Professor Michael Coper was Dean of the ANU College of Law from 1998 to 2012, having succeeded Leslie Zines as Professor of Constitutional Law in 1995. A graduate of Sydney Law School, Michael was a founding member of the UNSW Law Faculty in the 1970s, a member of the Inter-State Commission in the 1980s, and in private practice in the early 1990s. He served in all these capacities as one of Australia’s leading constitutional lawyers, and maintained his interest and output in this area notwithstanding his long and demanding tenure as Dean of the ANU College of Law.

Professor Coper came to prominence with his prize-winning 1983 book Freedom of Interstate Trade under the Australian Constitution, which was influential in the High Court’s change of direction five years later in the landmark case of Cole v Whitfield, in which Professor Coper also appeared as counsel. His 1987 book Encounters with the Australian Constitution was received to great acclaim, as was the project he conceived and co-edited to fruition in 2001, the comprehensive Oxford Companion to the High Court of Australia.

In addition to his core interest in constitutional law and the judicial process, Professor Coper’s research extends to legal biography, oral history, and law, philosophy and the photographic image. With colleagues he has conducted interviews of former judges and others to create an oral history of the High Court, and has also written extensively about legal education.

Professor Coper was Chair of the Council of Australian Law Deans (2005-2007), Vice President of the International Association of Law Schools (2011-2014), and is a member of the American Law Institute and a Foundation Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law. He was appointed as Professor Emeritus of the ANU in 2017, and in 2018 Federation Press is publishing a book of essays in his honour: James Stellios (ed), Encounters with Constitutional Interpretation and Legal Education: Essays in Honour of Michael Coper (Federation Press, forthcoming 2018).