Human rights

Many of our lawyers in London take the opportunity to contribute to our human rights legal work, in particular providing legal assistance to those facing the death penalty in the US and the Caribbean. More recently, our lawyers have also undertaken cases addressing key human rights issues, such as Guantánamo Bay.

We work with a number of human rights charities, including Amicus, Reprieve, Justice, Liberty, Fair Trials International and REDRESS, with an emphasis on supporting work that ensures people are given a fair trial, corrects a manifest injustice and helps establish a legal right.

We assisted JUSTICE with its report on lifting the ban on the use of intercept evidence, providing comparative law research and funding for its publication. We also worked with Liberty on its recent report on the government’s proposals to extend the time limit on pre-charge detention for those arrested for terrorist offences and helped with a report on the practice of so-called data mining. As well as working with Reprieve on US death penalty cases, we provided it with ad hoc research assistance on a variety of issues.

We recently persuaded the UK’s Social Security Commissioner to set aside UK law on the grounds that it discriminates against transsexuals in breach of EU law on behalf of a client. The facts were unusual: our client reassigned gender between the ages of 60 and 65. This left him in legal limbo: he could not claim a pension, as he was too young for a male pension, and could not claim incapacity benefit, as he had not served the relevant qualifying period (because as a woman he was prohibited from contributing). The Commissioner accepted our arguments that this was unjustifiable discrimination in breach of EC law and the UK law was set aside.