Professor Mirko Bagaric

Biography

Professor Bagaric is an internationally renowned expert in punishment and sentencing. Before joining Swinburne University, he was the Dean and Head of the Law School at Deakin University from 2003 to 2006 and 2012 to 2015. He was the Dean of the Swinburne Law School from 2019 to 2022. He is also a member of Human Rights Advisory Panel of the 57th Queensland Parliament.

Professor Bagaric graduated from Monash University with a BA/ LLB (Hons) degree in 1992. He obtained a PhD from Monash University in 2001 for his thesis Punishment and Sentencing: A Rational Approach. 

Professor Bagaric is the author or co-author of over 30 books and 200 articles which have been published in leading Australian and international journals. He has had numerous articles published in the top 3% of law journals as ranked by the Washington & Lee Rankings (the top 50), including the American Criminal Law Review, the Cardozo Law Review, the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, the George Mason Law Review and the Lewis and Clark Law Review. He has had numerous other articles in the top 100 journals (including the Florida State University Law Review, the Brooklyn Law Review; the University of Cincinnati Law Review; the Tennessee Law Review, the Missouri Law Review, the Michigan State Law Review and the Pepperdine Law Review) as well as the Harvard Human Rights Journal, the Stanford Law and Policy Review and the Harvard Journal of Racial and Ethnic Justice. He has also published in the leading Australian law journals, including the University of New South Wales Law Journal, the Sydney Law Review, the Melbourne University Law Review and the Monash Law Review.

While his main work is in the area of punishment and sentencing, he has also written extensively in migration and refugee law and human rights law. His articles have been cited in over 100 court judgments, including the High Court of Australia and superior courts in Canada, Singapore, New Zealand, the United States and Ireland.

His research actively and regularly engages with the community, having written approximately 500 opinion pieces on a range of socially relevant and important legal topics. He appears regularly in the electronic media as an expert commentator on his research areas.

Professor Bagaric is one of 18 contributors to Future Proofing Australia (MUP, 2013) which is edited by Federal Senator and Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Foreign Affairs Brett Mason and Daniel Wood. The forward to the book is written by former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbot who states that the authors are 'big thinkers on big ideas'.

Professor Bagaric has extensive legal experience. He is a former member of the Migration and Refugee Tribunal and as a lawyer has appeared at courts at all levels of the judicial hierarchy including the High Court of Australia.

As well as his academic writing, he is the co-author of several practitioner works which are updated quarterly. The main works are Australian Sentencing Law, Federal Offences, Victorian Criminal Law and Procedure and Ross on Crime. He is the editor of the two volumes of Laws of Australia which cover the criminal law and co-editor of the Criminal Law Journal.