Ian Callinan was born in Casino NSW, raised in Brisbane, and educated at Brisbane Grammar School and the University of Queensland.  He was admitted to legal practice in 1960, and joined the Queensland Bar in 1965.  He rapidly developed a broad and extensive national practice in areas including commercial law, industrial relations, defamation, constitutional law and criminal law. 

He became a QC in 1978, and was President of the Queensland Bar Association 1984-1987, and the Australian Bar Association 1984-1985.  His Honour was appointed a Justice of the High Court of Australia in 1998.  Following his retirement from the High Court in 2007, he conducted a commission of enquiry into the outbreak of equine influenza in Australia, and more recently an enquiry into Victoria’s parole system.  In 2014, he was appointed an ad hoc judge of the International Court of Justice in the proceeding Timor-Leste v Australia on the nomination of Australia. 

He is also a noted supporter of the Arts, and is a member of the Council of the National Gallery of Australia.  In addition to his legal and judicial writings, he is the author of a number of novels, short stories and plays, including the crime fiction novels “The Lawyer and the Libertine” and “The Missing Masterpiece”.