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History
Born in 1946, Professor Michael Coper graduated with a Bachelor of Arts/Laws in 1970. Following a year at the University of Rajasthan in Jaipur, India, he returned to Australia in 1971 to be one of the founding members of the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Law School, where he completed a PhD on section 92 of the Australian Constitution (Interstate Trade).
Professor Coper moved to Canberra in 1988 upon his appointment as Commissioner of the Inter-State Commission. As Commissioner, he produced reports on reform of the Australian waterfront and of interstate land transport.
He joined Sly & Weigall (later Deacons Graham & James) in 1991 as Director of Government Advising and worked in full-time private legal practice until 1995, when he was appointed as Professor of Constitutional Law at the ANU. Appointed Dean of the ANU College of Law in 1998, Professor Coper served as Dean, and as Robert Garran Professor of Law, until the end of 2012. He was appointed as Professor Emeritus of the ANU in 2017.
Professor Coper was also Chair of the Council of Australian Law Deans (2005–07), Vice-President of the International Association of Law Schools (2011–14) and was a member of the American Law Institute and a Foundation Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law.
A prize-winning author, Professor Coper’s books include Freedom of Interstate Trade under the Australian Constitution (1983), Encounters with the Australian Constitution (1987), and The Oxford Companion to the High Court of Australia (2001).
Professor Coper held visiting positions in the United States, and in 1999 was elected as a member of the American Law Institute (ALI). He was Chair of the Council of Australian Law Deans (CALD) from 2005 to 2007 and Vice-President of the International Association of Law Schools.
His distinguished service to legal education and to the law, as an academic, author and administrator, and to safety standards in the transport industry was recognised when he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2018. His distinguished services to the law and legal education were further recognised by UNSW when he was awarded an honorary doctorate in March 2019.
Professor Coper died in 2019 and is survived by his wife and fellow ANU College of Law academic, Associate Professor Judith Jones, and his five children.