Senior Victorian barrister Rachel Doyle SC delivered a scathing address at last week’s Australian Legal Convention in Canberra, arguing that renewed support for disgraced former High Court Justice Dyson Heydon reflects a “rearguard action” by powerful legal figures to rehabilitate his reputation.
Doyle, speaking to a crowd that included High Court Chief Justice Stephen Gageler and NSW Chief Justice Andrew Bell, said many women in the profession feel “there is a sunset clause on caring about sexual harassment”.
Heydon has long denied wrongdoing, despite an independent inquiry finding in 2020 that he sexually harassed six female High Court associates during his tenure, leading to an extraordinary apology from former Chief Justice Susan Kiefel.
Doyle said her critique was not about “cancelling” Heydon. Rather, she argued that while there may be space for personal redemption, there has been no genuine public reckoning or reconciliation. “The redemption story is missing,” she said.
Members of the Western Australian legal profession expressed similar concern earlier this year at the news that Heydon was a keynote speaker at the Samuel Griffith Society annual conference held in Perth in August.
President of the Women Lawyers Association of Western Australia Catriona Macleod published an editorial in The West expressing disbelief at the decision to put Heydon on a pedestal.
“The standard you walk past is the standard you accept,” she said. “That is truer for lawyers than for anyone else. We tell the community that we uphold standards when it is difficult. We say we do the right thing, even when it costs us. If we will not do that here, then those words are empty.”
Speaking to Brief, Macleod said it is encouraging to see there is growing opinion around Australia that Heydon’s rehabilitation, without accountability, is not acceptable, and that there are more and more people willing to call out the issue.
“Rachel Doyle SC’s reference to a ‘sunset clause’ on sexual harassment in the workplace was an incisive message to us as a profession, and to the world at large about what we as a profession accept,” she said. “We all play a part in that, and we all have a choice to make on what that part is.”
This masthead also published an editorial in a similar vein, arguing that it’s time to lift the bar on who we call eminent.
“The Law Council of Australia’s position is unambiguous: sexual harassment is professional misconduct,” Claire Chaffey wrote. “It is not a private matter; it strikes at the heart of the profession’s integrity. Eminence without ethics is not eminence in law.”
Doyle also expressed concern about optics and institutional integrity beyond Heydon, singling out the tradition of judges wearing court robes to the Catholic Church’s annual Red Mass, suggesting it risks blurring the lines between secular judicial authority and religious ceremony.
