Owen Dixon

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Owen Dixon : biography

28 April 1886 – 7 July 1972

Sir Owen Dixon, OM, GCMG, KC (28 April 1886 – 7 July 1972) was an Australian judge and diplomat who served as the sixth Chief Justice of Australia. A justice of the High Court for thirty-five years, Dixon was one of the leading jurists in the English-speaking worldGraham Perkin – (published in The Age on 23 September 1959) and is widely regarded as Australia’s greatest ever jurist.Justice Jim Spigelman, "Australia’s Greatest Jurist," presented in Sydney, May 2003.

Notes

Sir Owen Dixon Chambers, in Sydney, is also named in honour of Sir Owen Dixon.

Honours

  • Dixon was made a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG) in 1941, and was elevated to a Knight Grand Cross of that order (GCMG) in 1954.
  • The road Owen Dixon Drive in the suburbs of Spence, Melba and McKellar in Canberra, Australia is named in honour of Sir Owen Dixon.
  • Owen Dixon Chambers, in Melbourne, is named in honour of Sir Owen Dixon.

Education

Dixon was born in Hawthorn in suburban Melbourne in 1886. His father, JW 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 the Melbourne Law School and was awarded a Bachelor of Laws in 1908, although he did not take his final honours exam.

Later academic awards

Dixon was later awarded honorary doctorates from Oxford, Harvard, and the University of 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 did not 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 had 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 had not been given a fair trial.

Dixon had reservations about the appointment of Labor 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 them and the 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.