Interview: Jocelyn Cockburn human right lawyer

Lawyer who has represented Stephen Lawrence’s family and won a landmark ruling on the human rights of soldiers has been at the heart of some of the most politically sensitive court cases of the past decade

When the families of several soldiers killed in action in Iraq and Afghanistan, apparently because of inadequate equipment, first contacted her for help, Jocelyn Cockburn was uncertain about whether she was the best person to represent them.

The human rights lawyer had spent her career representing vulnerable people in legal battles against the state and initially saw soldiers as agents of the state.

“My cases are against the state – the little man, I suppose, against the big bullying monolith,” she says with a wry smile. “Soldiers are state agents, in a way, a bit like a police officers.”

It took her a while to realise that soldiers also needed legal protection. “I have learned that soldiers are an incredibly vulnerable class of people,” she says. “Because they have to do what is ordered of them, they have very little autonomy.”

Cockburn had a notable success earlier this summer at the supreme court when she represented the families of three soldiers killed by roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan, and won a landmark ruling confirming that the Ministry of Defence has a duty to protect the human rights of the its soldiers, even when they are on the battlefield.

It was a significant and controversial victory, but not her first. Cockburn has been at the heart of some of the most interesting and politically sensitive court cases of the past decade. As well as taking on the Ministry of Defence, she has represented Neville Lawrence, launching the judicial review that helped secure the reopening of a moribund investigation into Stephen Lawrence’s death, and which helped bring about the conviction last January of two men for his murder.

She also represented the family of Fiona Pilkington, the woman who took her own life and that of her disabled daughter, Francesca Pilkington, after enduring months of disability-related abuse, securing undisclosed damages from Leicestershire police, who recognised that they had not responded sufficiently to the family’s requests for help. Last year she was named partner of the year by the legal journal, The Lawyer, in recognition of her achievements.

When people ask Cockburn if she was nervous about taking on the force of the Ministry of Defence, she replies: “No, because I’ve done a lot more frightening things in my life than that.”

Although it is a subject she prefers not to dwell on, this is a sideways reference to her disability. She had a tumour removed from her spine when she was six, and developed scoliosis, which affected her growth and has left her with some enduring health problems. She has always flinched from describing herself as disabled, but concedes that the experience of growing up different gave her a strength she might otherwise not have had, and a desire to represent vulnerable people.

“I have never defined myself as a disabled …read more