Honourable Justice Teresa Berrigan
Supreme and National Courts of Papua New Guinea
Justice Berrigan was appointed to the Supreme and National Courts of Papua New Guinea in 2018. She is the Administrator of the National Court Crimes Fraud and Corruption Track. Justice Berrigan serves on several judicial committees, including the Judges Rules Committee, the Law Reporting Council and the Judges and Staff Terms and Conditions Committee. She is an educator with the Pacific and PNG Centres for Judicial Excellence and a member of the PNG Judicial Women’s Association.
Justice Berrigan was admitted to practice in Australia in 1996 after working as a para legal in Singapore. She joined private practice and then the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, in Sydney, in 1999 where she prosecuted white collar crime and was made a Specialist Prosecutor in 2003. Between 2005 and 2010 she was a Senior State Prosecutor and advisor with the Office of the Public Prosecutor in Papua New Guinea and prosecuted fraud and corruption, homicide and sexual violence offences at trial and on appeal. She advised the Ombudsman Commission of Papua New Guinea on the investigation of offences under the Leadership Code for one year from mid-2010. Between 2011 and 2012 she was a trial advocate and legal advisor to the Prosecutor of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. In 2012 she was appointed to the newly established United Nations Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals and was responsible for overseeing the legal work of the Office of the Prosecutor in Arusha, Tanzania. Justice Berrigan returned to Papua New Guinea in 2015 and prior to her appointment was the Team Leader of the Papua Guinea and Australia Justice Services & Stability for Development Program, a sector-led program to strengthen law and order and improve access to justice.
