Ian Freckelton AO KC

University of Melbourne, Melbourne Law School, Faculty Member

Monash University, Law Faculty, Faculty Member

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Ian Freckelton is a King's Counsel in full-time practice as a barrister throughout Australia and is a former Judge of the Supreme Court of Nauru. He is also a Professor of Law and Professorial Fellow in Psychiatry at the University of Melbourne, an Adjunct Professor of Forensic Medicine at Monash University, an Adjunct Professor of Law at La Trobe University, an Adjunct Professor at the Queensland University of Technology and an Adjunct Professor of Health Science at the Auckland University of Technology. He was the Commissioner at the Victorian Law Reform Commission in charge of its reference on Medicinal Cannabis and a member of the Australian Commonwealth Government Advisory Committee on the Medicinal Use of Cannabis. He was a member of the Mental Health Tribunal of Victoria for 25 years and the Victorian Bar Council for 5 years. He is an inaugural member of the coronial Council of Victoria (since 2010). He is an honorary life member of the Australian and New Zealand Association of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law. He is the Editor of the Journal of Law and Medicine and the Founding Editor of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law. He is an elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences, the Australian Academy of Law, the Academy of Social Sciences Australia and the Australian College of Legal Medicine.

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Papers by Ian Freckelton AO KC

Research Misconduct

Springer eBooks, 2019

The Search for Anne Perry by Joanne Drayton

Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, Nov 1, 2012

Drayton’s literary history of Anne Perry (http://www.anneperry.net) interweaves a chronicling of ... more Drayton’s literary history of Anne Perry (http://www.anneperry.net) interweaves a chronicling of Perry’s extensive and decorated literary career with the extraordinary story of her conviction for murder in 1954 in Christchurch at the age of 15. Perry’s first major publication was in 1979 with The Cater Street Hangman, the first book in a series featuring the Victorian policeman, Thomas Pitt, and his well-born wife Charlotte. It has become one of crime fiction’s longest series, now numbering 27 books, many of which have been bestsellers. In 1990, Perry started a second series of detective novels with The Face of a Stranger, set in the 1850s and featuring the private detective, a recovering amnesiac, William Monk, and volatile nurse Hester. So far, there have been 17 books in this series. In 2000, Perry won an Edgar award for her short story ‘‘Heroes’’, the main character in which subsequently appeared in a five-book sequence set during the First World War. Perry is also a practising Mormon and has written a number of fantasy books, inspired by her beliefs, commencing with Tathea (2002). The forensic history of Anne Perry will be known to many readers of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law by virtue of her being a co-accused in August 1954 under her birth name of Juliet Hulme in the Parker– Hulme matricide trial. The story of the murder has been portrayed extensively in various media, including by lawyer Peter Graham in So Brilliantly Clever (Awa Press, 2011), Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh’s Academy Award-nominated film, starring Kate Winslet, Heavenly Creatures (1994), Julie Glamuzina and Alison Laurie’s Parker & Hulme: A Lesbian View (Firebrand Books, 1991), Michelanne Forster’s play, Daughters of Heaven (Victoria University Press, 1992) and Tom Gurr and HH Cox’s fictionalized Obsession (Frederick Muller Ltd, 1958). It appeared in Rupert Furneaux’s Famous Criminal Cases (Roy Publishers, 1962, vol 2) and Tom Gurr and HH Cox’s Famous Australasian Crimes (Frederick Muller Ltd, 1957). Drayton juxtaposes Perry’s literary career against the backdrop of her erratic childhood, the unconventional ménage à trois that her marriage counsellor-mother formed with Perry’s father and his new girlfriend, Perry’s illness-plagued education, and then her formation of a fantasydominated relationship with her school friend, Pauline Parker. This culminated in their beating Parker’s mother to death at a remote location with a stone secreted for the purpose, pursuant to a plan they had formulated together and which was documented in Parker’s diary. Drayton’s account of the trial of the two girls in Christchurch’s Supreme Court before Judge Adams and a jury for murdering Parker’s mother because of her opposition to their relationship is short but absorbing and confronting. It was dominated by expert medical evidence about the mental state of 16-year-old Parker and Psychiatry, Psychology and Law Vol. 19, No. 5, November 2012, 764–767

Non-Disciplinary Pathways in Practitioner Regulation

Routledge eBooks, Jul 29, 2020

Research Misconduct

Springer eBooks, 2020

Sex Therapy as a Reasonable and Necessary Support for Persons with a Disability

Journal of law and medicine, Mar 1, 2021

Historically, there has been inadequate recognition of the need for persons with disabilities to ... more Historically, there has been inadequate recognition of the need for persons with disabilities to have the opportunity for meaningful sexual expression. Many impediments lie in the way of such recognition and, for some with a disability, professional assistance is required. In a precedent-setting decision by the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia (National Disability Insurance Agency v WRMF (2020) 276 FCR 415; [2020] FCAFC 79) a woman with multiple sclerosis who had been accepted onto the National Disability Insurance Scheme was affirmed to be eligible for taxpayer-funded receipt of services from a sex worker, in spite of the National Disability Insurance Scheme having declined such services as not constituting a reasonable and necessary support. However, it may be that the decision will be overturned by a controversial legislative amendment. This section reviews the reasoning in the decision and the human rights and political issues raised by the decision that require consideration and engagement.

Health law's kaleidoscope: health law rights in a global age

Journal of law and medicine, 2009

... Just as globalization reveals a tension between the universal and the particular, so too ... ... more

An Exclusive Love

Journal of law and medicine, 2010

Health law, scholarship and forensic expertise: complications and challenges

© 2016 Dr. Ian FreckeltonThe body of work submitted traverses a range of published scholarship on... more © 2016 Dr. Ian FreckeltonThe body of work submitted traverses a range of published scholarship on the intersections between the law and other disciplines, principally within the health domain. It grapples with dilemmas posed by how scholarly misconduct is responded to by the law, including fabrication and misrepresentation of research data. It also deals with a cross-section of health conditions that are challenging mental health assessors by their forensic requirements. It tracks the evolution of health law as an area of scholarly endeavour and aspects of mental health law, including by reference to therapeutic jurisprudence. It also engages with medicinal cannabis law reform, controversial issues in relation to regulation of health practitioners, accountability in relation to expert evidence, and modern developments in coronial law and policy

Death of a Doctor: How the Medical Profession Turned on One of Their Own Sydney [Book Review]

Law in context, 2005

Review(s) of: Death of a Doctor: How the Medical Profession Turned on One of Their Own Sydney, by... more

The law of expert evidence

Expert Evidence and Criminal Jury Trials

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The Trial of the Expert: A Study of Expert Evidence and Forensic Experts

' The Trial of the Experts is both a textbook of the rules of expert evidence and a timely an... more ' The Trial of the Experts is both a textbook of the rules of expert evidence and a timely analysis of the difficulties experienced when experts from non-legal disciplines are called as witnesses. The author deals with the difficulties besetting judges and juries by unreliable, esotreric, conflicting, and biased evidence. He examines the contribution made to the legal process by physchologists, phychiatrists an other members of the health care professions. The author also examines the issues presented by the emergence of a welter of new scientific disciplines, and analyses how the forensic expert's duties to maintain the confidentiality of communication made in the course of professional relationships may conflict with the courts' need for all relevant and probative evidence. This is a provocative and informative work that provides, for the first time outside the United States, a comprehensive statement of the law of expert evidence as evolved by courts and legislation.

Therapeutic Jurisprudence Misunderstood and Misrepresented: The Price and Risks of Influence

Regulating health practitioner professionalism: [Paper in: Regulating Health Practitioners. Freckelton, Ian (ed).]

Law in context, 2006

This volume of Law in Context grapples from a number of different perspectives with the concept o... more This volume of Law in Context grapples from a number of different perspectives with the concept of health practitioner regulation. It is a topic that is subject to diverse interpretations and to descriptions that vary substantially from country to country (see Alsopp and Jones, 2006). The mottos of the General Medical Council and of the Medical Practitioners Board of Victoria quoted at the start of this Introduction are illustrative of important differences in regulatory approach. Likewise, the shift in thinking evident in the title of the report of Sir Liam Donaldson (Donaldson, 2006), 'Good Doctors, Safer Patients' is an example of the evolution in thinking which is seeking to regulate professionalism to protect the public by enhancing standards of health service delivery.

COVID-19 as a Disruptor and a Catalyst for Change

Journal of law and medicine, Mar 1, 2021

COVID-19 has profoundly and pervasively disrupted the world's health, economy, security and attit... more COVID-19 has profoundly and pervasively disrupted the world's health, economy, security and attitudes. It has caused us to rethink what is most important for us individually and collectively, what we must change to retain viability as a species and as a planet, and what values and public health infrastructures governments need to embrace to avoid the next pandemic. COVID-19 has given a fillip to "One Health", the "Global Virome Project" and other co-ordinated initiatives to address the risk of zoonotic spillovers of disease. We are challenged to become more responsible in our workplaces and in public spaces. We have learned to trust and mistrust our governments in times of crisis. Our awareness of public health and the importance of evidence-based foundations for treatment and disease-prevention has been changed. Remote health service provision has become part of the architecture of conventional health care. Hybrid-working will become standard. Masks have become conventional accessories in congregate environments. Our respect and compassion for our health practitioners has increased but at a terrible cost. We have been reminded of the importance of direct and tactile communication with those whom we love.