Quick Facts
Biography
Dame Heather Carol Hallett DBE PC (born 16 December 1949), styled The Rt Hon. Lady Justice Hallett, is an English judge of the Court of Appeal. She is the fifth woman to sit in the Court of Appeal, after Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss (now Baroness Butler-Sloss) (1988), Dame Brenda Hale (now Baroness Hale of Richmond) (1999), Dame Mary Arden (2000) and Dame Janet Smith (2002).
Hallett was educated at Brockenhurst Grammar School, in the New Forest, and at St Hugh's College, Oxford.
She was called to the Bar by The Honourable Society of the Inner Temple in 1972. She became a Queen's Counsel in 1989 and a Bencher of Inner Temple in 1993. She was the first woman to chair the Bar Council, in 1998, having been vice-chair in 1997. She became Treasurer of the Inner Temple in 2011.
She was appointed a Recorder of the Crown Court in 1989 and a deputy High Court judge in 1995. She became a full-time judge of the High Court, in 1999, in Queen's Bench Division, and was promoted to the Court of Appeal in 2005. She was appointed a member of the Judicial Appointments Commission in January 2006, as a representative of the judiciary.
Hallett was chosen in 2009 to act as coroner in the inquest of the 52 fatal victims of the 7/7 bombings; hearings began in October 2010.
She began a four-year term as Vice-President of the Queen's Bench Division on 3 October 2011, succeeding Lord Justice Thomas.
In May 2012 in an appeal hearing she quashed the murder conviction of 24-year-old Sam Hallam as unsafe after he had spent seven years in prison, which made him one of the youngest victims of a UK miscarriage of justice.
In February 2013 she was assessed as the 8th most powerful woman in Britain by Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4. In November 2013, she was appointed Vice-President of the Criminal Division of the Court of Appeal, succeeding Lord Hughes.
In March 2014 she was appointed by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland to carry out an independent review of the administrative scheme by which 'letters of assurance' were sent to those known as the 'on the runs' (OTRs).