Selden Society lecture series Australia
Join a variety of judicial officers, legal professionals and academics for this informative and provocative series of legal history lectures. Each episode presents a single story uncovering a unique aspect of our common law past. This might be literature or language, a fascinating event or item, a significant person, or the development of a legal idea. These lectures are recorded in the Banco Court, Brisbane, and are now available to the world.
Selden Society lecture series Australia
50 years of the Family Law Act
This lecture explains broadly the fundamental changes to divorce and matrimonial causes law introduced by the Family Law Act in 1975. It also demonstrates how the many changes to the Act over the past 50 years have transformed family law as much as, if not more than, the original changes introduced in 1975.
About the speaker
The Hon Mary Finn worked in private legal practice in England and Brisbane after being admitted to the Queensland Bar in December 1969. She was a research assistant to the first Parliamentary Inquiry into the Family Law Act before working in the Commonwealth Attorney General’s Department on amendments to the Family Law Act and the creation of the child support scheme.
The Hon Mary Finn was appointed a Judge of the Family Court of Australia in 1990 and to the Appeal Division in 1993. She was the Senior Judge and Judge Administrator of that Division from 2004 until her retirement in 2016. She has been a member of the Family Law Council and the Board of the Institute of Family Studies.