The Hon. Marcia Neave AO

The Hon. Marcia Neave AO

The Hon. Marcia Neave AO has had a career as a judge, lawyer, academic and public policy maker.

Ms Neave was a legal academic for many years. She held chairs in the Law School at Adelaide University, at Monash University and in the Research School of Social Sciences at Australian National University. She was a Global Law Scholar at New York University in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

In 2001 she became the Foundation Chair of the Victorian Law Reform Commission, which played a key role in modernising Victorian law, including recommending changes that addressed some of the systemic disadvantages faced by women and children within the legal system, in particular victims of domestic victims and sex offences. She was appointed as a Justice of the Victorian Court of Appeal in 2006.

From February 2015 to March 2016, she was the chair of the Victorian Royal Commission into Family Violence. The Commission’s Report including its 227 recommendations were provided to the Victorian Government on 29 March 2016.

From 2021-2023 she chaired a Tasmanian Commission of Inquiry (equivalent to a Royal Commission) into the Government’s Response to Institutional Child Sexual Abuse.

She is the Chair of Justice Connect. This year she was appointed as a part-time Commissioner on the Australian Law Reform Commission’s reference on sexual violence.

Marcia Neave is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, and a life member of the Australian Institute of Judicial Administration.