Litigants, notable, 1945-2001

Abstract

In Australia's sombre postwar years, the colourful individualism sometimes displayed by litigants of the inter-war period came to be less apparent. Some categories of notable litigant remained constant: there were, as before, those litigants having pre-existing celebrity status and those whose notoriety instead grew from their encounters with the law. For many in the latter category, though, the Cold War generated notoriety of a deeply serious nature. New varieties of notoriety also emerged. Increasingly, litigants became notable because their case gave rise to an important legal principle, thereafter bearing that litigant's name. The profile of indigenous litigants, too, has been rising steadily, with some of the Court's most notable litigants in recent years being of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent.