Book Review: The Byers Lectures 2000-2012

In 2002, the client representative asked, ‘who would be good to brief if the matter goes to the High Court? I have been told that Byers is the very best’. The practitioner responded: ‘Byers would be excellent, but he is permanently unavailable’.

Blackshield and Coper under the heading ‘notable counsel’ in the Oxford Companion to the High Court of Australia (page 166) state that “in any generation, Maurice Byers … must be regarded as outstanding. As Commonwealth Solicitor General from 1973 to 1983, and later in major cases such as Australian Capital Television v Commonwealth (1992), Kable v DPP (1996), and Wik (1996), he had an extraordinary success rate. Like those of Robert Menzies, his arguments may have fallen on the ears of a receptive Court; but in his genial avuncular style, he projected his inner character and made the Court comfortable with what still appears to some as a radical proposition that the Constitution contains an implicit guarantee of the freedom of political communication”.

The Byers Lectures 2000 — 2012 is an apt tribute to Sir Maurice Byers CBE QC (10 November 1917 — 17 January 1999).

In 2000, the New South Wales Bar Association first hosted what has become an annual lecture in honour of Sir Maurice Byers. The first twelve lectures, as recorded in this publication, comprise a variety of topics presented by a range of eminent jurists, including:

1. Strength and perils: The Bar at the turn of the century — The Honourable Sir Gerard Brennan AC KBE;

2. Does Chapter III of the Constitution protect substantive as well as procedural rights? — The Honourable Justice MH McHugh AC;

3. Legalism, realism and judicial rhetoric in constitutional law — Professor Leslie Zines AO;

4. What is wrong with top-down legal reasoning? — The Honourable Justice Keith Mason AC;

5. Statutes — The Honourable Justice WMC Gummow AC;

6. The implications of the Constitution — DF Jackson QC;

7. Theories of constitutional interpretation: A taxonomy — The Honourable Justice JD Heydon AC;

8. Judicial review today — The Right Honourable Dame Sian Elias, Chief Justice of New Zealand;

9. Beyond the text: A vision of the structure and function of the Constitution — Stephen Gageler S.C., Solicitor-General of Australia;

10. Rules that ought not to be applied: The ultimate iconoclasm — David Bennett QC;

11. Truth and the law — The Honourable Chief Justice JJ Spigelman AC; and

12. Dictator or Dialogue? The relationship between the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom and the European Court of Human Rights — The Right Honourable the Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers KG.

The publication is edited by The Honourable Nye Perram of the Federal Court and Judge Rachel Pepper of the New South Wales Land and Environmental Court, who have contributed to the work by including a referenced concise introduction to each chapter. This additional introductory text provides not only information about each individual author, but precisely assists in contextualising the subject matter of each chapter. Their Honours also draw the reader’s attention to relevant developments of the law that have occurred since the particular lecture and have supplemented the original precedents.

The Honourable Murray Gleeson AC states that much “is said in praise of Sir Maurice in this collection. All of it is true” and as to Sir Maurice as an advocate, that it “is surely reasonable to infer that his technique of presenting argument in Court reflected an accurate appreciation of the nature of the process in which he was taking part. … His arguments were succinct, technical and legal. … His famous comment that he merely put the ball into the scrum and let the politics take over is perhaps more ironical than is generally acknowledged”.

This is an important collection of information for those interested in constitutional law and in legal excellence.

Dominic Katter