Favourite High Court Justice (1 Viewer)

[Jonathan A]

I have to say our current bench has some great judges, each with their own way of things. On one hand you have Gleeson CJ, a judge of legalism and to the point, and on the other hand you have Kirby J, who generally provides an alternative to many of the views.

Some of my favourate judges over the years on the High Court bench would have to include Sir Owen Dixon, Sir Harry Gibbs and Sir Garfield Barwick.

 

[Jonathan A]

Dixon, Mason and more recently Gleeson - all simple to understand (in the cases I read anyway)

Interestin you would include Mason CJ as an easy to understand judge, usually his policy judgements have at times changed the face of law. He could take credit for the expansion of Modern Negligence from refining foreseeability to "not far fetched of fanciful". Nonetheless, I agree he was a good judge and most of his policy considerations made sense.

 

[MoonlightSonata]

Interestin you would include Mason CJ as an easy to understand judge, usually his policy judgements have at times changed the face of law. He could take credit for the expansion of Modern Negligence from refining foreseeability to "not far fetched of fanciful". Nonetheless, I agree he was a good judge and most of his policy considerations made sense.

I still have qualms with Mason's bogus use of language for "far-fetched and fanciful." He was supposed to talk at UNSW last week but I missed the opportunity to see him! I would have liked to question him about that.

 

[Frigid]

i quite like the phrase "not too far-fetched or fanciful"... rolls off the tongue nicely when mooting...

MS, when is it used agin, in the duty or the breach stage?

 

[MoonlightSonata]

i quite like the phrase "not too far-fetched or fanciful"... rolls off the tongue nicely when mooting...

MS, when is it used agin, in the duty or the breach stage?

Both

(But note Mason's assertion it has nothing to do with probability, whereas if you ask what "far-fetched and fanciful" lends itself to, it is actually referring to probability. Eg. something can be possible but still far-fetched and fanciful, thus it must be something more than possibility -- I say it is a very small, concentrated element of probability, though obviously they don't want to explicitly bring in probability at that stage, even though they are doing it implicitly and perhaps subconsciously.)

 

[Jonathan A]

i quite like the phrase "not too far-fetched or fanciful"... rolls off the tongue nicely when mooting...

MS, when is it used agin, in the duty or the breach stage?

The problem with not far-fetched or fanciful being used to define reasonable foreseeability is that reasonable foreseeability is a test at all three elements of negligence, hence its no longer a real challenge. You would be happy to know (I know MoonlightSonata would - although you are not a real fan of it), that the Civil Liability Act requires a risk to be 'not insignificant', and this raises the bar a little bit.