A kick in the guts for women: The legal profession’s re-embrace of a disgraced judge

In 2020, Australia’s legal world was reeling from the finding of an investigation into former High Court judge Dyson Heydon that he had sexually harassed six women, many of them his former associates. The combination of the findings of harassment and the power imbalance brought about by his position as a High Court justice over young, junior lawyers at the start of their careers was particularly disturbing. Some of these women have since abandoned promising careers in the law.

Then chief justice Susan Kiefel issued a public and heartfelt apology to the women. She said she was “ashamed that this could have happened at the High Court of Australia”.

Finding supporters among judges and lawyers: former High Court judge Dyson Heydon.Credit: AAP

In the days following the reporting of these findings, more than 500 women lawyers wrote to the Commonwealth attorney-general expressing their concern and seeking institutional changes, including to judicial appointments and complaints mechanisms. Courts and governments around the country conducted reviews. The Council of Chief Justices changed the Guide to Judicial Conduct to remind judges that such behaviour as bullying and sexual harassment was off-limits. In 2022, the attorney-general committed the government to implementing a federal judicial complaints commission, although that commitment has not yet materialised into any concrete reform.

Heydon’s long-term publisher, Thomson Reuters, ceased its relationship with him. Heydon resigned from the Order of Australia.

The #MeToo moment of reckoning for the courts had come. Or had it?

Fast-forward to 2025. Last week, Dyson Heydon launched a new, self-published book, Heydon on Contract: Particular Contracts. Abbey’s Bookshop in Sydney, which hosted a private launch, sings the book’s praises on its website: “No book of this precise kind has ever been published before and every practice and chamber should have their copy of this book.”

Former High Court Justice Michael Kirby also praises the book in its foreword. After deploying various superlatives, he calls it “an intellectual masterpiece”.

This week it was reported that the NSW Law Society advertised the book in its Monday Briefs. After a number of practitioners voiced concerns, the society announced it would “review its internal processes for approval and placement of advertisements”, and that it remained committed to “promoting and advocating for safe work environments, particularly in the legal profession”.

The profession’s promotion of Heydon’s latest book does not appear to be an isolated incident of the legal establishment (re)embracing him. As I understand, Heydon has also recently attended, at the invitation of a sitting judge, Sydney’s Federal Court building for Friday night drinks. Lawyers Weekly reports its own rumours: it has heard the Law Society has allowed Heydon “free access” to its library for “several months”, despite not being a member.

All of this raises the question: has the Australian legal profession really reckoned with the legacy of Dyson Heydon? What message does it send if senior members of the profession, including former High Court judges and professional bodies, celebrate and lionise his intellectual contributions to the law?

Let’s take a deeper look at those intellectual contributions.

In 2003, when a High Court appointment opened with the pending retirement of Mary Gaudron, Heydon delivered what became known as his “job application” speech. Holding no punches, he decried the “activism” of the High Court era under chief justice Sir Anthony Mason (1987-1995) as posing a threat to the rule of law. He criticised “hero” judges who, in his view, improperly drew on values to determine the law. He took aim at those legal rules implied by the High Court to protect freedom of communication and judicial process.

None of this “realism” for Heydon. He was a “black letter” judge. A legalist. The rule of law, in his view, demanded nothing less, and a legalist judge must possess two values: “One is a firm grip on the applicable law. The other is total probity.”

His obvious failure to demonstrate probity reveals not just a hypocrisy, but something deeper. Should – if we were to apply Heydon’s own principles – the findings of sexual harassment against him give the legal profession pause when considering his intellectual legacy? What do we do about his defence of legalism, the doctrines that he expounded on the bench, or his extra-judicial scholarship?

These questions are not necessarily new in the context of the #MeToo movement, in particular where allegations have been made against prominent artists. But in Heydon’s case, he himself foregrounded the importance of probity, and much of his legacy is the law of the land, or could be the law of the land if adopted by a future High Court.

That’s not to say there has not been a reckoning of sorts. There was a swift response, but it seems not necessarily to have been a deep or effective one. For instance, South Australia’s review of harassment in the legal profession and the judiciary, handed down by the Equal Opportunity Commissioner this year, reveals that at least in that state little has changed for women in the law.

Perhaps more importantly, however, what do we do about the intellectual and legal legacy, and – critically – the judgments, of a man who was found to have abused a position of professional power, sexually harassed a number of associates, and whose conduct actively drove women from the profession?

The legal profession can’t decry the conduct but not wrestle with this intellectual and precedential legacy. Of course, freedom of speech allows Heydon to keep writing and self-publishing his views. That’s not the issue here. It’s the celebration and endorsement of these views, by those well respected in the legal establishment, and the urging for lawyers to take them up. That is the issue.

It is a kick in the guts for the women he was found to have harassed, for all women, and for those who wish to see a safe and inclusive legal system.

Gabrielle Appleby is a professor at UNSW Law & Justice and director of the Judiciary Project at the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law.