Tony Blackshield began his teaching career at the University of Sydney, where he taught in the Department of Jurisprudence and International Law from 1961 to 1970, rising to the rank of Senior Lecturer. In 1971 he was one of the seven foundation members of what was then the newly-established Faculty of Law at the University of New South Wales. He taught there from 1971 to 1978, having risen in 1974 to the level of Associate Professor. From 1979 to 1988 he was Professor of Legal Studies (and sometime Head of Department) at La Trobe University in Melbourne, and from 1988 to 1999 he was Professor of Law (and sometime Head of School) at Macquarie University in Sydney. Throughout his teaching career he was a frequent public commentator on legal and constitutional issues, notably in relation to the dismissal of the Whitlam government (11 November 1975) and “the Murphy affair” (1984-1986). Tony has written extensively on jurisprudential and constitutional issues. In 2001 he joined with Michael Coper and George Williams in editing The Oxford Companion to the High Court of Australia. From 1996 until the fifth edition in 2010, he joined with George Williams in producing the influential textbook Blackshield & Williams, Australian Constitutional Law & Theory (now in its sixth edition by George Williams, Sean Brennan and Andrew Lynch).Tony is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences and an Honorary Professor of the Indian Law Institute, New Delhi. In 2014 he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia.
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