Dr Rachel Tolley

Biography

Before joining Trinity Hall, Rachel was a member of Wadham College, Oxford, where she completed her BA (Jurisprudence), and BCL. She recently submitted her DPhil thesis, entitled Deception, Mistake, Privacy and Consent: A Conceptual Framework for Resolving the ‘Line-drawing’ Problem in Sex-by-Deception and Mistaken Sex. Whilst at Wadham, Rachel was one of three graduate students to co-found and organise the Herbert Smith Freehills Oxford Disability Mooting Championship in 2014. This major event in the Oxford mooting calendar was established to promote discussion of disability and how it intersects with domestic and international law; an issue to which Rachel remains committed here in Cambridge.

Rachel’s main area of research concerns the effect of deception and mistake on the validity of consent to sexual activity in English criminal law. Rachel also maintains research interests in the non-fatal offences against the person. She is currently working on a paper which considers how the law should conceptualise damage to prosthetic limbs, wheelchairs and other mobility aids. Rachel teaches Criminal Law and and Criminal Procedure and Evidence, and is honoured to hold a fellowship in the name of John Collier.