Estelle Dehon

Date of call: 2006

Estelle has a broad-based practice, undertaking work in all areas of public, planning and environmental, employment, commercial and regulatory law.

Public law and human rights.
Estelle has a developing practice in public law. She is a contributing editor of Clayton and Tomlinson’s The Law of Human Rights (2nd edn), and digests cases for the Administrative Court Digest. Estelle has advised and acted on matters in education law, including school exclusion appeals and admissions criteria for religious schools, and has experience in a very broad range of public law cases, including care standards proceedings and judicial review involving planning, prisons, asylum and immigration. She is also particularly interested in mental health and community care law.

Planning Law
Estelle appears regularly on behalf of local authorities in both the Magistrates’ and Crown Court in environmental protection and licensing work. She also regularly appears at public inquiries on both planning and enforcement appeals and has recently been successful in defending planning appeals concerning a large block of flats in Bromley (on design and siting grounds) and a change of use in a shopping park in Orpington. She has experience in large, long-running inquiries, having been instructed by the Ministry of Defence as junior counsel to Philip Coppel QC in a controversial nine month inquiry into three wind farms in Northumberland.

Election Law
Estelle’s practice includes election law. She has advised on the requirements for the creation of a new Parish Council and on potential challenges to a parish council election. She was briefed to appear as junior counsel for the Returning Officer in the 2007-8 challenge to the local government election for the Aston Ward in Birmingham.

General Commercial Law
In the area of general contract law, Estelle has experience of drafting pleadings, advising on contractual interpretation and appearing in the County Court on contract claims, including conducting an appeal from a fast track trial. She has familiarity with defending bankruptcy orders, and has been involved with VAT Duty Drawback Litigation.

Before she came to the United Kingdom in 2001, Estelle worked at the South African Constitutional Court where she clerked for Justice Richard Goldstone. Prior to joining the Constitutional Court, Estelle was employed by the Independent International Commission on Kosovo to research the Kosovo crisis, assist with the administrative work of the Commission, and to help to draft and edit the Commission’s Report.

AFFILIATIONS
Administrative Law Bar Association
British South African Law Association
Commercial Bar Association
Human Rights Lawyers Association
Public Law Project

EDUCATION
BA (Law, Politics, English) Cum Laude, University of the Witwatersrand 1994-97
LLB, Cum Laude, University of the Witwatersrand, 1998-99
BCL, Exeter College, University of Oxford, 2001-2
MPhil in International Criminal Law, Exeter College, University of Oxford, 2002-3 (dissertation on the prosecution of gender crimes in international criminal law)
CPE, With Distinction, Oxford Brookes University, 2004-5
Bar Vocational Course, Very Competent, College of Law, 2005-6

SCHOLARSHIPS
Skye Foundation International Scholarship for Academic Excellence, 2002
Shell Centenary International Scholarship to Oxford, 2001

CONFERENCES
Estelle presented a paper on “Community Care and Human Rights” at the 4-5 Gray’s Inn Square Community Care Conference (13 October 2008)
Estelle was invited to participate in the Global Women’s Court of Accountability San Diego (17-18 November 2005) to act as a legal expert making submissions before the bench.

OTHER
President of the Inner Temple Mooting Society, 2005-6
Winner of the Inter-Inn Mooting Competition, 2006
Winner of the Queen Mary LexisNexis Inter-University Moot Competition, 2005
Member of the Steering Committee of the Oxford Public Interest Litigation Group, 2003
Oxford Postgraduate Law Society Social Secretary Co-curricular, 2002-3
Associate Editor of the Oxford Commonwealth Law Journal, 2002-3
Deputy-Chief Adjudicator of the 13th World Schools Debating Championships, Greater Johannesburg, 2001
Student Editor of the South African Journal on Human Rights, 1999
Tournament Director, 4th South African National University Debating Championships, 1999
Africa Representative on the World Universities Debating Executive Committee, 1999
Semi-finalist in the World University Debating Championships, 1998
Chair of the South African National Debating Council, 1998-99

AREAS OF PRACTICE
Estelle will accept instructions in all areas in which Chambers specialises

CLERKS EMAIL
Daniel Perry & Anthony King