Vale Professor Emeritus Colin Howard QC

Melbourne Law School has paid tribute to former dean, Professor Emeritus Colin Howard QC (LLM 1966, LLD 1971), who died on 2 September, aged 83. Professor Howard had a long connection with the Law School. He was the Hearn Professor of Law from 1965 until 1990 and served as Dean from 1978 to 1983.

Professor Colin Howard
Professor Colin Howard

Professor Howard was a scholar whose works crossed legal disciplinary boundaries including constitutional law, criminal law and company law. His contributions to the Law School and to law reform in Australia more generally were significant, and he also played an important role in the life of the university during a time of change and modernisation.

Born in England, Professor Howard studied law at the University of London (LLB 1955, LLM 1956). The talented scholar came to Australia in 1958 to take up a lectureship at the University of Queensland, closely followed by a senior lectureship at the University of Adelaide in 1960. His distinguished career at Melbourne Law School began in 1965 with appointment as the Hearn Professor of Law.

An admirer of the US legal system, Professor Howard was a visiting professor at Harvard University in 1963/64, following which he taught  a summer school program at the University of Texas in Austin. In 1968 he spent a six-month sabbatical at Wayne State University in Detroit. From 1973 to 1976 he was general counsel to the Commonwealth Attorney-General and also served as crown counsel of Victoria in the 1990s. He was appointed as Queen's Counsel in 1996. His many books include Companies: What they are and how they work; The Constitution, Power and Politics and Australian Criminal Law.

Mervyn  Howard  (LLB(Hons) 1982) and five grandchildren. Dean of Melbourne Law School, Carolyn Evans, extended her deepest sympathies  to  Professor  Howard's family and friends on behalf of the Law  School.

"We are sad to lose someone who achieved so much and who played so significant a role in the history of the Law School. Professor Howard will be remembered for his distinguished service and scholarship of the highest quality," said Professor Evans.

Image: Professor Emeritus Colin Howard QC

This article originally appeared in MLS News, Issue 6, October 2011.