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Linda Daniele
1 November 2008
A DECADE ago, then Federal Court judge Marcus Einfeld was popularly voted a national living treasure. Now he faces up to 14 years’ jail for being a self-confessed liar.
Born September 22, 1939, Marcus Richard Einfeld is the son of the late Labor MP, Sydney Einfeld. A respected state minister, Sydney was named by his parents, Jewish migrants from London, after the city they were to make their home.
Marcus attended Sydney Boys High School and completed a law degree at Sydney University. He also holds a PhD from Pacific Western University in the US.
A doctorate in law from Century University, another diploma mill in the US, formed part of his stated qualifications for a time but has dropped off his entry in the latest Who’s Who.
Einfeld practised as a QC for 10 years and as a barrister in Australia from 1962 and in Britain from 1974.
A Labor judicial appointee, he was a Federal Court judge for 15 years, from 1986. He also served on the bench of the ACT, WA and NSW Supreme Courts.
Now a director of various companies and trusts, the three-times-married father of four still dabbles at the bar.
The founding president of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Einfeld was awarded the Order of Australia in 1998 for his services to international affairs and human rights.
He was also voted one of 100 national living treasures in 1997.
Einfeld has also been national vice-president of the Australian section of the International Commission of Jurists, a judge of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court, UNICEF ambassador for children, chairman of the Paralympic Federation and Austcare’s ambassador for refugees.
In delivering a human rights and social justice speech in 2002, Einfeld caused a stir when he drew comparisons to the Nazi era in his statements on Australia’s mandatory detention system.
The “thuggery of the guards at Woomera” was “not much different to that shown by the SS guards in the name of the Third Reich”, he said.
Einfeld was subjected to a formal complaint of plagiarism in 2003 when he reproduced the work of Sydney University’s John Carter in Halsbury’s Laws of Australia in a judgment without attribution.
Einfeld said his footnotes had gone missing in the publication process.
Copyright 2008 News Ltd. All Rights Reserved
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Einfeld ready for release (SMH, March 6, 2010).
Linda Daniele 
