Heather Hallett

Who is Heather Hallett?

Dame Heather Carol Hallett, DBE, 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, Dame Brenda Hale, Dame Mary Arden and Dame Janet Smith.

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.