Geoffrey Nettle

The Honourable Justice Geoffrey Nettle QC
Justice of the High Court of Australia
Incumbent
Assumed office 3 February 2015
Nominated by	Tony Abbott
Appointed by	Sir Peter Cosgrove
Preceded by	Susan Crennan
Personal details
Born	(1950-12-02) 2 December 1950 Cottesloe, Western Australia
Nationality	Australian
Alma mater	Australian National University University of Melbourne University of Oxford

Geoffrey Arthur Akeroyd Nettle QC (born 2 December 1950) is a Justice of the High Court of Australia, the highest court in the Australian court hierarchy. Prior to his appointment to the High Court, he was a judge of the Court of Appeal, Supreme Court of Victoria, in the Australian state of Victoria.

Justice Nettle was born in Cottesloe, Western Australia (a beachside suburb of Perth), but moved to Victoria at an early age, and received his secondary education at Wesley College, Melbourne. He completed a Bachelor of Economics at the Australian National University followed by a Bachelor of Laws, for which he received First Class Honours, at the University of Melbourne in 1975. While studying at Melbourne, he was a resident at Trinity College, where he rowed and played rugby. He then completed a Bachelor of Civil Laws with First Class Honours at Magdalen College, Oxford.

Nettle was admitted to practise in 1977 and was a solicitor with Mallesons Stephen Jaques (now King & Wood Mallesons). He was called to the bar in November 1982. He became a Queen's Counsel in 1992. His major areas of practice were commercial law, taxation, constitutional law and administrative law. He was appointed a Judge of the Supreme Court of Victoria, Trial Division, in 2002, and a Judge of Appeal of the Victorian Court of Appeal, Supreme Court of Victoria, in 2004.

Unusually for an Appeal Justice, in 2013 he presided over the trial at first instance of Adrian Ernest Bayley for the rape and murder of Irishwoman Jill Meagher in Melbourne, Australia.

On 4 December 2014 the Commonwealth Attorney-General, Senator George Brandis, announced that Nettle would become a justice of the High Court of Australia, replacing Justice Susan Crennan who would retire on 3 February 2015. Nettle will reach the mandatory retirement age of 70 for High Court justices in 2020.