Last week, UNSW’s Gilbert and Tobin Centre for Public Law held a workshop on Great Australian Dissents. The  judgments nominated by the attendees were tweeted during the proceedings and included thirteen High Court dissents from 1915 to 2013:

• New South Wales v Commonwealth [1915] HCA 17; (1915) 20 CLR 54 (Barton J)
• R v Federal Court of Bankruptcy [1938] HCA 10; (1938) 59 CLR 556 (Dixon & Evatt JJ)
• Chester v Waverley Municipal Council [1939] HCA 25; (1939) 62 CLR 1 (Evatt J)
• Re Richard Foreman & Sons Pty Ltd; Uther v Federal Commissioner of Taxation [1947] HCA 45; (1947) 74 CLR 508 (Dixon J)
• Australian Communist Party v Commonwealth [1951] HCA 5; (1951) 83 CLR 1 (Latham CJ)
• Victoria v Commonwealth [1975] HCA 39; (1975) 134 CLR 81 (Mason J)
• Australian Conservation Foundation v Commonwealth [1980] HCA 53; (1980) 146 CLR 493 (Murphy J)
• Hospital Products Ltd v United States Surgical Corporation [1984] HCA 64; (1984) 156 CLR 41 (Mason J)
• Chamberlain v R (No 2) [1984] HCA 7; (1984) 153 CLR 521 (Deane J)
• Leeth v R [1992] HCA 67; (1992) 67 ALJR 167 (Deane & Toohey JJ)
• Langer v Commonwealth [1996] HCA 43; (1996) 186 CLR 302 (Dawson J)
• Al-Kateb v Godwin [2004] HCA 37; 219 CLR 562 (Gleeson CJ & Kirby J)
• Monis v The Queen [2013] HCA 4 (Heydon J)

Although my own nomination was Deane J’s anguished dissent in the Chamberlain case, my workshop paper identified a forgotten judgment from exactly one hundred years ago as arguably the greatest dissenting judgment of all time. Continue reading →