Shami Chakrabarti
Shami Chakrabarti has been Director of Liberty (The
National Council for Civil Liberties) since September 2003.
Shami first joined Liberty as In-House Counsel on 10 September
2001. She became heavily involved in its engagement with
the 'War
on Terror' and with the defence and promotion of
human rights values in Parliament, the Courts and wider
society.
A Barrister by background, she was called to the Bar in 1994 and
worked as a lawyer in the Home Office from 1996 until 2001 for
Governments of both persuasions.
Since becoming Liberty’s Director she has written, spoken and
broadcast widely on the importance of the
post-WW2 human
rights framework as an essential component of democratic
society.
She is Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University, a Governor of
the British Film Institute, and a Visiting Fellow of Nuffield
College, Oxford in addition to being a Master of the Bench of
Middle Temple. She was recently invited to be one of 6 independent
assessors advising Lord Justice Leveson in his Public Inquiry into
the Culture, Practice and Ethics of the UK Press.