biography
| name: |
Stephen, Sir Ninian (Martin)
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1923– )
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| biography:
| Judge, born in England, UK. His schooling was undertaken in Edinburgh, London, and Switzerland, before he moved to Melbourne as a teenager. He studied law at the University of Melbourne, served in World War 2, and became a QC in 1966. He was a justice of the Victoria Supreme Court (1970–2) and the High Court of Australia (1972–82). Appointed Governor-General of Australia in 1982, he retired from the position in 1989, when Prime Minister Bob Hawke made him Australia's first ambassador for the environment, a non-political role from which he retired in 1991. In 1991 he was asked to chair the ill-fated talks between representatives of Britain, Ireland, and Northern Ireland, and in the same year was part of a Commonwealth of Nations panel on constitutional reform in South Africa. He was knighted in 1972. His interest in human rights prompted his appointment as judge on the International Criminal Tribunals for Yugoslavia in 1993 and for Rwanda in 1995. |
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