Human rights lawyer who originally worked on sex-discrimination cases before setting up Doughty Street chambers
Born into a working-class, strongly Catholic and socialist family in Glasgow, Baroness Kennedy, 61, is deeply influenced by her upbringing. "We were brought up to believe that material things were not important and that people had to be measured by what they did for other people," she says. By this standard she is doing pretty well.
At just 24, the radical lawyer set up her own chambers to work on sex-discrimination cases, domestic violence against women and to defend women who had killed or assaulted violent partners.
By 1990, along with other human rights lawyers, she set up the Doughty Street chambers, and worked on headline-grabbing cases such as the Guildford Four and the Michael Bettany spy trial.
If criticism can't silence her, nor can honours – despite being a Labour peer, she harshly criticised the Blair government's erosion of legal rights and famously compared the then home secretary David Blunkett to Robert Mugabe.
She has chaired an independent inquiry recommending sweeping changes to the way sudden infant deaths are investigated, and headed organisations as diverse as the British Council and the Human Genetics Commission. She also has her own foundation funding disadvantaged students.
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