Judicial Life

Abstract

When the Attorney-General Mr Snedden approached me in 1966 with the offer of appointment to the Commonwealth Industrial Court and to the Supreme Court of the Australian Capital Territory, he mentioned that there was a policy dating back to Sir Garfield Barwick’s day as Attorney-General that there should be a new Commonwealth Superior Court with a wide range of federal jurisdiction, which would absorb the Commonwealth Industrial Court and the Federal Bankruptcy Court. Its status would be aligned with that of the State Supreme Courts. This should, he believed, be achieved within twelve months. He wanted mine to be an appointment made with the new wide-ranging work of the proposed court in view. In accepting, I was influenced both by personal reasons already explained, and by the fact, of which I was already aware through my Law Council interests, of the policy of setting up the new court.