Tessa Hetherington

Called 2004
Tessa Hetherington
Tessa Hetherington's principal areas of work are public law (including education, health, community care and environmental law), human rights, employment, and discrimination and equality law.

Tessa does a wide range of public law work, including many cases involving human rights and EC law elements. She has appeared alone in the High Court in judicial review proceedings, and as a junior in the Court of Appeal and House of Lords. Tessa was instructed by Liberty and JUSTICE (along with Rabinder Singh QC and Raza Husain) to intervene in the House of Lords in R (Limbuela, Tesema and Adam) v Secretary of State for the Home Department, concerning the correct analysis of Article 3 ECHR in the context of support for destitute asylum seekers, and appeared as junior counsel in the House of Lords in R (Edwards) v Environment Agency on the requirements of the IPPC and EIA directives in environmental law and the exercise of remedial discretion in judicial review. She is one of the contributing authors of the 2nd edition of Clayton and Tomlinson's Law of Human Rights, and is currently junior counsel for the victims in the Baha Mousa Inquiry.

Tessa has a strong interest in education law, and has been instructed in a wide variety of areas, appearing before the SENDIST, Independent Appeal Panels and the High Court. Tessa appeared (with David Wolfe) in the first judicial review to examine the process of setting up Academy schools, and has been instructed in a number of other cases involving Academies. She is the deputy editor of the Education Public Law and the Individual journal.

Tessa has broad experience of employment work, including unfair dismissal, discrimination, collective rights, TUPE and trade union recognition. She frequently appears in employment tribunals, including in complex multi-day trials, and regularly delivers training sessions on employment issues. Tessa has a particular interest in discrimination and equality matters, and has been involved in cases dealing with these issues both in and outside the employment field. She was instructed as junior counsel to represent the lead Claimants in the race discrimination claims of fifteen prisoners against Leeds prison.

Tessa studied law at Cambridge, and was awarded the second highest first class degree in her year in 2001. She completed a Masters in Law at Harvard in 2003, and then the Bar Vocational Course in 2004, ranking fourth in her year with the grade of Outstanding. She became a full member of Matrix in October 2005, on completion of her traineeship.