Professor Richard Chisholm

BA, LLB (Sydney); BCL (Oxford); Hon LLD (UNSW)
Honorary Professor, ANU College of Law
ANU College of Law
T: 0418294865

Biography

Richard Chisholm grew up in Sydney and did his undergraduate degree at the University of Sydney (BA, LLB, 1968) and his post graduate degree at Oxford (BCL, 1970), after which he was an academic at the University of New South Wales Law School, specialising in family law.  In the 1970s he was a founding member of the Aboriginal Legal Service, and the founding President of the children’s rights group Action for Children. He was appointed as a Judge of the Family Court of Australia in 1993.  On his retirement in 2004, he resumed academic work, and was appointed Honorary Professor of Law at the University of Sydney, and, after his move to Canberra in 2006, has been a Adjunct Professor, then an Honorary Professor, at the ANU College of Law. 

He was awarded the AM in 2009 for ‘service to the judiciary, to the law and to legal education, particularly in the field of family law and the welfare and rights of children and young people’. He was made a Life Member of the Family Law Section of the Law Council of Australia in 2018, and awarded an Honorary LLD by the University of NSW in 2019.

He has worked with a variety of organisations, including the Family Law Council, the Australian Law Reform Commission, the New South Wales Law Reform Commission, and the NSW Child Protection Council. His work includes collaborative projects with the Attorney-General’s Department, Professor Patrick Parkinson, Professor Bruce Smyth, Dr Jenn McIntosh.  He was appointed as a member of Advisory Council of the Australian Institute of Family Studies in 2012 and as a member of the Australian Law Reform Commission's Advisory Committee for its review of Family Law in 2017-2019.  His publications include the Family Courts Violence Review (2009), and reports in 2013 and 2014 on the sharing of information between the family law and the child protection systems (available on the AGD website).  

Publications

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Updated:  29 March 2024 / Responsible Officer:  Director (Research Services Division) / Page Contact:  Researchers