Everything about Owen Dixon totally explained
Sir Owen Dixon OM GCMG KBE PC (
1886 -
1972)
Australian
judge and
diplomat, was the sixth
Chief Justice of Australia. A justice of the High Court for thirty-five years, Dixon is widely regarded as Australia's greatest ever jurist.
Education
Dixon was born in
Hawthorn in suburban
Melbourne in
1886. His father, J.W Dixon, was a barrister and subsequently a solicitor. He attended
Hawthorn College and later the
University of Melbourne, graduating with an
Arts degree in
1907. During this time he developed his lifelong love of the classics.
His BA became an MA, as was the custom then, a year later upon the payment of a small fee. He also studied law at Melbourne and graduated LLB in 1908, although he didn't take his final honours exam, probably because he was working too much at the time, perhaps helping out in his father's law office.
He was later awarded honorary doctorates from Harvard, Oxford and perhaps somewhat belatedly, Melbourne.
Early career
Dixon was admitted to the
Victorian Bar in
1910. In December 1911, Dixon appeared before the High Court of Australia for the first time, aged just 25 years. After a slow start, his career was stellar, and he became a
King's Counsel in 1922. In the
1920s, Dixon was a prominent member of the Victorian Bar, along with his colleagues and friends
John Latham (who preceded Dixon as Chief Justice) and
Robert Menzies (later the longest serving
Prime Minister of Australia). He regularly appeared in the High Court of Australia and the Privy Council in London. At the time of his appointment to the High Court in 1929, he was the acknowledged leader of the Bar in Victoria, and indeed Australia. In 1920, he married Alice Brooksbank (1893-1971). They had four children, Franklin (1922-1977), Ted (1924-1996), Betty (1928- ) and Anne (1934-1979).
Judicial career
In
1926, Dixon was briefly made an Acting Judge of the
Supreme Court of Victoria, and although he was considered to be an excellent judge, he didn't enjoy the experience. In
1929, Dixon was appointed to the
bench of the High Court, by his friend
John Latham, who was then the Commonwealth Attorney-General. During his time on the bench, Dixon also wrote several judgements on behalf of his colleague, Sir
George Rich. The propriety of one judge writing a judgment under the name of another has never been determined. Dixon rapidly established himself as a dominant intellectual force on the High Court bench, and many of his judgments from the 1930s and 1940s are still regarded as classic statements of the common law. Examples are McDonald v Dennys Lascelles Ltd (1933) 48 CLR 457 (terms contracts), Brunker v Perpetual Trustee Company Ltd (1937) 57 CLR 555 (gifts, property), Yerkey v Jones (1939) 63 CLR 649 (Equity) and Penfolds Wines v Elliott (1946) 74 CLR 204 (personal property torts). Dixon also showed that behind his formidable command of legal principle he'd a sense of fairness, such as in his joint judgment in Tuckiar v R (1934) 52 CLR 335, where the Court quashed the murder conviction of an aboriginal man who hadn't been given a fair trial.
Dixon had reservations about the appointment of Labour politicians Dr
Herbert Vere Evatt and Sir
Edward McTiernan by the
Government of
James Scullin in late 1930 (and is said to have considered resigning in protest). He nevertheless forced himself to get along with all his colleagues, and at one point acted as a go between between them and the irascible conservative judge Sir
Hayden Starke, who refused to have any direct communication with them. He and Evatt wrote a number of joint judgments prior to Evatt's resignation in 1940 to return to politics.
From
1942 to
1944, Dixon took leave from his judicial duties while he served as Australia’s Minister
(Ambassador) to the United States, at the request of the then
Prime Minister John Curtin. On
May 27 1950, Dixon was invited by the
United Nations to act as their official mediator between the governments of
India and
Pakistan over the disputed territory of
Kashmir. His role was to continue
conciliation talks between the two nations in the lead up to a proposed
plebiscite to be put to the residents of Kashmir. His role as mediator ended in
October 1950, although he'd left
India in September frustrated with what he saw as an inability of the respective governments to negotiate.
At about this period, Dixon was in the majority in important Constitutional cases which declared unconstitutional pet projects of successive Labour and Liberal Governments, namely the Banks Nationalisation case (1948) 76 CLR 1 and the Communist Party case (1951) 83 CLR 1. In the former, he considered that many of the operative provisions of the
Chifley Government's Banking Act 1947 (which sought to nationalise Australia's banks) were beyond the scope of the constitutional powers of the Australian Commonwealth Parliament. In the latter case he considered that the Communist Party Dissolution Act 1950 of the Liberal Government led by his old friend
Robert Menzies (which sought to ban the Australian Communist Party) was 'ultra vires' (beyond power) for the Commonwealth Parliament, and couldn't be supported by any head of Commonwealth legislative power.
In
1951, Dixon was appointed a member of the
Privy Council, the English judicial organ which, at that stage, was the final court of appeal in Australian legal matters. However, Dixon never took up his seat on that Court. In fact, Dixon's disdain for the
Privy Council is well documented, particularly in Phillip Ayres' biography, titled
Owen Dixon. Here, it's revealed that Dixon approached then-
Prime Minister Robert Menzies on at least two occasions, urging a restriction of appeals to the
Privy Council. In Dixon's view, the council had a limited understanding of Australian Constitutional law, allowed appeals on trivial matters, and published confusing judgments. His words to Menzies were "I don't think they've a clue."
In
1952, Dixon was appointed Chief Justice of the High Court by his friend
Robert Menzies, who remained Prime Minister throughout Dixon’s tenure in the position. This marked the beginning of a period described by
Lord Denning as the "golden age" of the High Court. Complemented by the work of Justices Kitto, Fullagar and Windeyer, Dixon led what NSW Chief Justice
Jim Spigelman has described as "one of the great common law benches of history." It may come as a surprise, then, that this period was one of relative stability in the area of
Australian Constitutional Law. This was in part due to Dixon's leadership of his Court, which resulted in a higher proportion of joint judgments than before or since. The most notable decisions from this period include
R v Kirby; ex parte Boilermakers' Society of Australia (Boilermakers' Case) (1956) 94 CLR 254 and
Victoria v Commonwealth (Second Uniform Tax Case) (1957)99 CLR 575. As Chief Justice he was also responsible for a number of seminal decisions in areas as diverse as contract law (for example Masters v Cameron (1957) 91 CLR 353) and criminal law and precedent (Parker v R (1963) 111 CLR 610). In Tait v R (1962) 108 CLR 620, he dramatically intervened to prevent the hanging of a mentally ill murderer before his appeal to the High Court could be heard.
In 1952, and again in 1955, Dixon was called upon by the
Governor of
Victoria to give advice when the upper house of the Parliament of that State refused to pass supply bills. Dixon advised the Governor of his powers in such a situation. This precedent was followed after Dixon's death, when then-
Governor-General Sir John Kerr sought advice from Dixon's successor
Sir Garfield Barwick CJ before controversially dismissing the Labor Government under
Gough Whitlam in
1975.
Retirement and later life
Dixon retired from the High Court in
1964, to be replaced by Sir
Garfield Barwick, who as a barrister had argued for the Commonwealth in the Communist Party Case, and of whom Dixon disapproved. Dixon is said to have thought that
Keith Aickin QC (subsequently a judge of the High Court 1976 - 1982) was a more appropriate choice. Shortly after his retirement, Dixon turned down an offer to be appointed Australia's
Governor General, because he considered himself "too old". During the early part of his retirement, he read extensively, particularly in the classics, until failing eyesight made this increasingly difficult. In the later 1960s and early 1970s, Dixon's health declined and he died in
Melbourne in 1972.
Assessment
Dixon has sometimes been described as a product of his times – for example, he was a strong supporter of the
White Australia policy, and was a critic of most organized religions and, as Philip Ayers' biographical work shows, a virulent anti-Catholic. Furthermore, he'd a strong involvement with several politicians of the day, notably
Robert Menzies, and on occasion gave "advice" to federal ministers on foreign policy matters. This might not now be regarded as proper for a serving judge, though one must consider that, in Dixon's time, the pool of talent and expertise available to Government was much smaller. This led to both Dixon and his predecessor Sir
John Latham being used by successive Commonwealth Governments on diplomatic and other international missions. Conversely, Dixon is remembered primarily for his attitude of "strict and complete legalism" in his approach to contentious issues, and is considered by some to be among the least politically influenced judges.
(External Link
)
For these and many other reasons, he's widely regarded as Australia's greatest judge and lawyer.
Honours
Further Information
Get more info on 'Owen Dixon'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://owen_dixon.totallyexplained.com">Owen Dixon Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
