Rate My Professor John Anderson

Professor John Anderson is a Professor in the School of Law and Justice at the University of Newcastle. He holds a PhD from the University of Newcastle, completed in 2003, which analyzed the natural life sentence for murder in New South Wales and the principle of equal application of the law in sentencing. He also earned a Bachelor of Legal Studies from Macquarie University. Prior to his academic career, Anderson practiced exclusively in criminal law, serving as Solicitor in the Newcastle Regional Office of the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (NSW) from 1988 to 1993 and advancing to Senior Solicitor/Advocate from 1993 to 1995. He joined the University of Newcastle in 1997 as Associate Lecturer in the School of Law, progressing to Lecturer (1998-2004), Senior Lecturer (2005-2010), and Professor. Key appointments include Interim Dean and Head of Newcastle Law School (January-April 2013; July 2015-May 2016), multiple terms as Deputy Head of School (2007-2015), Deputy Head of Faculty of Business and Law (July-December 2019), Program Convenor for JD/GDLP (2013-2014) and LLB(Hons) (2015), and Student Academic Conduct Officer (2006-2010). He continues to serve on the School Executive and lectures in Criminal Law and Procedure, Advanced Criminal Law, and Evidence.

Anderson's research interests focus on inequities and unfairness in the criminal justice system, particularly sentencing and treating like cases alike, integration of restorative justice practices, the legal framework for arson including mental elements and sentencing, evidence law aspects such as identification evidence, tendency and context evidence, judicial discretion to exclude evidence, and issue warnings, as well as legal practice and health issues through an ARC Discovery Project on advance personal planning and elder abuse. Prominent publications include textbooks like Uniform Evidence Law: Text and Essential Cases (2021), Criminal Law Perspectives: From Principles to Practice (2021, with Murphy B, Livings B, et al.), Uniform Evidence in Australia, 3rd Edition (2020, with Weinstein R, Marychurch J, Roy J); book chapters such as "Life Imprisonment in Australia: Restoring a Hope of Release and the Phuong Ngo Case" (2023); and journal articles including "Sentencing and placement of offenders with dementia: a significant contemporary challenge for the criminal justice system" (2026, with Baird A), "A study of the values and principles-based approach to restorative justice" (2025, with Islam MS, Li B), "Recidivism of paroled murderers as a factor in the utility of life imprisonment" (2019), "Playing with Fire: Contemporary Fault Issues in the Enigmatic Crime of Arson" (2016), and "The Label of Life Imprisonment in Australia: A Principled or Populist Approach to an Ultimate Sentence" (2012). He contributed to the Life Imprisonment Worldwide project as a 2012 ARC peer reviewer, 2017 visiting scholar at the University of Nottingham, co-author of UN policy briefings, and chapter contributor to Harvard's 2019 Life Imprisonment: a Global Human Rights Analysis. Anderson has earned ten teaching awards and citations, including the 2010 Australian Learning & Teaching Council's Teaching Excellence Award for Law, Economics, Business and Related Studies.