John Jefferson Bray: A Vigilant Life

(Paperback)

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In March 1967 South Australian Premier Don Dunstan appointed his State's most outstanding barrister as Chief Justice. In public Bray's appointment brought barely a ripple but in the murky waters of Adelaide's corridors of power this decision unleashed waves of outrage and bitter revenge seeking, which would eventually lead to the sacking of a police commissioner, the resignation of Dunstan and the early retirement of Bray. After his successful defence of Rupert Murdoch's News in 1960, in a seditious libel case, Bray made a powerful enemy who coveted the position of Chief Justice Bray would come to hold; an enemy who would then then ruthlessly targetted Bray's unconventional private life. This is the story of an extraordinarily gifted man whose judicial writings continue to be cited across the Commonwealth and who determined to defend not only his own natural right to a private life, but that of all citizens. As Michael Kirby relates in his Foreword, "the abuse of power, recorded in those pages, stands as a warning to us".

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This biography unravel(s) the puzzle of how such a gifted legal scholar, advocate and judge could, at the same time, live a life that so outraged the orthodox expectations that descended upon him.

Author Bio

John Emerson is Visiting Research Fellow with the University of Adelaide Law School and the founding Director of the University of Adelaide Press. He has previously published The History of the Independent Bar in South Australia and First Among Equals: Chief Justices of South Australia since Federation and dozens of articles on the history of the legal profession. He holds a Masters Degree in Cinema from the University of Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle, and a PhD in French from the University of Adelaide.