Michael David Coper AO FAAL (27 April 1946 – 13 April 2019) was an Australian legal academic, one of Australia's leading constitutional lawyers, author, and one of the founders of the law school at the University of New South Wales.
[4] In 1988 he was appointed to the Inter-State Commission,[4] producing several reports on the Australian waterfront and interstate land transport.
[4][5] Coper came to prominence with his prize-winning 1983 book Freedom of Interstate Trade under the Australian Constitution, which was influential in the High Court's change of direction five years later in the landmark case of Cole v Whitfield, in which Professor Coper also appeared as counsel.
His 1987 book Encounters with the Australian Constitution was received to great acclaim, as was the project he conceived and co-edited to fruition in 2001, the comprehensive Oxford Companion to the High Court of Australia.
Coper was the Dean of the College of Law at the Australian National University from 1998 to 2012.