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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

In the aftermath of the Lawyer X scandal, where barrister Nicola Gobbo’s role as a police informant with Victoria Police unjustly affected multiple convictions, the Victorian government recently passed the State Civil Liability (Police Informants) Act 2024 . The legislation was introduced amid Gobbo’s civil case against the State of Victoria, in which she alleges the government negligently used her as an informer [ 1 ]. The original bill aimed to limit Victoria’s liability by

Recently, my friend invited me to accompany her to an event hosted by the ANU. The event was called ‘First Nations Peace Poetics’. It wasn’t until we arrived at the event that she informed me it was a poetry reading. I leaned across my seat and asked her timidly if I was supposed to have researched the speakers. She shrugged, and told me I knew at least one of them – Ellen van Neerven had been prescribed in an English class we had taken together. I blushed, and admitted that