Staff Profiles

Professor Cheryl Saunders AO

Personal Chair in Law

Cheryl Saunders is a laureate professor and holds a personal chair in law. She is Associate Dean (Juris Doctor) within the Law School and Director of the Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies.

Cheryl Saunders has specialist interests in constitutional law and comparative public law, including federalism and intergovernmental relations and constitutional design and change, on all of which she has written widely. She is presently working on two major projects: an account of the Australian Constitution written from a comparative constitutional perspective and a text on comparative constitutional law.

Other positions presently held by Cheryl Saunders include President of the International Association of Centres for Federal Studies and member of the Program Committee of the Forum of Federations. She is an editor of the Public Law Review, a symposium editor of I.CON and a member of the editorial boards of a range of Australian and international journals, including Publius, Jus Politicum and the Constitutional Court Review, South Africa. She has held visiting positions at the universities of Cambridge, Paris II, Indiana (Bloomington), Hong Kong, Copenhagen, Fribourg, Capetown and Auckland and has an honorary doctorate from the University of Cordoba, Argentina. She is President Emeritus of the International Association of Constitutional Law and a former President of the Administrative Review Council of Australia. She has been elected a visiting fellow in 2009 at Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

In addition to her research and teaching activities, Cheryl Saunders is active in public debate on constitutional matters in Australia and internationally. From 1991, as deputy chair of the Australian Constitutional Centenary Foundation, she was closely involved in its pioneering work to encourage public understanding of the Constitution. She has had some involvement in aspects of constitutional design in other countries, including Fiji, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka, East Timor and Iraq.

In 1994, Cheryl Saunders was made an officer of the Order of Australia, for services to the law and to public administration. She was awarded a Centenary Medal in 2003, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Cordoba, Argentina in 2005. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and a Foundation Fellow of the Australian Academy of law.