Heydon' Seek: Looking for Law in All the Wrong Places

Abstract

What judges think they are doing has considerable effect on what they actually do. Accordingly, the appointment of Dyson Heydon to the High Court of Australia is a useful occasion on which to examine the connection between one judge's thought and his actions. Heydon's extra-judicial writings call for a nostalgic return to the formalist virtues of an earlier era. However, his early judicial opinions on the High Court not only demonstrate the intellectual shortcomings of such a formalist approach, but also emphasise that adjudication is an inescapably political and contested activity - judicial conservatism is no less ideological than its activist counterpart.