The Honourable Debra Mortimer
In April 2023, The Honourable Debra Mortimer was appointed as Chief Justice of the Federal Court of Australia. Chief Justice Mortimer is the fifth Chief Justice and the first female Chief Justice of the Federal Court. She had been a judge of the Federal Court since 2013.
Prior to her appointment in 2013, Chief Justice Mortimer was a member of the Victorian Bar and was appointed Senior Counsel in 2003. Her main areas of practice included public law, anti-discrimination law, extradition and environmental law. In all areas she acted for both applicants and respondents, for and against government, in state and federal jurisdictions including in the High Court, as well as internationally before the Samoan Supreme Court. She had a substantial public interest and pro bono practice and was involved in many ground-breaking cases over her 24 years at the Bar.
In 2011, she was awarded the Victorian Bar’s pro bono perpetual trophy for outstanding contributions and was also awarded the Law Council of Australia’s President’s Medal for outstanding contributions to the Australian legal profession. In 2012, she was awarded the Victorian Bar’s Public Interest/Justice Innovation Award, alongside the counsel team she led, for work in cases challenging the implementation of the Malaysian Solution and successfully upholding the rights of asylum seekers.
As Chief Justice, she has maintained her connection with the Pacific and is committed to strengthening connections with judiciaries across the region, having signed several memoranda of understanding, as well as attending the Pacific Judicial Conference in 2025, and the Pacific Chief Justices’ Leadership Forum in 2024 and 2025.
Chief Justice Mortimer, a naturalised Australian citizen, was born in Auckland, where she attended Kelston Girls’ High School. She began her law degree at Auckland University, before completing her degree at Monash University. She was awarded two Supreme Court prizes as the top graduate in both the Bachelor of Jurisprudence and the Bachelor of Laws (in which she shared the prize). She was an editor of the Monash University Law Review in 1985 and 1986.
Chief Justice Mortimer then completed her articles at Melbourne firm Goldberg & Window in Richmond, before serving as associate to Sir Gerard Brennan of the High Court (later Chief Justice) in 1988 and 1989.
From 1991 to 1994, the Chief Justice was an Assistant Lecturer at Monash University, lecturing in torts, property law and evidence. In 1995 and 1996, she co-taught the Legal Issues in Bioethics course at Monash. In 1996, she published, with Sue McNicol then Associate Professor of Law at Monash, the first edition of their textbook on the Law of Evidence. While at the Bar, the Chief Justice also appeared for Monash University before the Victorian Supreme Court and the Federal Court.
Chief Justice Mortimer remains a Senior Fellow at Melbourne Law School, a member of the Advisory Board of the Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies at Melbourne Law School, and a member of the Board of Advisers for the Public Law Review. Since she has been on the Federal Court, including in 2024, she has co-taught regularly in the Masters’ Program at Melbourne University Law School, with Laureate Professor Emeritus Cheryl Saunders AO.