High-profile judge and long-time anti-death penalty campaigner Lex Lasry has been honoured for his service to the law.
Justice Lasry was admitted to the bar in 1973 and became a Supreme Court of Victoria judge in 2007.
In the wake of the Bali Nine executions, he called for the Australian government to lobby other countries to abolish the death penalty.
Justice Lasry was appointed on Monday a Member (MA) of the Order of Australia for significant service to the law, through pro bono advocacy and legal professional organisations, and to the judiciary.
Speaking recently in the wake of the executions of Bali Nine drug traffickers Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, Justice Lasry said Australia should form a group of "eminent persons" to make submissions to other governments including Indonesia, China, the United States.
"It needs to be a discussion that's intellectual rather than emotional so that people can be made to understand and be persuaded to the view that capital punishment is something that we should leave to history," Justice Lasry said in April.
Justice Lasry represented Australian man Nguyen Tuong Van, convicted of drug trafficking and executed in Singapore in 2005, and visited Chan and Sukumaran in Indonesia before they were shot by firing squad in April.
"The idea that the government would take individuals out into the bush and shoot them is something I can never live with, can never understand, and from a legal viewpoint, it has no deterrent value," Justice Lasry said at the time.
