Mr Christopher Shanahan SC was appointed as Chief Justice of Tasmania and Lieutenant Governor on 20 January 2025.

Chief Justice Shanahan was an independent barrister prior to his appointment as Chief Justice, and was appointed silk on 1 December 2004.  He is a member of the WA Bar Association, of which he was Vice-President (2005-2007).  He most recently practiced from Murray Chambers which he founded in 2017.  His practice focused on civil, administrative and commercial matters, with an emphasis on appeals, and included criminal matters both of first instance and appeal.

He served in a part-time role as Acting Commissioner of the Corruption and Crime Commission for over 7 years.

He has also served as an Acting Information Commissioner for Western Australia, and as a Senior Sessional Member of the State Administrative Tribunal of Western Australia.

He is a fellow of the Australian Academy of Law and was responsible for the introduction of a Bar Readers’ Course for the WA Bar Association in 2004.

He was a member of the Australian Bar Association’s Advocacy Training Council (2008-2017) and was Course Director of the ABA’s first Appellate Advocacy Course in 2012.  He has taught in many of the ABA Advanced Advocacy courses.

He taught in the South-Eastern Circuit’s International Advanced Advocacy Course at Keble College in Oxford in 2005, 2010 and 2024, and has lectured in law at Macquarie and Murdoch Universities.  He teaches occasionally at Curtin University where he is an Adjunct Clinical Professor.  In 1997, whilst teaching at Murdoch University, Chris established the community legal centre known as SCALES as a site for clinical legal education.  In 2024 he taught his residential Comparative Anti-Corruption Course at Ghent University, Belgium.