John Harber Phillips, AC, QC (18 October 1933 – 7 August 2009) was an Australian lawyer and judge who served as Chief Justice of Victoria from 1991 to 2003.
[1] He attended Presentation Convent and De La Salle College, Malvern and then undertook his tertiary education at the University of Melbourne where he obtained an LL.B.
As a result of the trial, he lobbied Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett for the introduction of an independent forensics institute in Victoria.
As head of the National Crime Authority and also Victoria’s Director of Public Prosecutions he worked to improve the efficiency of the Courts.
[8] At the time, critics privately labelled Phillips as not being a “legal luminary” and that he had not delivered any “significant rulings“ prior to his appointment.
[8] This offensive involved every judge in the Supreme Court hearing civil cases for a month.
[14] At his retirement ceremony he remarked upon receiving a summons to serve on a jury that explained about the standard of proof in criminal cases.
[14] At the dinner, Phillips talked about Italian judge Giovanni Falcone who was murdered in Sicily by explosives placed under a road.
At the dinner, the Attorney General described Phillips as “a man who thinks before he speaks, who measures his words and makes each one count”.
In December 2003 he appeared at Victoria Law School as Ned Kelly in the dramatisation of his play An Irish Tragedy.