Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC KC > Doughty Street Chambers > London, England > Barrister Profile
Doughty Street Chambers Offices
53-54 DOUGHTY STREET
LONDON
WC1N 2LS
England
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Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC KC
Work Department
Position
Caoilfhionn Gallagher QC is a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers, specialising in human rights and civil liberties.
She has acted in many of the leading human rights cases in the UK in recent years, including acting for bereaved families and survivors of the 7/7 London bombings and the Hillsborough disaster, and acting in a series of cases which have established that the UK Government’s welfare changes are discriminatory. Caoilfhionn undertakes many ‘test cases’ which secure results for her clients but also achieve wider change in the law. For example, her recent cases include acting in a number of successful challenges to the Department of Work and Pensions’ benefit changes, R (Hurley and others) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions [2016] PTSR 636 (benefit cap unlawfully discriminates against the severely disabled), R (A and Rutherford) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions [2016] HLR 8 (social sector size criteria, ‘bedroom tax,’ unlawfully discriminate against women) and R (MA) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions [2013] PTSR 1521 (Regulations required to correct discriminatory impact of the bedroom tax on severely disabled children).
Caoilfhionn has particular expertise in freedom of expression and open justice. She regularly advises and acts for newspapers and broadcasters in the UK concerning journalistic access to the courts and public interest reporting. She has acted, for example, for media organisations in the inquests into the deaths of Alexander Litvinenko and Gareth Williams (the GCHQ employee found dead in a holdall), ensuring that these hearings were open to public scrutiny and could be freely reported. She worked with the Media Lawyers’ Association and the Chief Coroner in the development of new guidelines on open justice in the coroners’ courts. She also regularly acts for journalists worldwide who are imprisoned, prosecuted, sued or subjected to travel bans due to their journalism; her current and recent case load includes work for journalists, bloggers, cartoonists, peaceful protestors and human rights defenders in Egypt, Turkey and Equatorial Guinea. She leads the international legal team for the family of Daphne Caruana Galizia, the award-winning journalist assassinated in Malta in 2017, and she is leading counsel to 152 BBC Persian journalists persecuted by Iran due to their work. She is a member of the UK Advisory Board to Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and regularly works with Index on Censorship and other NGOs specialising in freedom of expression.
Women’s rights is another area of particular interest for Caoilfhionn. Much of her work in relation to austerity and welfare cuts concerns the disproportionate impact of those cuts upon women, particularly BAME women and victims and survivors of domestic violence. She has also acted in a series of cases concerning the almost total ban on abortion in Northern Ireland, including R (A and B) v Secretary of State for Health [2017] UKSC 41 and Re Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission [2018] UKSC 27.
Caoilfhionn also has expertise in children’s rights and she has acted in many of the leading cases in this field, including HH v Italy [2013] 1 AC 338 (right of children to be heard in extradition proceedings concerning their parents) and R (HC) v SSHD [2014] 1 WLR 1234 (acted for Hughes Chang in this test case on treatment of 17-year-olds in police custody as adults rather than children; it has resulted in a change to the law, affecting 70,000 17-year-olds in custody every year). Internationally, she acts in many cases concerning children’s rights, particularly in Strasbourg and before the UN Special Procedures, and she has provided consultancy services to the UN on child soldiers and Boko Haram.
Languages
Memberships
Howard League for Penal Reform
INQUEST
Association of Prison Lawyers
Police Action Lawyers Group
Liberty
British Irish Rights Watch
Irish Council for Civil Liberties
Irish Penal Reform Trust
Education
BCL (University College Dublin)
BL (Honorable Society of the King’s Inns, Dublin)
LLM (Cambridge, Gonville & Caius College)
Lawyer Rankings
London Bar > Court of Protection and community care
(Leading Silks)Ranked: Tier 3London Bar > Police law (claimant)
(Leading Silks)Ranked: Tier 2Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC – Doughty Street Chambers ‘Caoilfhionn is a phenomenal barrister – she has an unmatched breadth of experience and is incredibly passionate and very bright. She is great with clients.’
London Bar > Administrative law and human rights
(Leading Silks)Ranked: Tier 3Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC –Doughty Street Chambers ‘Caoilfhionn is a formidable barrister – a standout silk for her expertise in public and human rights law.‘
London Bar > Inquests and inquiries
(Leading Silks)Ranked: Tier 1Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC – Doughty Street Chambers ‘Caoilfhionn is very dedicated, with excellent judgement and comprehensive knowledge of inquests and inquiries matters.‘
With vast experience in representing bereaved families, Doughty Street Chambers is widely recognised for its inquests and inquiries expertise. Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC is acting for the family of Steve Dymond, who took his own life after a polygraph test branded him a “love cheat” on The Jeremy Kyle Show, in the inquest into his death. Jude Bunting KC is active in a number of cases relating to Northern Ireland, including representing the widow of a member of the public killed when they drove into a security forces ambush of IRA members in 1987. Alison Gerry handles cases involving deaths following contact with the police, while Tom Stoate represented an eighteen-year-old woman, on remand awaiting sentencing for robbery at HMP Bronzefield, whose baby died after she gave birth alone in her cell. Fiona Murphy KC took silk in March 2023.