Ligertwood’s teaching and research interests
Emeritus Fellow Andrew Ligertwood completed a Bachelor of Laws Degree with First Class Honours at The University of Adelaide and travelled to Oxford as a George Murray Scholar, graduating with a Bachelor of Civil Law (BCL) in 1969. He then spent a year teaching at the University of Pennsylvania before returning to Adelaide after being offered a position in the Adelaide Law School. Admitted to practice on his return, for some years Ligertwood also worked with the then newly-formed Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement.
Ligertwood specialised in the areas of evidence and procedure. Conscious of the critical importance of these areas in the teaching of law, it is the Adelaide Law School’s intention that the proposed Chair will include but not be limited to these areas of law.
Ligertwood’s teaching and research interests have focused on the nature and processes for the finding of facts determinative of legal decisions. The principal manifestation of his work is a major treatise on the laws of evidence, first published in 1988 and now in a 6th Edition (with Professor Gary Edmond as Co-author) entitled Australian Evidence, A Principled Approach to the Common Law and the Uniform Acts, published by LexisNexis, Sydney.
Ligertwood was also involved in a major project to provide a comprehensive account of Australian law (The Laws of Australia) and has served as a consultant to the Australian Law Reform Commission and to the Law Council of Australia on projects related to evidence law.
He has served as Dean of the Faculty and spent time as a visitor at University College, Oxford, and the University of Mannheim and has taught at The China University of Politics and Law in Beijing. In 2010, Ligertwood became an Emeritus Fellow in Law at the University of Adelaide.
