Human rights law occupies a central position in the collective expertise offered by Matrix. The Human Rights Act has incorporated the principles of the ECHR into English law making the provisions of the Convention directly enforceable in the national courts. The promise of the new legislation has been increasingly borne out in a wide range of areas of domestic legal practice - in criminal justice and the regulatory process, in public law, in commercial and employment law, in media law, and in extradition, immigration, environment law, discrimination and data protection.

Matrix members with in-depth expertise in all of these areas have been at the forefront of most of the groundbreaking human rights cases of recent years. In addition to extensive experience of domestic litigation members have represented clients before regional and international human rights tribunals, including the United Nations Human Rights Committee and the American Commission and Court of Human Rights. Several members appear regularly before the Privy Council in constitutional appeals arising in death penalty cases from the Caribbean.

Recent highlights include:

* A v Secretary of State for the Home Department - detention without trial of foreign terrorist suspects (Ben Emmerson QC, Philippe Sands QC, Raza Husain, Rabinder Singh QC, and Alex Bailin)

* R (on the application of Al-Skeini & Ors) v Secretary of State for Defence - judgment held that, in principle, the obligations in the ECHR and the Human Rights Act 1998 could apply to British forces during the occupation of South-Eastern Iraq (Rabinder Singh QC and Christine Chinkin)

* R (on the application of S) v Chief Constable of South Yorkshire; R (on the application of Marper) v Chief Constable of South Yorkshire - case concerning the compatibility with the Human Rights Act 1998 and the retention of DNA/fingerprint evidence (David Bean QC, Rabinder Singh QC, and Garreth Wong)