Associate Professor Andrew Dyer

Overview

Andrew Dyer took up an appointment as an Associate Professor at Melbourne Law School in July 2024, having previously been a member of the academic staff at the University of Sydney Law School for just over a decade. Andrew’s research concerns criminal law doctrine and theory, human rights law and the relationship between the criminal law and human rights law – and he has published extensively in each of these areas. More particularly, Andrew has published many articles and chapters about topics such as sexual offence law reform in Australia and elsewhere, the law of criminal complicity, the partial defence of (extreme) provocation and constitutional challenges to preventive detention schemes & harshly punitive sentencing laws. His research has been published in leading national and international journals, including the Common Law World Review, Criminal Law Review, Human Rights Law Review, Zeitschrift fuer die gesamte Strafrechtswissenschaft, Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights, Melbourne University Law Review, Sydney Law Review, UNSW Law Journal, Monash University Law Review, Public Law Review and Criminal Law Journal. Andrew’s doctoral research concerned whether the presence of a charter of rights in a jurisdiction can improve protections for criminal offenders against harshly punitive laws – and he is interested in the proper limits of state power and, relatedly, in helping to achieve fair criminal law rules and criminal justice procedures. He has made written and oral submissions to various Australian law reform commissions, as well as to the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor and to State and Federal Parliamentary Committees – mainly about sexual offence and anti-terrorism laws – and his research has been cited by justices of the High Court of Australia (and in submissions to that Court), the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal and the Law Reform Commissions of NSW, Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia.

Andrew teaches Criminal Law & Procedure and Legal Method & Reasoning in the Melbourne JD, and in 2025 he will be teaching a Legal Research stream entitled ‘Contemporary Issues in Australian Criminal Law.’ In his teaching, Andrew aims to take a precise, methodical, detailed, scholarly and engaging approach, and to create an atmosphere that is open, sceptical and free of dogmatism. Different perspectives are welcomed: after all, many criminal justice problems are complex, and it is unrealistic to expect that people will agree about how to resolve them or to think that anyone has the correct answer to them.