Professor Rosalind Croucher
Full-time Commissioner
Professor Rosalind Croucher was appointed to the Australian Law Reform Commission for a term of three years, beginning on 5 February 2007. She currently leads the Commission’s Inquiry into Client Legal Privilege and Commonwealth Investigatory Bodies.
Professor Croucher joined the Commission in 2007 after a distinguished period of 25 years in University teaching and management, most recently as Dean of Law at Macquarie University (from 1999). Prior to this she was a member of the Law Faculties of the University of Sydney and the University of New South Wales . Professor Croucher served as Chair of the Council of Australian Law Deans (2002), Vice President (Western Pacific), International Academy of Estate and Trust Law (1998–2005), Chair of the Scientific Committee for the World Congress of Medical Law 2004 and on the Program Committee for the 8th biennial conference of the International Association of Women Judges, 2006, for which she was also ‘Rapporteur’.
Professor Croucher has lectured and published extensively principally in the fields of equity, trusts, property, inheritance and legal history. She has written or edited nine books (formerly under the name of ‘Atherton’, and ‘Croucher’ since 2004), including Succession: families, property and death; Families and Estates: A Comparative Study; and Law and Religion – God, the State and the Common Law; as well as Family Provision (an Expert Report for the Victorian Attorney-General’s Law Reform Committee); and more than 100 other publications including book chapters, encyclopaedia entries, journal articles, casenotes and conference papers.
Professor Croucher was the academic member of the inaugural panel that developed the standards and assessment for accreditation of practitioners in the field of wills and probate in New South Wales . She is an elected Academician of the International Academy of Estate and Trust Law; an elected Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts; elected member of the Australian Academy of Forensic Sciences and a Foundation Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law. Professor Croucher is an Honorary Fellow of St Andrews’ College, University of Sydney and an Honorary Fellow of the Australian College of Legal Medicine.
Professor Croucher obtained a BA (Hons) in History and an LLB from the University of Sydney ; and a PhD from the University of New South Wales in the field of legal history. She was admitted as a legal practitioner in New South Wales in 1981.