Paul Desmond Finn (22 April 1946 – 27 September 2023) was an Australian academic jurist and judge of the

Federal Court of Australia The Federal Court of Australia is an Australian superior court which has jurisdiction to deal with most civil disputes governed by federal law (with the exception of family law matters), along with some summary (less serious) and indictable (mo ...

Early life and education

Finn was born on 22 April 1946 in

Brisbane Brisbane ( ; ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and largest city of the States and territories of Australia, state of Queensland and the list of cities in Australia by population, third-most populous city in Australia, with a ...

. His father died when Finn was a child. He completed a

Bachelor of Arts A Bachelor of Arts (abbreviated B.A., BA, A.B. or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is the holder of a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the liberal arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts deg ...

degree at the

University of Queensland The University of Queensland is a Public university, public research university located primarily in Brisbane, the capital city of the Australian state of Queensland. Founded in 1909 by the Queensland parliament, UQ is one of the six sandstone ...

, majoring in literature. Although his father and stepfather were both lawyers, Finn was never pressured into following them into the legal profession; in an interview in 2010, he stated: "I did law by default, probably a lack of imagination". He later completed a

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge Gonville and Caius College, commonly known as Caius ( ), is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1348 by Edmund Gonville, it is the fourth-oldest of the University of Cambridge's 31 colleges and ...

, England, Finn won the

Yorke Prize The Yorke Prize is awarded annually by the Faculty of Law at the University of Cambridge for an essay of between 30,000 and 100,000 words on a legal subject, including the history, analysis, administration and reform of law, "of exceptional quality ...

in his final year, and this treatise formed the basis of Finn's 1977 book ''Fiduciary Obligations''.

Academic career

After completing his doctorate, Finn joined the Law Faculty at the University of Queensland as a senior lecturer. Two years later, he moved to the

Australian National University The Australian National University (ANU) is a public university, public research university and member of the Group of Eight (Australian universities), Group of Eight, located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton, A ...

, where he remained until 1995. He became a Professor of Law in 1988 and was appointed Head of the Department of Law in the same year. Finn has authored and edited a number of books and journal articles, including ''Law and Government in Colonial Australia'', which was published in 1987 by

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. Its first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press officially granted the legal right to print books ...

. He has also served on the editorial boards of ''

Public Law Review In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the ''Öffentlichkei ...

'', the ''

University of Queensland Law Journal The ''University of Queensland Law Journal'' is a leading Australian double-blind peer-reviewed law review. It was established in 1948 and is published three times a year. The editor-in-chief An editor-in-chief (EIC), also known as lead editor o ...

'', the '' Australian Journal of Legal History'' and '' Uniform Law Review''. In 2008, he was awarded an

honorary degree An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or '' ad hon ...

in law from

Flinders University Flinders University, established as The Flinders University of South Australia is a public university, public research university based in Adelaide, South Australia, with a footprint extending across a number of locations in South Australia and ...

Legal career

Finn was appointed a judge of the

in 1995. He later reflected that this appointment was for him "wholly unexpected" given his experience: it is unusual for an individual with an academic background to be appointed a judge, and he had not been in a courtroom for 25 years. He provided advice to the 1992

WA Inc Royal Commission WA Inc was the name for a set of public-private partnerships in Western Australia in the 1980s associated with the Western Australian Development Corporation, which became a political scandal. The state government, which was led for much of t ...

on "the manner in which the issues confronting this Commission have been dealt with elsewhere in Australia and in other Western democracies". Finn retired as a judge in 2012. He died in North Adelaide on 27 September 2023.The Canberra Times, 7 October 2023.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Finn, Paul Desmond Judges of the Federal Court of Australia 1946 births Academic staff of the Australian National University University of Queensland alumni Alumni of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge Living people