Dr Sarah Murray is a Professor at the University of Western Australia where she teaches Constitutional Law and researches in public law, electoral law and court innovation. She has published extensively in Australia and overseas and was part of the UWA-led team which was successful with a national Australian Research Council multi-year bid to digitise the drafting of the Australian Constitution, in partnership with Go8 Law Schools and Oxford University.

She teaches into the core JD subjects of Constitutional Law (LAWS5110) and Foundations of Public Law (LAWS4108) and in 2025 was a recipient of a Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning in the 2024 Australian Awards for University Teaching (AAUT). 

Professor Murray is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law, a former member of the Law Reform Commission of Western Australia, was an inaugural co-Chair of the International Society of Public Law AUS-NZ Chapter and is a co-Convenor of the Electoral Regulation and Research Network. Her PhD thesis received the Mollie Holman Doctoral Medal for Law by Monash University and was published as a monograph, The Remaking of the Courts - Less-Adversarial Practice and the Constitutional Role of the Judiciary in Australia (Federation Press, 2014). Professor Murray was awarded the Fay Gale Fellowship and Institute for Advanced Studies Distinguished Early Career Fellowship for her work on Community Justice Centres. She has published widely in Australia and internationally and is an editor of Constitutional Perspectives on an Australian Republic– Essays in Honour of Professor George Winterton (Federation Press, 2010), co-editor of Regulating Preventive Justice- Principle, Policy and Paradox (Routledge UK, 2017) and a co-author of The Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia – History, Principle and Interpretation (CUP, 2015) and Winterton’s Australian Federal Constitutional Law (Thomson Reuters, 2022).  She has recently published a monograph on the community justice model, Community Justice Centres - New Trajectories in Law (Routledge, 2022) and a co-authored work on the Western Australian Constitution, The Constitution of Western Australia - An Exploration (Springer, 2023).  

Professor Murray with Associate Professor Joe Clare are part of the Law School Justice Evaluation Network (JEN). JEN brings together interdisciplinary expertise in the evaluation, study, and research of justice spaces and interventions.  JEN members have experience across a broad array of sectors including the courts, legal services, police and first responders. Using mixed methods approaches and building on a realist evaluation framework, the UWA JEN is able to deliver a range of research products, including best-practice reviews, development of evaluation program logic, and implementation of process and impact evaluations.       

In 2021, Professor Murray was a member of the WA Ministerial Expert Committee on Electoral Reform alongside Malcolm McCusker AC QVO QC, Professor John Phillimore and Associate Professor Martin Drum. The Ministerial Expert Committee on Electoral Reform Final Report recommended significant electoral reforms for Western Australia, including that for Legislative Council elections the whole of the State of Western Australia be one electorate as well as recommending the abolition of Group Voting Tickets and the introduction of Optional Preferential Voting. The Report recommendations were followed by historic WA legislative amendments in the form of the enactment of the Constitutional and Electoral Legislation Amendment (Electoral Equality) Act 2021 (WA).

UWA Academic Board, member

Robert French Centre of Public Law, Co-Director

Australian Academy of Law, WA Events Committee Co-Convenor

WA Co-Convenor of the Electoral Regulation Research Network

Former Member of the Law Reform Commission of Western Australia

Advisory Board, Institute of Advanced Studies

Centre for Public Integrity, Fellow

Public Policy Institute (UWA), Fellow

Expert Advisory Board member for the evaluation of Ontario's Justice Centres and the Assessment of Select Therapeutic Courts (2026-2027)

BA (Hons) W.Aust., LLB (Hons) W.Aust.
Grad Dip (Legal Practice)
PhD (Monash)

ARC LIEF LE230100159, $399,046, ‘Digitising the Drafting of the Australian Constitution’ (Assoc/Prof Murray Wesson; Professor Sarah Murray; Assoc/Prof Tamara Tulich; Prof John Williams; Prof Anne Twomey; Prof Nicholas Aroney; Prof James Stellios; Prof Rosalind Dixon; Prof Ann Genovese; Assoc/Prof Luke Beck; Assoc/Prof Melissa Castan; Assoc/Prof Benjamin Saunders; Dr Dylan Lino; Ms Jacinta Dharmananda; Dr Nicholas Cole)

UWA Teaching/Research Nexus Grant, ‘A Closer Look at Case Reading in the JD) (with Aidan Ricciardo, Ian Murray and Julie Falck)

FABLE Research Accelerator Scheme Award $20,000: ‘Ensuring the Right to Have Rights’ (with large team across FABLE led by Ned Curthoys)

2017 Fay Gale Fellowship recipient

Pocketing the Proceeds of Crime: The Legislation, Criminological Perspectives and Experiences (2020) (Australian Institute of Criminology, Criminology Research Grant) $53,768 (with Natalie Skead, Hilde Tubex and Tamara Tulich): https://www.aic.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-07/CRG-27-1617-FinalReport_0.pdf

Family Property Disputes Involving Family Violence: A Pilot Research Project (2018) (Law Society of Western Australia Public Purposes Trust): https://www.able.uwa.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/3392336/Family-Property-Disputes-involving-Family-Violence-A-Pilot-Research-Project-Dec-2018.pdf

‘A Neighbourhood Justice Centre and Court-based Service Provision for Western Australia: A Feasibility Study’ (lead CI), $72,197 (2017-2018): Doing Justice Differently: A Community Justice Centre for Western Australia: A Feasibility Study (2018): https://www.law.uwa.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/3151757/FEASIBILITY-STUDY-REPORT.pdf

2015 Institute of Advanced Studies Distinguished Early Career Fellowship - $5000

2014 UWA Diversity Initiatives grant (with Natalie Skead) – awarded $9948

2010 National Mediation Conference Scholarship

Participant in 2011 Gilbert & Tobin Federalism Research Roundtable

ARC LIEF LE230100159, $399,046, ‘Digitising the Drafting of the Australian Constitution’ (Assoc/Prof Murray Wesson; Professor Sarah Murray; Assoc/Prof Tamara Tulich; Prof John Williams; Prof Anne Twomey; Prof Nicholas Aroney; Prof James Stellios; Prof Rosalind Dixon; Prof Ann Genovese; Assoc/Prof Luke Beck; Assoc/Prof Melissa Castan; Assoc/Prof Benjamin Saunders; Dr Dylan Lino; Ms Jacinta Dharmananda; Dr Nicholas Cole)

Sarah is the Unit Coordinator for Foundations of Public Law (LAWS4108) and teaches in Foundations of Public Law (LAWS4108)and Constitutional Law (LAWS5101).

She has previously taught Legal Process, Administrative Law, Marketing Law and lectured in Law, Justice & Social Policy.

Dr Sarah Murray researches in the areas of public law, institutional change and less-adversarial justice and has a particular interest in Community Justice Centres as well as the constitutional law implications of less-adversarial curial processes.

She completed her PhD at Monash University on the topic "Less-Adversarial Practice and the Constitutional Role of the Judiciary in Australia". Her thesis was awarded a 2011 Mollie Holman Doctoral Medal by Monash University and she is the recipient of a 2015 IAS Distinguished Early Career Fellowship and a 2017 Fay Gale Fellowship.

Professor Murray and Associate Professor Joe Clare are part of the Law School Justice Evaluation Network (JEN). JEN brings together interdisciplinary expertise in the evaluation, study, and research of justice spaces and interventions.  JEN members have experience across a broad array of sectors including the courts, legal services, police and first responders. Using mixed methods approaches and building on a realist evaluation framework, the UWA JEN is able to deliver a range of research products, including best-practice reviews, development of evaluation program logic, and implementation of process and impact evaluations.