Justice Stephen Gageler appointed 14th Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia

Stephen Gageler, a Labor-­appointee widely praised as a black letter lawyer, will lead a High Court dominated by men and NSW judges.

Stephen Gageler was announced on Tuesday morning as the new High Court Chief Justice, replacing outgoing Chief Justice Susan Kiefel. Picture: Jane Dempster

Stephen Gageler will lead a High Court dominated by men and NSW judges following an appointment celebrated across the legal fraternity and political spectrum, in a move many expect could keep the highest legal authority in the land constitutionally conservative.

Justice Gageler, a Labor-­appointee widely praised as a black letter lawyer, was elevated to become the 14th High Court chief justice on Tuesday, following extensive consultation with state governments and various legal groups.

The vacancy he left will be filled by NSW Supreme Court judge Robert Beech-Jones, who is expected to bring a much-needed wealth of criminal knowledge to a bench currently dominated by commercial and administrative judges.

Anthony Albanese and ­Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus on Tuesday revealed Justice Gageler would replace retiring Chief Justice Susan Kiefel and celebrated his “outstanding rep­u­­tation as a jurist”.

“He is highly respected for his leadership abilities and deep knowledge and understanding of constitutional law,” a joint statement read. “On behalf of the government and the Australian people, we congratulate Justice Gageler and Justice Beech-Jones on their appointments, and wish Chief Justice Kiefel all the very best for the future.”

Justice Gageler was one of three dissenters in the Love and Thoms case that saw the High Court determine Aboriginal Australians were not “aliens” under the Constitution and could not be deported.

Departing Chief Justice Susan Kiefel.

Chief Justice Kiefel, Justice Gageler and Justice Patrick Keane disagreed with the conclusion that Aboriginal Australians could not be aliens.

Justice Gageler, the former solicitor-general and son of a saw miller, is known in the profession to be staunchly apolitical in his judgments and is expected to “stick in the middle of the road”.

“He went to high school in the Hunter Valley, and comes from a small business background. His wife is a deep Catholic and he goes to mass with her every Sunday,” a senior public law barrister, who worked closely with Justice Gageler but did not wish to be named, said. “So he’s got conservative elements and instincts too. He’s given various judgments that are pro-union and pro-collective action, but you’ll also find he’s very strong on freedom of speech, on implied freedom of political communication.

“He takes those basic rights and freedoms very seriously, and they’ve become quite unfashionable for the Left now.”

UNSW law professor Andrew Lynch, who studies the dissenting judgments of High Court judges, said it was likely Justice Gageler would work in a more restricted silo than Chief Justice Kiefel, who valued teamwork across the bench. “Where it’s going to be very interesting is Chief Justice Kiefel was very candid about how the court works,” he said.

“She kind of lifted the veil in terms of this is how we come together to discuss and deliberate and decide cases as an institution, and she also spoke a lot of the value of finding agreement so as to reduce the number of individual judgments.

“Justice Gageler has certainly written with others when he agrees on the outcome, but he also gave a very considered speech about this topic a few years ago when he said this is what I’m thinking about, and I want to write my own judgement to think through those issue, and then I can consider whether I should discard that and join the others, or whether I actually think those reasons should be published under my own name.”

The second High Court appointment of the Albanese government – following the historic installation of Jayne Jagot in Oct­ober 2022 – has been warmly welcomed by all corners of the legal profession, who have celebrated Justice Beech-Jones’s long experience in criminal law.

Justice Beech-Jones in 2018 issued a blistering criticism of remarks made by disgraced former High Court judge Dyson Heydon and then-attorney-general Christian Porter.

Mr Porter endorsed Justice Heydon’s critique on the Victorian Court of Appeal’s threat to have three Turnbull ministers charged with contempt for criticising soft sentencing.

In response, Justice Beech-Jones issued a statement asserting that Justice Heydon and Mr Porter – neither of whom he named – had failed to acknowledge the three ministers’ statements “were not a commentary on court decisions but instead were co-ordinated personal abuse … directed at three judges who had heard but not yet decided an ­appeal which directly involved the commonwealth.”

Former NSW Supreme Court justice Nigel Rein SC, who worked in chambers with Justice Beech-Jones as a young barrister, told The Australian it was good for the High Court to hold a range of expertise. “Justice Beech-Jones has a wealth of criminal experience,” he said. “It complements the court when you’ve got someone who has a particular depth of knowledge.”

Defamation lawyer Patrick George welcomed the Beech-Jones appointment, having appeared before him in one of the country’s most renowned freedom of speech cases between Sky News commentator Chris Kenny and The ABC’s Chaser boys.

“Both of the appointments are very good,” he said.

“Stephen Gageler will be a good chief as he has the respect of the rest of the judges there. Robert Beech-Jones used to do a bit of defamation, but he’s been doing more criminal law now. The High Court needs a criminal specialist, and he’s very good.”

Newly appointed High Court justice Robert-Beech Jones.

The Beech-Jones appointment restores the 4:3 gender split of males to females to the bench.

One legal source indicated the High Court bench may regularly see the four judges who graduated from the NSW legal fraternity and also happened to be Labor-appointed (Justice Gageler, judge Jacqueline Gleeson, Justice Jagot and Justice Beech-Jones) stacked against the remaining three.

“You’ll likely have Justice Simon Steward, Justice Michelle Gordon and Justice James Edelman sort of out more on their own, and less predictable,” they said. “You could definitely see a regular cohort of four, a majority, which are really NSW people.”