PUBLIC LAW Brick Court had always done public law cases. Bob Alexander had argued Spycatcher155 and Datafin156 because the best advocates at the bar are invariably asked to argue the most important and most challenging cases. Much of the Euro work had involved judicial review. In the 1990s there had been an explosion in EU and competition work. By the late 1990s the Blair government had made clear that it intended to legislate in the human rights area, and enacted the Human Rights Act 1998. This led to an increased importance for public and administrative law. Partly because of its moral and political importance, and partly because the courts were suddenly active in creating the boundaries, many of the best graduates became anxious to specialise in this burgeoning area of law. There was a significant overlap with the work done by the Euros, as many of their cases involved judicial review. Euro practitioners such as David Anderson and Jemima Stratford already had practices that crossed over into public law. The Euro practitioners organised a weekend seminar at a hotel in Rye (shades of Jowitt) in 1996 for everyone in chambers to learn about human rights. The attraction of moving into public law was to use the Euro expertise as a way into this new market. It was envisaged that there would be synergies with the Euro practice, and also potentially with commercial judicial review. And a strength in public law was likely to attract bright young graduates enthusing about it after studying at university. Richard Gordon was recruited, a senior silk who had a longstanding public law practice, together with Alan Maclean, who had a mixed public law and commercial practice. Shortly afterwards a number of public lawyers split from 4–5 Gray’s Inn Square. This led to the recruitment of Marie Demetriou and Martin Chamberlain. Marie had been one of those who had applied for pupillage for 1995–6, had not obtained a pupillage in that golden year, and her absence had been regretted ever since. Martin was at that time relatively junior but soon became the 155 [1990] 1AC 109 156 [1987] QB 815
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