Australia’s finest judge was Sir Owen Dixon, who spent 35 years on the High Court, 12 of those years as Chief Justice. For almost seven years he was away from the bench assisting the government with the war effort, first at home—when his vituperative brother-judge Starke said he ‘did nothing and just went to lunches and dinners’—and then as Special Minister to Washington. In 1950 he was UN Mediator in Kashmir.
Dixon died 31 years ago, and the legal community has awaited his official biography with great anticipation. For years, James Merralls qc from the Melbourne Bar was expected to provide the text. But in the end the family committed Dixon’s papers to a non-lawyer, Philip Ayres—an English literature academic from Melbourne and the biographer of Malcolm Fraser. Ayres has burrowed beyond Dixon’s public record, but in very selected places. His main additional sources are Dixon’s diaries and five of Dixon’s surviving and most adoring associates, who shared their memories and assisted with the redrafting of the more legal chapters. Judges’ associates are usually bright young graduates who spend a year or two with a judge before their own successful careers at the Bar and on the bench. Ayres does not list Merralls as one of the associates who participated in the biography, but he is given special mention for his ‘extensive and profound’ knowledge of Dixon. The result is a very Melbourne book under the imprint of Miegunyah Press from Melbourne University Press. Miegunyah, for those not in the know, was the residence of Sir Russell Grimwade, Dixon’s predecessor as Chairman of the Felton Bequest Committee.
Not only has there never been a finer judge, there has never been one better connected with the government of the day. Prime Minister Menzies had been Dixon’s pupil at the Bar. When in 1964 Dixon decided to retire as Chief Justice, he tried to convince Menzies to take on the job because, as Ayres puts it, ‘it was impossible to leave things to the others’. Dixon had a poor opinion of most of his fellow lawyers, and especially of his predecessor John Latham and successor Garfield Barwick. He regarded Latham as a usurper and was very curt with Menzies at the swearing-in. He never liked Barwick, who had often appeared before him as an advocate. When Barwick’s appointment as Chief Justice was announced, Dixon’s judicial colleague Douglas Menzies, the prime minister’s cousin, called to