The Hon. Justice Robyn Layton is a former Supreme Court judge of South Australia (SA) and was the fourth female to have been so appointed. Prior to her Supreme Court appointment, she was
a barrister practising across many jurisdictions, the third female to be appointed a silk in SA, the first female Judge in the South Australian Industrial Court, and then a Deputy President of the Commonwealth Administrative Appeals Tribunal. In 2003, she authored the Review of Child Protection in SA recommending an overall government policy and legislative framework across all departments.
Justice Layton was a Member and later the first female Chair of the Committee of Experts on Application of Conventions of the UN International Labour Office (ILO), Geneva, from 1993 to 2008. She has been an ILO consultant since 2000, delivering training for judges and lawyers in labour law and human rights standards internationally, particularly in Asia (Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand).
As a judge in Australia, she was involved in developing and delivering judicial training courses on issues such as vulnerable witnesses including children and women in court. She and other judges produced a judicial Bench Book for all judges in Australia on children as witnesses.
Currently, Justice Layton is an Adjunct Professor at the School of Law, University of South Australia. She also works independently as a Judicial Education and Program Development Consultant and is a consultant for the Asian Development Bank and has worked on many projects related to gender. They have included poverty reduction for women in Cambodia, Kazakhstan, and the Philippines (2011–2013); strengthening women’s resilience to climate change and disaster through legislation in Fiji, the Lao PDR, and Mongolia (2018 to date) and a consultant and adviser on
Legal Literacy for Women in Afghanistan and Pakistan (2017 to date).
Her recent publications have been as a co-author of a book on Evidence Law in Australia in 2017 and two publications on equal remuneration and the gender pay gap.
Her work has been acknowledged in receiving the following Awards in Australia: Member of the Order of Australia (AO) (2012); The South Australian, Australian of the Year (2012); Life Member of the Law Society of South Australia (2012); Justice Award Law Society of South Australia (2013); Australian Woman Lawyer’s Award (2016); and Life Member of the Women Lawyer’s Association (2017). She is also a Patron and Ambassador for many organisations including the Australian Migrant Resource Centre and is the Human Rights Ambassador for the United Nations Association of Australia.