Jamie Beagent

Human rights department.

Jamie specialises in judicial review and public law. Jamie works for a range of clients including individuals, groups, NGOs and charities. He undertakes judicial challenges to the decisions and failings of public authorities from quangos to central Government departments. He has particular expertise in the fields of planning and environmental law and unlawful detention but has a wide-ranging judicial review practice. He has worked closely with NGOs such as Bail for Immigration Detainees, Detention Action and Medical Justice to identify systemic unlawfulness by the Home Office and bring strategic litigation to assist the large and growing marginalised group of immigration detainees. Jamie has a strong interest in corporate accountability and worked the Corner House and Campaign Against Arms Trade in their challenge to the decision of the Serious Fraud Office to drop their investigation into BAE and Saudi Arms deals. He also helped a group of complainants (including Corner House and the Kurdish Human Rights Project) bring the first successful complaint to the UK’s OECD National Contact Point. The NCP upheld the complaint finding that a consortium led by BP had breached the OECD Guidelines by failing to consult properly with the local population in Turkey when developing the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline. Jamie has also been involved in some of the leading cases relating to the ‘war on terror’. He worked on the case of Binyam Mohamed in the judicial review that helped secure his release from Guantanamo Bay and has worked with Reprieve on the cases of other victims of ill-treatment and unlawful detention, including the application for habeas corpus brought by Bagram detainee Yunus Rahmatullah. An area of particular interest for Jamie is access to justice. He was involved in the leading case on Protective Costs Orders (Corner House v the Secretary of State for Trade & Industry), intervened on behalf of the Public Law Project in the leading case on claimant’s costs (Bahta & Ors-v-SSHD) and has brought challenges to the Legal Aid Agency where they have cut legal funding without proper consultation.

Bedford School, Somerville College, Oxford (Classics - 1998).