Stuart Morris QC is an Australian lawyer. He served as a Justice of the Supreme Court of Victoria and as President of the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) from 2003 until 2007. Former Chairman of the Victorian Government's Local Government Commission, 1986 under the Cain Government. Stuart Morris worked as a barrister, and was one of Australia's leading lawyers in planning law. He was appointed a Queen's Counsel in 1991.
He is credited with having driven major improvements at VCAT. However, the position of VCAT President typically attracts criticism from some local municipalities unhappy with planning decisions.
He presided over some of the most famous cases to come before Australian courts in recent years, including the guardianship of the body of Maria Korp, granting access to Victorian Government legal advice to Heather Osland, and was the first Victorian judge to order planning authorities to take into account greenhouse pollution before extending coal mining licences.
He surprised many in the legal profession by resigning four years into his five-year term as President of VCAT. He has now returned to practice as a barrister at the Victorian Bar.
Morris holds a Bachelor of Laws and a Bachelor of Economics from Monash University. He was educated at Wesley College, Melbourne.
Famous quotes containing the words stuart and/or morris:
“The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”
—John Stuart Mill (1806–1873)
“The white dominant culture seemed to think that once the Indians were off the reservations, they’d eventually become like everybody else. But they aren’t like everybody else. When the Indianness is drummed out of them, they are turned into hopeless drunks on skid row.”
—Elizabeth Morris (b. c. 1933)