McConvill, James --- "The Oxford Companion to the High Court of Australia" [2002] DeakinLawRw 10; (2002) 7(1) Deakin Law Review 219

Book Review

The Oxford Companion to the High Court of Australia
by Tony Blackshield, Michael Coper and George Williams (eds) (Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 2001) 720pp, Price $150.00 (hardcover). ISBN 0 19 554022 0.

James McConvill[*]

“There is a need for a wider and deeper understanding of this institution and the part it plays in the administration of justice.”[1]

- Chief Justice of Australia, Murray Gleeson

During my first week at Law School, one lecturer asked the class to name as many of the current High Court of Australia justices as possible. I was able to name five out of the seven – and apparently set a new record in the process. We were told that as law students we should become familiar with all the High Court justices, just as if they were players from our favourite sports team. So began my quest to gain a better understanding of the role and function of Australia’s superior court, and a greater recognition of the individual justices that shape and control its activity. I can now name all seven.

The task to gain a wider and deeper understanding of the High Court of Australia has to date been quite difficult. While law libraries in Australia have an abundance of texts on the United States Supreme Court, one usually has to turn to texts on Australian constitutional law or Australian legal history for any contemporary discussion on the High Court. Any specific texts on the High Court typically fail to paint a complete picture of the Court, and are outdated to such an extent that they lose any real relevance.

Given this background, one can understand why I am excited by the release of The Oxford Companion to the High Court of Australia. The Oxford Companion to the High Court of Australia is an extremely ambitious and impressive text, running to over 700 pages and containing over 400 entries from 225 authors - including academics, legal practitioners, historians and both current and former members of the High Court.

The book is essentially an A-Z guide to the High Court of Australia during its first 100 years, but it is certainly not a dictionary. The book is an exquisite and exceptional piece of scholarship in its own right, which is a credit to the book’s editors, and their research assistants. Rather than simply restate or summarise what has already been written about the Court elsewhere, the book examines and discusses each particular aspect of the Court with a fresh insight and a sense of reflection. Much of what is written in the book is based on original research, published for the very first time.

The book is valuable not only for setting out a significant amount of detail about the Court, but also for providing readers with a guide to the future direction of the Court. As Chief Justice Murray Gleeson said when launching the book, ‘A challenge confronting readers of this book will be to stand back from the detail, and to draw together pieces of information which, in combination, reveal the changes in the Court and its work that have taken place over a century’[2]

For the purpose of writing this review, I attempted to approach the book in a very mechanical way: starting first by reading entries about the internal workings of the Court (including ex tempore judgments, remuneration of justices, research assistance and personal relations), then going through the biographies of each of the justices, then reading about the general history of the Court (including the Court’s role in Nauru and Papua New Guinea, the Strike of 1905, the architecture of the High Court building and the Dixon Diaries), and then immersing myself in some of the fascinating essays dealing with a number of themes and subjects (such as an enlightened piece on ‘values’ by Sir Gerard Brennan and a brilliant discussion of ‘policy considerations’ by Sir Anthony Mason). While I did read the majority of entries in the book, the book was simply too captivating for such a mechanical exercise to be adhered to. An excursion of the life of McTiernan made me anxious to revisit the topic of federalism; reading the piece on the Engineers Case[3] made me curious about the career of Isaacs; and the piece on the High Court Library fuelled my desire to read about research assistants and the role of associates. The book is a self-determined maze for which you will want to get further into as you discover your way around.

In a recent speech coinciding with the release of the book, Justice Michael McHugh compared The Oxford Companion to the High Court of Australia with the US-equivalent, The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States.[4] In that book, Justice McHugh explained, the editors described the US Supreme Court as being ‘not only a legal institution’ but also ‘a hybrid political, social, economic, and cultural institution ... that speaks through the law but whose decisions shape and ... are shaped by the social order of which it is a part’.[5] The broad understanding of the High Court of Australia which is made possible by this latest book demonstrates the High Court has taken on a similar dimension during its first century of operation, and is becoming an increasingly important part of Australian society.

The style, substance and vision of The Oxford Companion to the High Court of Australia makes this book a must for lawyers, academics, students and anyone with even a passing interest in the High Court of Australia as an institution, and the impact that this great court has on Australia’s social, political and economic landscape. The book addresses the recognised need for a wider and deeper understanding of the role and influence of the Court, and ensures that law students across Australia will come to talk not only of the infamous snail in the bottle, but also the seven justices that occupy the High Court in Canberra.

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[*] Articled Clerk, Allens Arthur Robinson, Melbourne.

[1] Chief Justice Murray Gleeson, ‘The Oxford Companion to the High Court of Australia’, Canberra Book Launch, 13 February 2002. Available at: <http://www.hcourt.gov.au/speeches/cj/cj_oxford.htm>

[2] Ibid.

[3] Amalgamated Society of Engineers v Adelaide Steamship Co Ltd (Engineers Case) [1920] HCA 54; (1920) 28 CLR 129.

[4] Kermit Hall (ed), The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States (1992).

[5] Justice Michael McHugh, ‘The High Court and the Oxford Companion to the High Court’, 2002 Constitutional Law and Conference Dinner, 15 February 2002. Available at: <http://www.hcourt.gov.au/speeches/mchughj/mchughj_oxford.htm>