Judge, Federal Court of Australia: 16.10.1998
Location: Melbourne
Other Commissions/Appointments:
Australian Law Reform Commission - Part-time Commissioner
Justice Susan Kenny graduated B. A. (hons), L. L. B. (hons) University of Melbourne. She was placed first in History and shared first place in Law. After being awarded the Menzies Scholarship in Law in 1985, subsequently receiving a grant from Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee Trust, she studied comparative constitutional law at Magdalen College, Oxford, under the supervision of Professor John Finnis and she graduated D Phil (Oxon) in 1989.
She was Associate to Sir Ninian Stephen, then a Justice of the High Court of Australia, for two years from 1979, after which she commenced practising as a barrister. She specialised in the fields of constitutional and public law, as well as commercial and tax law, and became Queen’s Counsel in 1996. She appeared in notable cases, including the Tasmanian Dam Case and the War Crimes Case, as well as Portugal v Australia and Nauru v Australia in the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
She was appointed to the Court of Appeal of the Supreme Court of Victoria in 1997. At the time of her appointment, she was a part-time Commissioner of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. She has also been President of the Administrative Review Council, Counsel Assisting the Commonwealth Solicitor-General, and Member of the Advisory Committee on Executive Government for the 1987 Constitutional Commission.
She maintains her interest in the development of the law and legal education in Australia and overseas. Amongst other things, she is a part-time Commissioner of the Australian Law Reform Commission, a member of the Board of Governors of the International Organization for Judicial Training, a Foundation Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law, Board Member for the Centre for International and Public Law at ANU, and Law Faculty Board Member, Monash University. She is also an alternate member of the Council of the National Judicial College of Australia (as nominee of the Chief Justices of the Federal Court and the Family Court), member of the Advisory Board for the Institute of Legal Studies, Australian Catholic University and a member of the Steering Committee for the Secretariat of the Asia Pacific Judicial Reform Forum. Justice Kenny is Patron of the Christian Lawyers Association and Patron of the Australia-Indonesia Legal Development Foundation.
Justice Kenny also has numerous publications and extra-judicial interests.
