Should successful asylum seekers who are also ­suspected terrorists be deported? Does a care home looking after an elderly person with Alzheimer’s disease have to respect her human rights? Must a Sikh schoolgirl be allowed to go to school wearing a Sikh bangle (kara) if other pupils are not allowed to wear bangles? Should a performance artist’s show in which members of the public smoke in glass booths be exempt from the smoking ban in the interests of freedom of expression? Do people affected by airport expansion have a right to be consulted on the potential health impacts?

These are some of the questions that human rights lawyers have to deal with. Human rights law touches all sorts of areas of life because ‘human rights’ are the rights that we all have simply by virtue of being human.

Human rights include: the right to equality of dignity and respect; the right not to be tortured or subjected to degrading treatment; the right to bodily liberty; and the right to believe what you want.

Human rights also include the rights that are ­absolutely fundamental to the existence of a free and fair society: the rights to receive and impart ideas; the right to have your privacy respected by the state; the right to a fair trial; the right to vote in free and fair ­elections; and the right to an education.

In other words, human rights are at the very core of what the rule of law and democracy are about. The idea of ‘doing human rights law’ is often what attracts ­people to becoming a lawyer in the first place.

It is hard to pin down what it is to ‘be’ a human rights lawyer. It often means handling cases brought under the Human Rights Act 1998, or some of the myriad of equality enactments (which prohibit discrimination on grounds of race, sex, disability, sexual orientation, age, religion or belief). But this is quite a narrow ­description – the Human Rights Act gives effect to the European Convention on Human Rights in UK courts, but there are lots of other international human rights treaties that a good human rights lawyer will be ­familiar with and lots of other UK laws that affect human rights.

Human rights issues arise in all sorts of areas. Is it “inhuman and degrading treatment” to refuse to ­provide support for a failed asylum seeker; is it a breach of privacy to publish CCTV footage of a suicide attempt on a public street? Is it a breach of the right to respect for private and family life to refuse to allow someone to try to get pregnant using embryos conceived by IVF if her ex-partner no longer consents?

There is no obvious career path for someone who wants to ‘do human rights’. Those who are interested in human rights law often seek to practise in fields where human rights issues frequently arise – public law and judicial review, criminal law, immigration, ­employment or media law – or to work for an organisation specialising in human rights issues.

The working culture

Human rights lawyers can be solicitors or barristers. They can work for public sector organisations (for ­example, as in-house lawyers for local or national ­government, or the Equality and Human Rights Commission), or for non-governmental organisations or pressure groups. So there is no one working culture.

It is very competitive to get into human rights law, so those who succeed are often very driven. Places that do human rights law are often quite conscious of the need to encourage diversity, so may be particularly ­receptive to candidates from non-traditional backgrounds and seek to support those who want to pursue non-traditional career patterns (such as working ­flexibly to accommodate family commitments).

And human rights lawyers are rarely, if ever, in it for the money. There are easier ways to get rich quick. Having said that, successful human rights lawyers in private practice make a very comfortable living.

Skills required

You need to be analytical, have a good understanding of and interest in the political issues involved, and you need to care about people. If you want to be an ­advocate, you need to be good at getting a point across clearly orally. And all human rights lawyers need to be able to express themselves well in writing.

Because getting into human rights law is competitive, you need a good academic record and must be able to demonstrate a real commitment to human rights, not only in modules studied, but in extra-curricular ­activities such as volunteering at legal advice clinics or campaign work.

Recent developments

The ‘War on Terror’ has generated a host of human rights cases, including the treatment of terrorist ­suspects, the responsibility for actions of British troops abroad, and issues concerning protest and freedom of expression. Other issues are which bodies are ‘public authorities’ that have to give effect to the Human Rights Act, and the scope of new ‘positive equality duties’ under the race, sex and disability discrimination acts to protect equality and good relations between members of different groups. The media also generates interesting human rights work – from the publication of the Douglas-Zeta-Jones wedding photos in Hello! to the Max Moseley videos in News of the World.

Helen Mountfield, barrister, Matrix Chambers