Jessica Kerr

Jessica Kerr has been fascinated by the role of judges in society for over a decade, and increasingly concerned by the shroud of mystery that surrounds them.

From working behind the scenes alongside top judges and arguing cases before them in New Zealand, to sitting on the bench as a criminal magistrate and re-writing drug sentencing laws in the Seychelles, to training young lawyers in courtroom ethics and introducing Australian teenagers to the constitutional importance of an independent judiciary: Kerr has been fascinated by the role of judges in society for over a decade, and increasingly concerned by the shroud of mystery that surrounds them.

Kerr studied, practiced and taught law in her native New Zealand before spending a seminal year in her mid-twenties as a Fulbright scholar in the US, obtaining an LLM from Yale Law School and volunteering as a public defender in New Orleans. She then took an even greater leap into the unknown, arriving solo with a backpack in the Seychelles for what would prove to be five years of struggle, sometimes successful, to develop access to justice and healthy constitutional processes in a tiny island state.

She is now a mother of two and a PhD candidate and teacher at the UWA Law School in Western Australia, researching the gaps in Commonwealth writing and thinking about judges and why we (should) trust them.