Baroness Ruth Deech and Professor Mark Freedland named as Queens Counsel Honoris Causa

The Faculty is delighted that Ruth Deech and Mark Freedland are to be appointed Honorary Queen's Counsel. The award of Queen's Counsel honoris causa is made to lawyers who have made a major contribution to the law of England and Wales outside practice in the courts.

Ruth Lynn, The Baroness Deech of Cumnor, DBE is a barrister and legal academic who was called to the Bar in 1967. In a career spanning more than 40 years she has been awarded several honorary degrees and was appointed Dame Commander of the British Empire in June 2002. She is a legal academic in family law and a former Principal of St. Anne’s College Oxford (1991–2004). She has published widely on issues ranging from genetics, IVF and the regulation of infertility treatment to family and property law. Ruth was chair of the UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (1994-2002) and dealt with the legalisation of stem cell research. She was a trustee of the Rhodes Scholarships from 1997 to 2006, a governor of the BBC from 2002 to 2006 and the first Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education from 2004 to 2008. Between 2008 and 2012 she was the Gresham Professor of Law and from 2006 to 2010 she was a member of the Select Committee on the Merits of Statutory Instruments. An active member of the House of Lords, she is a member of the Select Committee on Communications and has been chair of the Bar Standards Board since 2009.

Professor Mark Freedland FBA was called to the Bar in 1971. He is a Bencher of Gray’s Inn and an Honorary Member of Chambers at 3 Verulam Buildings. A former Professor of Employment Law at the University of Oxford and a law tutor at St John’s College, Oxford, he is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Law Faculty and its Institute of European and Comparative Law. His academic career has specialised in Labour and Employment Law and Public Law and his published works include, ‘The Contract of Employment’ (1976) and ‘The Personal Employment Contract’ (2003) while he has co-authored ‘Towards a Flexible Labour Market’ (2005) and ‘The Legal Construction of Personal Work Relations’ (2012). He holds an Honorary Doctorate at the University of Paris II and held one of the highly-prestigious Leverhulme Major Research Fellowships. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2001 and has provided studies for the European Commission and the International Labour Organisation on data protection in employment and employment protection legislation. He has recently been made an Honorary Professor in the Faculty of Laws at University College London where he was once a law student.

(Taken from the Ministry of Justice Press Release issued  27 February 2013)