Speaker details

Biography

Justice Melissa Perry was appointed to the Federal Court of Australia in 2013. Her Honour was commissioned in the office of member of the Defence Force Discipline Appeal Tribunal in 2018 and appointed as a Deputy President of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal in 2019.

Prior to taking judicial office, Justice Perry graduated from the University of Adelaide and was subsequently awarded an LLM and a prize-winning PhD in public international law from the University of Cambridge. Her Honour practiced at the Bar in Australia from 1992 to 2013, being appointed Queen’s Counsel for South Australia in 2004. She was admitted to the Bar of England and Wales in 2012.

Her Honour’s areas of expertise in practice included constitutional law, administrative law, native title, migration law, and international law. Justice Perry is a member of the Judicial Council on Cultural Diversity established by the Council of Chief Justices and chaired the specialist committee which prepared the National Recommended Standards for Working with Interpreters in Courts and Tribunals (JCCD, 2017).

Among other roles, her Honour is a Fellow and former director of the Australian Academy of Law, and a member of the advisory boards for the Centre for International and Public Law (Australian National University), the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law (University of New South Wales), and the Research Unit on Military Law and Ethics (University of Adelaide). Justice Perry served for many years on the Administrative Review Council, an independent statutory body which monitored and advised on federal administrative law.

Among other subjects, her Honour has presented extensively about issues pertaining to the utilisation of digital technologies in decision-making from a rule of law perspective.