Tessa Hetherington’s principal areas of work are public law, human rights and civil liberties, and discrimination and equality law.
Tessa does a wide range of public law work, and has appeared in the High Court in judicial review proceedings, and as a junior in the Court of Appeal and House of Lords. She has a particular interest in cases involving human rights and/or equality elements, and recently acted (with Helen Mountfield QC) for service users in the case of R(Rahman) v Birmingham City Council, a successful challenge to a local authority’s decision to cease funding voluntary sector advice services, reached without compliance with its public sector equality duties.
From 2008-2011, Tessa was junior counsel for the victims in the Baha Mousa Public Inquiry, and in 2010 was awarded the JUSTICE Peter Duffy Award for her “brilliant and extraordinarily hard work” on this case. Tessa is recommended by Chambers and Partners in the field of Administrative and Public Law, and Civil Liberties and Human Rights, with comments including “a future star of the Public Law Bar” and “she is not only bright but the hardest working Counsel I have ever come across”. Tessa is on the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s list of approved counsel and is one of the contributing editors of the 2nd edition of Clayton & Tomlinson’s Law of Human Rights. She is also a member of the Attorney General’s ‘C’ Panel, and is currently teaching Constitutional Law at Trinity College, Cambridge.
Tessa is regularly instructed in a wide variety of education law work, including special educational needs, exclusion, and school reorganisation. 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 deputy editor of the Education Public Law and the Individual journal.
In addition to general community care work, Tessa has experience of Court of Protection work, including welfare issues and deprivation of liberty, and other cases involving the protection of vulnerable adults.