Alistair Alcock, Dean of the Buckingham
Law School presented the HONOURABLE JUSTICE MICHAEL KIRBY
for the degree of LLD, Honoris Causa at the Convocation
on Saturday 4th March.
Justice Michael Kirby at the lunch
following the conferral of his LLD with the Dean of
Buckingham Law School who is wearing the gown of a Doctor
of Laws of the Ukrainian Law School conferred upon him
in 1998.
The Honourable Justice Michael Kirby is
one of only seven Justices of the High Court of Australia,
the equivalent of a Law Lord in this country or given the
constitutional significance of the position, a Justice of
the Supreme Court in the United States. He has also been
a friend to this University, entertaining colleagues out
in Australia and coming here for the Denning Symposium.
Indeed if one wanted a close career comparison, it would
have to be with the young Lord Denning, a bright star in
the legal firmament, a believer in judicial activism. Michael
Kirby has been described by the magazine 'Bulletin' as one
of the ten most creative minds in Australia.
Michael hales from that most vibrant of
Southern Hemisphere cities, Sydney, went to Sydney University
and obtained an LLM with first class honours. To this he
has already added honorary degrees from amongst others his
alma mater and the National Law School of India, so he is
working his way westwards.
As Deputy President of the Australian Conciliation
and Arbitration Commission, he was the youngest appointment
to federal judicial office in Australia. Since then, he
has never been content with just one job. He also became
the founding Chairman of the Australian Law Reform Commission,
a Judge of the Federal Court of Australia, President of
two Courts of Appeal, for New South Wales and the Solomon
Islands and now one of the High Court Justices.
Lest you think that this latest position
may mark a resting on his laurels, he is also the President
of the International Commission of Jurists and has been
involved in numerous Australian, OECD, UNESCO, WHO and other
Committees. This is a man who gives as his recreational
pastime in Who's Who - WORK.
That might suggest a certain narrowness
of interests, but a quick scan of his website shows a man
prepared to speak on the most amazing range of subjects
- Economics, Genetics, HIV and AIDs, Religion, Tudor and
Stuart History as well as the more obvious legal subjects
from Company Law to the Future of the Jury: from the Legal
Issues of the Genome Project to those of Same-Sex Relations.
It is said that you can tell the mettle
of a man by his heroes. Though far from uncritical, one
can certainly detect from Michael's speeches a certain admiration
for two catholic Saints, Sir Thomas More and King Charles
I and one Protestant hero, Martin Luther. All three were
men of unbending principle who believed fervently in the
law being a moral instrument. This is not a comfortable
tradition, but let me quote from a recent article by this
eminent judge:
"To discriminate against people upon
any irrational ground (whether it be race, skin colour,
gender, homosexual orientation, handicap, age or any
other indelible feature of humanity) is not only irrational
but immoral. The law should provide protection from
and redress against it."
Some of us may shy away from such absolutist
positions. I am not sure that he himself would uphold it
in completely unqualified terms. Certainly judges with such
strong personal convictions, like Lord Denning and Michael
Kirby, can find themselves torn between those convictions
and upholding the law. In a speech on Thomas More, Michael
said the following:
"It is often the fact that judges and
lawyers must perform acts which they do not particularly
like. In Utopia, for example, More had written that
he believed capital punishment to be immoral, reprehensible
and unjustifiable. Yet as Lord Chancellor and as Chancellor
to the King, he certainly participated in sending hundreds
of people to their death - a troubling thought."
Troubling indeed. Yet the law and the rule
of law have an intrinsic value - you only have to travel
to parts of the world (as Michael has frequently) where
law has broken down or has hardly ever existed to understand
this. Robert Bolt in his play 'A Man for All Seasons' puts
into the mouth of Michael's hero, Sir Thomas More, one of
the most passionate defences of the law, with all its terrible
imperfections, in the whole of the English language. They
are words that should be etched into the minds of all the
lawyers graduating here today.
More's impetuous future son-in-law, Roper
has attacked More's legalism and in exasperation shouts:
'So now you'd give the Devil benefit of law'. More replies:
"Yes. What would you do? Cut a great
road through the law to get after the Devil? Yes? And
when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round
on you - where would you hide, Roper, the law being
all flat? This country's planted thick with laws from
coast to coast - Man's laws not God's - and if you cut
them down - and you're just the man to do it - d'you
really think you could stand upright in the winds that
would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of
law, for my own safety's sake."
Justice Michael Kirby is that most remarkable
of creatures, a man of conviction, an activist judge but
a defender of the law.
