The last stand of Gummow J

Many years ago I used to work as a lowly, underappreciated RA at a university here in Brisbane. One day, on a research project that the university shared with ANU, I went down to Canberra for a meeting with my fellow researchers there and, because the lady that was in charge of organising the few days’ of me being there could organise a f___ in a brothel, I ended up being there on a day that no one else was available to meet with anyone...a day off, alone in our nation’s capital...what oh what could I do? Yeah, i know, but that didn’t last long and I didn’t have the right shoes anyway, so I decided to go for a walk around the lake when the thought occurred to me that I could go sit in on the High Court, if it were in session.

To my luck, not only was the full bench sitting, they were hearing a very interesting case – the case of Jihad Jack (Thomas v Mowbray [2007] HCA 33 (2 August 2007)) What luck!

I sat up the back, in awe of the solemn nature of the place, scoffing at all the Clark Griswald-like tourists that were flowing in and out of the place, seeking to project and amplify their knowledge of Australian legal procedure. There were around thirty representatives sitting in a columns being the bar, with differing degrees of snootiness and pompousness. The lead QC for the appellant was being absolutely grilled by Michael Kirby J while presenting arguments that his honour would, and did, entirely agree with. He wasn’t letting her off without proving she knew what she was talking about though, and the rest of the bench seemed to range from a slightly engaged Gleeson CJ and Callinan J, right through to the seemingly detached attendance of Gummow J.

Gummow J at the time would have been an elderly man, and like many members of the bench, the years and changes in fashion have not been kind. Just then it appeared as thought Gummow, seemingly disinterested and detached from the debate, leaned forward and died. His head slumped further forward, to the side a little and let out a sought of pained “errrgh”.

No one else seemed to notice this. All the legal advocates were busy making it appear as if they were important or briefly trying to see who was doing the best at looking important (the trick is to look somewhere between angry and annoyed); the tourists around me were too awed by the giant portrait of Sir Samuel Griffith looking down his nose at everyone or wondering whether they bowed penitently enough, given the prowess at this of the over-weight security guards and seriously under-weight articled clerks

I was beside myself with fear and curiosity. What does one do in this situation, surely his clerk would have noticed if he’d died. I looked, they all seem to be heavily engaged in finding whatever precedent may be called into question in the main debate. I thought about quietly talking to one of the security guards, but that wasn’t something that I was keen on doing given that it would involve crossing the entire court to get them.

So I turned to the bloke beside me;

“Mate, I think Justice Gummow just kicked the bucket” I said.

Intensely interested, he removed all pretence of knowing anything about the court for a minute. “Which one is Gummow?” he asked.

“There, second from the left.” I said, pointing, but trying not to point at the same time, feeling like a college mook playing drinking games.

He immediately turned to his wife/partner and mumbled something.  I couldn’t hear.

Then a reply from her, then a clear “Oh, the one second from the left...geez, don’t you know who they are?”

I smiled to myself, but was still quite concerned about what to do. At least I wasn’t the only one that knew this now – I could take some comfort in that. Over the next ten minutes or so, every once in a while I heard this “no mate, I reckon he’s carked it” or “second from the left of course...” coming from up and down the back three rows of the court.

“Sooner or later, someone here is going to tell the security or someone” I thought.  So I became quite immersed in the theatre of the whole thing.

‘Had anyone ever actually died on the bench while the court was in session?’ I wondered. I couldn’t remember anything like that from law school, not that that sort of trivial info is taught very much.

I started thinking about designs for T-shirts... “I was there the day Gummow J made his last incorrect and stubborn decision on the bench” they may have said.

I looked again. His pale features and old face had now slumped right down into his hands as he appeared lifeless and at peace. Kirby J and the QC were still arguing about rights and stuff, I would normally have been really interested in that, but couldn’t focus due to what was happening elsewhere in the court.

All of a sudden, Gummow J jerked his head upright, belted the bench with his left fist and yelled “that is nothing but obiter and has no authority in this court!!!”

With that, the entire three rows at the back of the courts, all of us now intensely over-seeing his untimely non-death due to my Chinese whispers jumped out of our seats and said a collective “shit!” as though we had seen a ghost. Seven Justices of the High Court and about thirty of the country’s best legal advocates turned around to wonder what on earth had happened. I felt ashamed for authoring such a scene and slumped out back into the safety of the foyer soon after, not forgetting my over-the-top bow on the way out.

This post’s lame joke

Why don’t sharks ever attack lawyers?

Professional courtesy.

This post’s identity seeking, groovy quote:

Every time you make a choice, you are turning the central part of you, the part that chooses into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing into either a heavenly creature or a hellish creature. C.S.Lewis

This post’s inappropriate over share:

I recently found myself uttering those eternally horrible words that mock our failings as fathers “I don’t care who started it, I’m finishing it.” There’s really nowhere to go further down from that point is there? I had once said “that music’s too loud,” but stopped myself as I was saying it, so it didn’t really count.