Short Bio:
Ian Freckelton has been a Judge of the Supreme Court of Nauru since 2017 and has been a member of eleven statutory tribunals at both Commonwealth and State level in Australia.
He is also King’s Counsel (a senior barrister / trial lawyer) in full time practice as a barrister throughout Australia and has been briefed in New Zealand, Thailand, Singapore and Papua New Guinea. He was admitted to the Bar in 1988 and took Silk in 2007. His practice is trial, appellate and advisory.
He is a Professor of Law and a Professorial Fellow in Psychiatry at the University of Melbourne, and an Honorary Professor of Forensic Medicine at Monash University and an Adjunct Professor at the Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand, and the Queensland University of Technology, La Trobe University and Southern Cross University in Australia. He has also been an Adjunct Professor at Johns Hopkins University in the United States, teaching in its research integrity programme. He was the Commissioner at the Victorian Law Reform Commission which resulted in Australia’s first legislation legalising medicinal cannabis and is a Board member of the Coronial Council of Victoria.
Ian is the only person to elected as a Fellow of three learned Academies in Australia: the Academies of Health and Medical Sciences; Social Sciences; and Law, and is also an Honorary Fellow of the Australasian College of Legal Medicine. He is the co-chair of the Education Committee of the World Association of Medicine and Law.
Since 1992 Ian has been the Editor of the Journal of Law and Medicine and is also the Founding Editor of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law and a former President of the Australian Association of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law. He was a member of the Mental Health Tribunal of Victoria for 25 years, including for a time as its Acting President.
Ian has received awards for his pro bono and human rights work, and has been awarded challenge medals of appreciation by four of Australia’s police forces for his representation of their members.
Ian is the author of over 750 published articles and chapters of books, as well as more than 50 books, including the 1,500 page Expert Evidence: Law, Practice and Procedure (7th edn, Thomson Reuters, 2024), COVID-19 and the Law (OUP 2023), Australian Public Health Law (Federation Press, 2023) and Scholarly Misconduct and the Law (OUP, 2017). He is currently finalising a new edition of Coronial Law and Medicine, and is also completing a book on Automatism with co-authors in England, Sweden and New Zealand. He has given more than 800 scholarly presentations in nearly 50 countries. He is acknowledged as Australia’s leading scholar on medico-legal issues.
In 2021 Ian was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for “distinguished service to the law and the legal profession, across fields including health, science and technology”, and in 2024 he was awarded its highest honour by the International Academy of Law and Mental Health, the Prix Philippe Pinel.
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