Dyson Heydon

John Dyson Heydon (born 1 March 1943) is an Australian former judge and barrister who served on the High Court of Australia from 2003 to 2013 and the New South Wales Court of Appeal from 2000 to 2003, and previously served as Dean of the Sydney Law School.

In 1967, Heydon became a fellow of Keble College, Oxford and, after graduating in 1968, he began teaching at the University of Ghana in 1969.

His 1971 book The Restraint of Trade Doctrine continues in a fourth edition.

In 1973 he returned to Australia and was admitted to the New South Wales Bar Association in 1973.

At age 30, he became a professor of law at the University of Sydney, the youngest person to reach that position.

In 1975, he published Cases and Materials on Equity, the ninth edition of which came out in 2019.

In 1977, Heydon married Pamela Elizabeth Smith, with Gummow as the best man.

They had four children.

Heydon was elected dean of the University of Sydney Law School in 1978, serving a one-year term.

He left to become a barrister, working at Selborne Chambers, where his colleagues included future High Court colleague William Gummow and New South Wales Supreme Court judge Roderick Meagher.

With Sir James Gobbo and David Byrne, he co-authored the second Australian edition of Cross on Evidence in 1980 and became sole author of subsequent editions.

He has also taken over from his former colleague, at Sydney University and on the High Court, William Gummow as one of the editors of Meagher, Gummow and Lehane's Equity: Doctrines and Remedies.

He is also a co-author of Jacobs' Law of Trusts in Australia.

He was appointed a Queen's Counsel (QC) in 1987.

In 1999, the Supreme Court of NSW found Heydon negligent in the advice he had given to the NRMA in 1994 concerning its demutualisation.

The negligence ruling was overturned on appeal.

The appeal judgment set a precedent on professional negligence.

Heydon was appointed a Justice of the Court of Appeal of the Supreme Court of New South Wales in 2000, and appointed a Justice of the High Court of Australia in February 2003.

His appointment to the High Court by the Howard government was generally welcomed, and Attorney-General Daryl Williams noted Heydon's strong work ethic.

There was some disapproval, however, because Heydon replaced the only female justice, Mary Gaudron, making the court then all-male, and because of his opposition to judicial activism.

After his first full year on the bench, Heydon was noted for his close alignment in opinions with the Chief Justice Murray Gleeson, as well as Justices Gummow and Kenneth Hayne, in constitutional law cases.

He reached the same outcome as the Chief Justice in all but one case and frequently wrote joint judgments with the latter pair.

As he approached the constitutionally mandated retirement age of 70, Heydon's rate of dissent increased markedly, tripling to 47.6 percent from 2010 to 2011.

Because of this, as well as his tendency to write a separate opinion for each case (even where he agreed with other justices), he was described by some as "The Great Loner" of the court.

He was the sole dissenter in Plaintiff M70/2011 v Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, relating to the Gillard government's "Malaysian solution" for asylum-seekers, and in Williams v Commonwealth, relating to the federal government's funding of school chaplains.

He also dissented in the case of Charles Zentai (writing in favour of his extradition to Hungary), and in the challenge to the Australian government's plain tobacco packaging legislation (writing in favour of British American Tobacco).

Heydon was known as a conservative judge, and spoke out against what he termed "judicial activism".

His publicly expressed views, set out while a senior New South Wales judge, criticised the evolution of the High Court under the two immediately preceding Chief Justices, Sir Anthony Mason and Sir Gerard Brennan, were described by contemporaneous commentators as a "job application" for appointment to the High Court by the government of Liberal Party Prime Minister John Howard.

Heydon did not join any majority decision in his last year on the High Court, and in a 2013 article in the English Law Quarterly Review argued that "compromise is alien to the process of doing justice according to law".

He retired from the bench at the constitutionally-mandated age of 70 and went on to chair the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption between 2014 and 2015, an appointment that was politically controversial due to his avowed conservatism and connections with the governing conservative party.

Pamela Heydon died on 13 June 2017 at the age of 66.

Heydon is also a legal scholar.

In 2019 he published Heydon on Contract.

These are mainly doctrinal treatises, designed principally as information to assist practitioners in their advice and pleadings.

In 2020, an independent investigation conducted for the High Court found that he had sexually harassed six female associates.

Further allegations were reported by the Sydney Morning Herald.

Heydon was born in Ottawa, Canada, to Muriel Naomi (née Slater) and Peter Richard Heydon (later Sir Peter).

His father, a diplomat and public servant from Sydney, met his mother (a Canadian) while both were on the staff of Richard Casey, the Australian Ambassador to the United States.

Heydon was raised in Sydney, attending the Shore School, before going on to receive a BA in history (with the University Medal) from the University of Sydney, where he was a resident of St. Paul's College.

He was then awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to attend University College, Oxford, where he received an MA and a BCL and was awarded the Vinerian Scholarship.