David Mitchell

David Charles Mitchell (13 March 1934 – 6 May 2018) was a minister of the Presbyterian Church of Australia, a specialist in constitutional law and Solicitor-General for Lesotho. Mitchell was born on 13 March 1934 at the St. Stephen's Private Hospital in South Hobart, Tasmania and grew up in the nearby suburb of Sandy Bay, Tasmania. He was educated at the University of Tasmania and admitted to the bar on 4 February 1958. In due course he was also admitted to the bar in Victoria, New South Wales, Australian Capital Territory, South Australia, Western Australia, England and Lesotho. Mitchell worked for the British Colonial Service in the Bechuanaland Protectorate, now known as Botswana, as an Assistant District Officer on probation in the Serowe District in the year following his appointment on 24 March 1960. He subsequently joined the Commonwealth Public Service, where he was responsible for legal matters in Papua New Guinea for the then Department of External Territories. He transferred to the Attorney-General's Department, where he helped establish the Australian Legal Aid Office in 1974. The Department sponsored him to, and he was a graduate of the International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, before being seconded to Lesotho. Mitchell was Solicitor-General for Lesotho in October 1976, when Lesotho was in dispute with its neighbour South Africa over the closure of three border crossings into the Transkei, that was designed to pressure Lesotho into recognizing this "homeland" established by South Africa for its Bantu peoples. He successfully presented the case for the government of Lesotho to the Security Council of the United Nations which resulted in an aid package of $US113 million.