He who would not be muzzled: Justice Heydon's last dissent in Monis v The Queen (2013)

Abstract

By 2013, the time of his final judgement in Monis v. The Queen ('Monis'), Heydon J had established a reputation for being a lone and somewhat curmudgeonly dissenting voice on the High Court. At his retirement, his disagreement and disappointment with the Court's increasing departure from traditional, formalistic judicial method was well documented in a series of increasingly acerbic judgments. This was not the voice that had first spoken from the bench in 2003, at a time when there was a movement towards formalism and away from the reasoning and doctrines of the Mason and Brennan Courts.