Opinion

Image from The Sydney Morning Herald For a generation of constitutional republicans, 1999 marks a ‘sliding doors’ moment many of us weren’t even alive to see. Of course, I am referencing the Australian ‘republic referendum’, a blueprint forged from enduring, 19th-century ambition, yet nonetheless foiled at the hands of perceived obligation. As we approach nearly thirty years since the referendum’s failure on the grandest stage, surveying the recent coups calling to further un

Image from Pinterest I. The Chasm In 2024, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to the team behind AlphaFold—an AI system that predicts protein structures with near-experimental accuracy, solving a problem that had resisted fifty years of scientific effort.¹ What previously took years of laboratory work now takes seconds at negligible marginal cost. Drug candidates that once required billions of dollars and more than a decade of human research are being generated in months at a

Michael Kirby is one of Australia’s most prolific High Court judges, known for his judgments and dissents, as well as his extra-judicial writings and general icon-status. This article explores what it is about Kirby that delights and divides, and the motivation behind his many, many dissents. Radical Restraint Justice Michael Kirby 1998, Ralph Heimans, oil on canvas One of my favourite things about studying law is getting to know the judges. It’s one of the quirks of the degr