Rate My Professor Tanya Josev

Her research interests encompass the status of judicial archives, the origins and evolution of the binary understanding of the judicial role as involving 'activism' and 'restraint' across common law jurisdictions, judicial biography, and Australian legal and political history including private law topics. Notable publications include her book The Campaign Against the Courts: A History of the Judicial Activism Debate (Federation Press, 2017), which earned the Law & Society Association of Australia and New Zealand’s Early Career Researcher prize in 2018; an article assessing the role of history and historiography in High Court of Australia judgments published in the Melbourne University Law Review; a reassessment of Sir Owen Dixon’s advocacy for an Australian common law published by Federation Press; an examination of judicial biography in Australia in the University of New South Wales Law Journal; and a narrative on the early years of the judicial activism debate in the United States in Studies in Law, Politics and Society. In 2022, she received the University of Melbourne's Woodward Medal in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Tanya serves as Co-Director of the Australian Legal Histories Programme, Coordinator of the MLS Judge in Residence Programme, and holds positions on the University of Melbourne Archives Advisory Board, the editorial board of Legal History journal, and various school committees. She has featured on ABC Radio National discussing the judicial activism debate.