Inquiries & Public Law

For more than 50 years chambers have been known for excellence in advocacy, coupled with approachability and empathy with clients.

Nowhere does the potency of that blend have more applicability than in the field of public law.

Highly rated for the strength and quality of our offering in advocacy, particularly criminal advocacy, our members have built from that sure foundation a formidable profile in inquiry work. The skills, forged and burnished in the criminal courts, equip our members with the robust, independent integrity necessary to the truth-finding purpose of public inquiries and inquests.

The range and depth of our members’ experience ensures that we can match the right counsel to the needs of the client. Our members have been instructed in many inquiries including most recently the Grenfell Tower Inquiry, the Dobbs Inquiry and the undercover policing inquiry (Mitting). Members have also been involved in the Baha Mousa and Al Sweady public inquiries, into alleged war crimes in Iraq; and the team working for Sir Robert Owen on the inquest into the death of Alexander Litvinenko.

Our inquest work is as diverse as 

• advising and drafting submissions for a number of bereaved families in the London Bombing Inquest presided over by Lady Justice Hallett,
• appearing for owners of care homes in one of which a patient choked while eating and
• appearing for a bereaved family whose son and brother had been killed in an air accident.

Complementing our Inquiry and Inquest work, we offer a first-rate service in Judicial Review, members having been instructed, for example, to challenge

• a coroner’s decision to limit the scope of a Jamieson (non-State) inquest about a Russian national who was suspected of having poisoned her husband,
• a coroner’s refusal to undertake an art 2 inquest into a death in a care home, and
• a police decision to discontinue investigations into allegations of historic sex abuse.

In extradition work, our team also offers depth and breadth of experience, regularly appearing for requested persons at both first instance hearings and High Court appeals; acting against governments as diverse as those of the USA, Nigeria, Singapore and Paraguay; and appearing for requesting states and judicial authorities.

Members’ work has included 

• defending in the extradition proceedings of a Romanian national who was acting as an informant against the mafia, his cellmate having revealed the location of 18 murdered prostitutes whose organs were being trafficked across Europe;
• prosecuting in cases at first instance and in the Queen’s Bench Division, including assisting with extradition requests made by foreign governments and judicial authorities in politically significant cases, such as that of Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange

Whatever the procedure inquest, public inquiry, extradition proceedings or judicial review our members are committed to recognising that a correctly judged approach, both tactically and procedurally, will be essential to reaching the best outcome for the client and the range of experience and depth of history that 3 TG offers in the field of public law bespeaks of the quality, consistency and dependability of that offering.