The Hon. Dame Roma Mitchell AC DBE CVO QC (1913–2000) was the first Australian woman to be a Queen's Counsel, Supreme Court judge, Acting Chief Justice, Deputy University Chancellor, Chancellor and State Governor. Born in Adelaide, Mitchell was four when her father was killed in the battle of Villers-Bretonneux. The consequent financial difficulties experienced by her mother helped shape Mitchell's awareness of social justice and women's issues. Having excelled as a student at St Aloysius Convent College, Adelaide, she won a scholarship to study law at the University of Adelaide, where she helped to found the Women Law Students' Society and won the David Murray Scholarship. She was admitted to the Bar in 1934 and practised as a barrister; some of her earliest cases were women experiencing domestic violence. Later, she advocated for issues including equal pay and the appointment of women to juries in South Australia. In 1962 she became Queen's Counsel, and in 1965, on the recommendation of Don Dunstan, she was appointed a Supreme Court judge. During the 1970s she chaired the Dunstan government's groundbreaking criminal law and penal methods reform committee; her recommendations in the Mitchell Report led to influential prison reform. She was also Vice President of the Law Council and founding chair of the Human Rights Commission from 1981 to 1986. In 1983 she became chancellor of the University of Adelaide, where she often taught family law. She was appointed Governor of South Australia at the age of 77 and retired five years later. In 1998, at the age of 84, she was an active participant in the Constitutional Convention. Devoutly religious, she was renowned for her integrity and was a much-loved public figure in South Australia. No other Australian woman was first to achieve so many official appointments, but she looked forward to a time when the appointment of a woman would not be noteworthy.
