A Review of Jason L Pierce, inside the Mason Court Revolution: The High Court of Australia Transformed (Carolina Academic Press, 2006)
| Published date | 01 March 2007 |
| Date | 01 March 2007 |
| DOI | 10.22145/flr.35.1.6 |
| Subject Matter | The Once and Future Court? |
THE ONCE AND FUTURE COURT?
A Review of Jason L Pierce, Inside the Mason Court Revolution: The High Court of
Australia Transformed (Carolina Academic Press, 2006)
Andrew Lynch*
In commencing his sprawling collective portrait of 19th century Britain a few years ago,
A N Wilson stated simply, '[t]he Victorians are still with us.'1 The truth of this, he went
on to explain, lay in the fact that, though much changed, the world which they created
persists. Although we seem to be at a great remove from the concerns, innovations and
ideals of that era, Wilson ably demonstrated that the world left to us by the Victorians
was immutably different from that which existed beforehand. As such it marked a
break with the past and set in place the parameters within which the modern age has
continued to develop.
It seems not unreasonable to suggest that this type of lingering generational
significance may be just as true in the history of particular institutions, including
courts. The United States Supreme Court under the Chief Justiceship of Earl Warren
provides perhaps the strongest example of this. That Court's invigoration of the civil
rights of Americans, its prevailing methodology, and general clarity of purpose
ensured that the institution and its capacities were viewed afresh.2 Despite attempts
through later appointments to secure a reversal of much of the inheritance from the
Warren Court, this has not been easily accomplished.3 Certainly the jurisprudence of
the Court has shifted, but even to its opponents and critics the Warren era continues to
loom large. In presenting new possibilities, it altered the Court forever, both inside and
out.
The title alone of Jason Pierce's new study of the High Court of Australia4 indicates
his premise that the institution under Chief Justice Mason experienced change on such
a scale that what occurred was nothing less than a judicial 'revolution'. Yet the author
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* Senior Lecturer, Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law, Faculty of Law, UNSW. I would like
to thank Alexander Reilly for his comments on an earlier draft of this review.
1 A N Wilson, The Victorians (2002) 1.
2 For a contemporary assessment, see John D Weaver, Warren: The Man, The Court, The Era
(1968). Latterly the most famous surveys of the Warren era have been provided by
Schwartz: Bernard Schwartz, Super Chief: Earl Warren and His Supreme Court — A Judicial
Biography (1983); Bernard Schwartz and Stephan Lesher, Inside the Warren Court (1983); and
Bernard Schwartz (ed), The Warren Court: A Retrospective (1996).
3 See Vincent Blasi (ed), The Burger Court: The Counter-Revolution That Wasn't (1983).
4 Jason L Pierce, Inside the Mason Court Revolution: The High Court of Australia Transformed
(2006) ('Inside the Mason Court Revolution').
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