Louise Hilda Christian (born 22 May 1952, Oxford) is a British human rights solicitor. [1] She is the daughter of Jack and Maureen Christian.
Christian was admitted to the Law Society as a solicitor on 16 January 1978. [2] In 1985, [3] she and Michael Fisher, a solicitor best known for his work representing those accused of Irish terrorist offences, whose firm, Fisher Meredith, she had worked in, [4] set up a firm called Christian Fisher. [5] [6] [7] An early case was representing 49 Liverpool councillors who were being prosecuted for wilful misconduct. [7] The councillors were surcharged a total of £106,000; however they appealed unsuccessfully to the high court, which awarded £242,000 legal costs against the councillors. [8] Sadiq Khan (now Mayor of London) joined the firm as a trainee in 1994, and became a partner in 1997. The firm was renamed Christian Khan when Fisher left in 2002. [5] [6] Khan left in 2004; [5] at the time the firm employed about 50 staff. [7] Christian Khan earned money almost entirely from legal aid. [3] Christian has represented detainees at the American Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba. [9] [10] and the bereaved in various disasters – the Marchioness Disaster, the Southall, Ladbroke Grove and Potters Bar Rail crashes and the Lakanal House Fire. Christian left in 2010; and the firm merged with Imran Khan & Partners in 2012. [7]
Christian has been prominent in left-wing politics, fighting Hendon South for Labour in 1987 before standing as a Socialist Alliance candidate in Hornsey and Wood Green in the 2001 election. Louise Christian has long been associated with human rights' pressure group Liberty (formerly known as the National Council for Civil Liberties) and was the chair from July 2007, [11] until October 2009. [12] She has contributed to The Guardian , [1] and is the author or co-author of several books.
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: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)Legal aid is the provision of assistance to people who are unable to afford legal representation and access to the court system. Legal aid is regarded as central in providing access to justice by ensuring equality before the law, the right to counsel and the right to a fair trial. This article describes the development of legal aid and its principles, primarily as known in Europe, the Commonwealth of Nations and in the United States.
Liberty, formerly, and still formally, called the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL), is an advocacy group and membership organisation based in the United Kingdom, which challenges unjust laws, protects civil liberties and promotes human rights. It does this through the courts, in Parliament and in the wider community. Liberty also aims to engender a "rights culture" within British society. The NCCL was founded in 1934 by Ronald Kidd and Sylvia Crowther-Smith, motivated by their humanist convictions.
The American Center for Law & Justice (ACLJ) is a legal organization in the United States. It is headquartered in Washington, D.C., and associated with Regent University School of Law in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
Sadiq Aman Khan is a British politician serving as Mayor of London since 2016. He was previously Member of Parliament (MP) for Tooting from 2005 until 2016. A member of the Labour Party, Khan is on the party's soft left and has been ideologically characterised as a social democrat.
Article 19 is an international human rights organisation that works to defend and promote freedom of expression and freedom of information worldwide. It was founded in 1987. The organisation takes its name from Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states:
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; the right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers.
Howe & Co Solicitors is a firm of human rights solicitors based in Brentford, London, England. The firm has in excess of 100 staff, and specialises in human rights cases, employment law, defamation, civil litigation, public law and personal injury litigation.
John Robert Marsden was an Australian solicitor and former President of the Law Society of New South Wales. He was known for his high-profile clients, his gay rights activism, and his victory in a defamation action against the Seven Network.
SharmishtaChakrabarti, Baroness Chakrabarti, is a British politician, barrister, and human rights activist. A member of the Labour Party, she served as the director of Liberty, a major advocacy group which promotes civil liberties and human rights, from 2003 to 2016. From 2016 to 2020, she served as Shadow Attorney General for England and Wales.
Olisa Agbakoba is a Nigerian human rights activist, maritime lawyer and former President of Nigerian Bar Association.
Jonathan Fisher KC is a London barrister specialising in corporate and financial crime, proceeds of crime, and tax cases He is also a Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics.
Martyn Day is a British solicitor specializing in international, environmental and product liability claims who founded – and is the Senior Partner of – the law firm Leigh Day. He was a director of Greenpeace Environmental Trust, having stepped down as chairman of Greenpeace UK in 2008.
Liberty Victoria, officially the Victorian Council for Civil Liberties (VCCL) and formerly Australian Council for Civil Liberties (ACCL), is a civil liberties group based in Victoria, Australia.
Sir Geoffrey Lionel Bindman KC (Hon) is a British solicitor specialising in human rights law, and founder of the human rights law firm Bindman & Partners. He has been Chair of the British Institute of Human Rights since 2005. He won The Law Society Gazette Centenary Award for Human Rights in 2003, and was knighted in 2007 for services to human rights. In 2011, he was appointed Queen's Counsel.
Public interest law refers to legal practices undertaken to help poor, marginalized, or under-represented people, or to effect change in social policies in the public interest, on 'not for profit' terms, often in the fields of civil rights, civil liberties, religious liberty, human rights, women's rights, consumer rights, environmental protection, and so on.
Mona Arshi is a British poet. She won the Forward Prize, Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection in 2015 for her work Small Hands.
Tuckers Solicitors LLC, known as Tuckers Solicitors, is a national criminal defence firm that has particular specialisation in serious crime, extradition, martial and military law, civil liberties, human rights, cyber crime and is one of the largest law firms headquartered in London. The firm featured in series of television shows about crime and disorder on national channels and has appeared on national news, commenting on various legal affairs.
Philip Joseph Shiner is a British former human rights solicitor. He was struck off the roll of solicitors in England and Wales in 2017 over misconduct relating to false abuse claims against British troops. He was Head of Strategic Litigation at Public Interest Lawyers (International) from 2014 until the firm's closure on 31 August 2016. He had previously been Principal at Public Interest Lawyers Ltd from 1999 to 2014.
R v Secretary of State for the Home Department was a challenge by way of judicial review to the ban on Louis Farrakhan entering the United Kingdom. The ban was imposed on Farrakhan, the leader of the black separatist Nation of Islam in the United States, in 1986. He sought to overturn the ban in 2001, relying on the provisions of the Human Rights Act 1998, and was initially successful in the Administrative Court of the High Court of Justice – the first time that an exclusion order had been successfully challenged in court.
Jacqueline (Jacqui) McKenzie is a British human rights lawyer specialising in migration, asylum and refugee law. Her legal career encompasses practice in the areas of civil liberties, crime and immigration with solicitors Birnberg Peirce and Partners, and since 2010 running her own immigration consultancy, McKenzie Beute and Pope (MBP), having previously spent more than a decade in senior local government roles with responsibility for equalities, community development, communications and urban development. She joined human rights law firm Leigh Day as a partner in 2021. She is the founder of the Organisation of Migration Advice and Research, which works pro bono with refugees and women who have been trafficked to the UK. McKenzie has won recognition for her work seeking justice for victims of the Windrush scandal that initially gained notoriety in 2018. She was named one of the top 10 most influential black Britons in the Powerlist 2022.
William Henry Thompson (1885–1947) was an English radical lawyer closely involved with trade unions, who founded Thompsons Solicitors. From the 1920s he was associated with the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). He was married to Joan Beauchamp, a prominent suffragette.