Denise Meyerson

Denise Meyerson completed a BA at the University of the Witwatersrand, before studying at Oxford, where she graduated with a B Phil and a D Phil in Philosophy. She also holds an LLB (magna cum laude) from the University of Cape Town. She is Emeritus Professor of Law in Macquarie Law School, which she joined in 2000. Prior to coming to Australia, she taught in the Philosophy Department at the University of Cape Town (1987-1996) and in the Law Faculty at the University of Cape Town (1997-1999), where she held the W P Schreiner Chair of Jurisprudence. She subsequently held an Honorary Professorship in the same Faculty. During her time at Macquarie University, she has been Head of the Department of Law (2003-2006) and Co-Director of the Centre for Legal Governance (2011-2014). She is an elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law. In 2015 she was appointed as a Research Evaluation Committee member on the Humanities and Creative Arts Panel for ERA (Excellence in Research for Australia). She served as a member of the Australian Research Council College of Experts from 2016-2018.

Professor Meyerson serves on the editorial boards of Australian Journal of Legal Philosophy, Australian Journal of Professional and Applied Ethics and the South African Journal of Philosophy. She is also a consulting editor for Philosophical Studies Series. She is a member of the Advisory Board of the Julius Stone Institute of Jurisprudence at the University of Sydney.

Visiting positions Professor Meyerson has held include: Visiting Fellow, All Souls College, Oxford (1996); Visiting Scholar, University of Cape Town (2006); Scholar-in-Residence, Valparaiso Law School, Indiana (2010); Visiting Professorial Fellow, University of New South Wales (2010); Visiting Fellow, Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (2013); Visiting Researcher, Brocher Foundation, Geneva (2016); Visiting Fellow, Trevelyan College, Durham University (2017); Bingham Centre International Visiting Research Fellow at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law (2017); and Visiting Fellow, Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (2022).

Professor Meyerson researches in the area of law, human rights and justice. She has published extensively in the areas of theoretical and applied jurisprudence, constitutional theory, human rights theory and comparative human rights law. In addition to numerous articles and chapters, she has written several books, including False Consciousness (Clarendon Press, 1991) and Rights Limited: Freedom of Expression and Religion in the South African Constitution (Juta, 1997). Her book, Jurisprudence (Oxford University Press, 2011), won a Highly Commended Award in the Tertiary Scholarly Reference section of the Australian Educational Publishing Awards.

RECENT RESEARCH GRANTS

2017-2022, ARC Discovery Project, ‘A Relational Theory of Procedural Justice’ (CIs: D Meyerson, C Mackenzie, T MacDermott), $207,000.

2011-2014, ARC Linkage Project, ‘On the cutting edge: promoting best practice in surgical innovation’ (CIs: W Rogers, A Johnson, A Ballantyne, M Lotz, D Meyerson, A Eyers, G Maddern, C Thomson), $255,000.

RECENT PHD COMPLETIONS (Principal/Sole Supervisor)

• J Campbell, PhD 2008, ‘Disability, Difference and Anti-Discrimination’
• H Melkonian, PhD 2009, ‘Free Speech and the Opportunity for Convergence of English and American Defamation Law’
• L Pratt,  PhD 2011,‘Legal and Political Protections of Fundamental Rights: Strengths and Weaknesses – A Comparative Study’
• M Taylor, PhD 2014, ‘The Politics of Bail Reform: The New South Wales Bail Act, 1976-2013’
• A Head, PhD 2014, ‘A Critical Evaluation of Presumption in Non-Marital Relationships in Australia’
• E Bari, PhD 2015, ‘Suspension of the Fundamental Rights and Unrestrained Exercise of the Power of Preventive Detention During the Successive Proclamations of Emergency in Bangladesh’
• Mahaarum Pertiwi, PhD 2021, ‘Religious Freedom and the Indonesian Constitution
• Carolyn Adams, PhD 2023, 'Access to Government Data Collections of Personal Information for Health Research: Better Decision Making’.