Justice Louise Taylor was appointed as Chief Magistrate of the ACT Magistrates Court in April 2026, having previously been sworn in as a Judge of the Court on Wednesday 16 August 2023.  

She holds a Bachelor of Laws and a Bachelor of Arts from the Australian National University. She was admitted to practice in 2001. Justice Taylor was a senior prosecutor at the ACT and Commonwealth Offices of the Director of Public Prosecutions before her appointment as Deputy Chief Executive Officer of the ACT Legal Aid Commission in 2013. Justice Taylor was appointed as a Magistrate and Coroner of the ACT Magistrates Court in 2018. She was also named the 2019 Indigenous Alumna of the Year. 

A Kamilaroi woman, Justice Taylor is the first Aboriginal woman in Australia to be appointed to a superior court. Prior to her appointment as a judicial office in the ACT, Justice Taylor contributed to the community sector with a decade of service as Chair of the Women’s Legal Centre (ACT) board as well as appointments to the ACT Domestic Violence Prevention Council, the ACT Ministerial Advisory Council for Women and the Law Council of Australia’s Indigenous Legal Issues Committee.