St Anne’s College congratulates alumna Jo Delahunty (Jurisprudence, 1982), a Family Law QC, who will receive a Freedom of the City of London. Professor Delahunty was nominated for her contribution to the Law and efforts to advance diversity and equality. More than 100 women will receive the Freedom of the City of London to commemorate the centenary of the Representation of the People Act 1918.
Last year, the City Corporation agreed to mark 100 years of female suffrage with the award of the Freedom by inviting members of the Court of Common Council and colleagues in their City of London Wards to nominate candidates. The Freedom is the highest honour the City of London can bestow and is one of the oldest surviving traditional ceremonies still in existence, believed to have been first presented in 1237. The City of London periodically invites individuals who have made a significant impact in their field to take up the Freedom to acknowledge their particular positive contribution to society.
Professor Jo Delahunty QC is one of the UK’s leading barristers specialising in cases concerned with families and children. Since being called to the Bar in 1986, Professor Delahunty has come to practise at the High Court level and above, rising to prominence for her work in cases concerning contentious medical evidence and the death of/catastrophic injuries to a child She was appointed a QC in 2006, a Recorder in 2009 and made a Bencher of Middle Temple in 2011. She is identified as a Top Rank Silk by Chambers and Partners and is ranked as a Top Tier Silk by the Legal 500.
Alongside her practice in the Family Division, between 2013-16, Professor Delahunty was instructed on behalf of 77 bereaved families in the Hillsborough Inquest, responsible for exposing the failures of the emergency medical response by the South Yorkshire Ambulance service which led to loves being lost that might have been saved.
She has been appointed Gresham Professor of Law since the summer of 2016 and undertakes that role alongside her silk practice.
Professor Delahunty also sits as a Recorder hearing public and private law chidren’s cases and is a member of various committees of legal associations, including the CCFLR (Centre for Child and Family Law Reform), the Women’s Forum (Middle and Inner Temple Inns of Court) alongside being Patron of the charity AMEND (Association of Multiple Endocrine Neoplasia Disorders). She is a member of 4Paper Buildings, Temple, London and has door tenancies at Park Lane Plowden in Leeds.
She will be presented with the Freedom by the Lord Mayor at a special ceremony on the 13 March 2019.
#100Freedoms100Women