John Jefferson Bray: A Vigilant Life

In March 1967 South Australian Premier Don Dunstan appointed his State’s most outstanding barrister as Chief Justice. In public Bray’s appointment brought barely a ripple but in the murky waters of Adelaide’s corridors of power this decision unleashed waves of outrage and bitter revenge seeking, which would eventually lead to the sacking of a police commissioner, the resignation of Dunstan and the early retirement of Bray. After his successful defence of Rupert Murdoch’s News in 1960, in a seditious libel case, Bray made a powerful enemy who coveted the position of Chief Justice Bray would come to hold; an enemy who would then then ruthlessly targetted Bray’s unconventional private life. This is the story of an extraordinarily gifted man whose judicial writings continue to be cited across the Commonwealth and who determined to defend not only his own natural right to a private life, but that of all citizens. As Michael Kirby relates in his Foreword, “the abuse of power, recorded in those pages, stands as a warning to us”.