Judicial Activity
Heydon was admitted to the New South Wales Bar in 1973. At age 30, Heydon became a Professor of Law at the University of Sydney, the youngest person to reach that position. He was elected Dean of the University of Sydney Law School 1978 – 1979. He was appointed as a Queen's Counsel (QC) in 1987. Heydon was appointed as a Judge of the Court of Appeal of the Supreme Court of New South Wales in 2000.
He was appointed as a justice of the High Court in February 2003. Under the Australian Constitution, Heydon has tenure as a Justice of the High Court until March 2013, when he will be 70 years old.
Heydon is known to be a conservative judge and has spoken out against judges who assume a law making role. His publicly expressed views, made whilst a New South Wales judge, were described by contemporaneous commentators as a "job application" for appointment to the High Court by the government of Prime Minister John Howard.
He is also a legal scholar. He joined Sir James Gobbo and David Byrne to co-author the second Australian edition of Cross on Evidence in 1980, and became sole author of subsequent editions. He has also written The Restraint of Trade Doctrine and has taken over his colleague Justice Gummow as one of the editors of Meagher, Gummow, and Lehane's Equity: Doctrines and Remedies.
As of August 2011, Justice Heydon had increased his dissent rate to 47.6%, dissenting most notably in the Plaintiff M70/2011 v Minister for Immigration and Citizenship (the Malaysian asylum seeker swap case) and Wainohu v New South Wales (the NSW "bikie laws" case).
Read more about this topic: Dyson Heydon
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