Staff Directory George Williams
Anthony Mason Professor BEc LLB (Hons) Macq, LLM UNSW, PhD ANU
Contact Details Telephone:  +61 2 9385 2259 Email:  george.williams@unsw.edu.au Office:  Law Building 320

George Williams is the Anthony Mason Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of New South Wales and was the foundation Director of the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law from 2000 to 2008 . He has worked at the Australian National University, Blake Dawson Waldron and as Associate to Justice McHugh of the High Court, and has held visiting positions as the Laskin Professor of Public Law at Osgoode Hall Law School, Toronto, at the Human Rights Institute, Columbia University Law School, New York and at University College London.

He has written and edited 22 books, including A Charter of Rights for Australia, What Price Security? Taking Stock of Australia’s Anti-Terror Laws, Australian Constitutional Law and Theory and The Oxford Companion to the High Court of Australia. He practises as a barrister and has appeared in the High Court of Australia in cases such as Lange v Australian Broadcasting Corporation (on freedom of speech), the Hindmarsh Island Bridge Case (on freedom from racial discrimination) and Plaintiff S157/2002 v Commonwealth (on review of government action and the rule of law) and in the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal of Fiji, including in Republic of Fiji v Prasad (on legality of the 2000 coup).

In 2007 he chaired a NSW Government inquiry into Options for a New National Industrial Relations System and was a member of the High Level Advisory Group on Federal-State Relations to Kevin Rudd and Bob McMullan. In 2005 he chaired Victorian Human Rights Consultation Committee that lead to the enactment of the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities.