Editing Anthony Mason (judge) (section)

==Judicial career==
In 1969, Mason was made a judge of the [[Supreme Court of New South Wales]], where he sat as a member of the [[Court of Appeal of New South Wales|Court of Appeal]]. In the same year he was appointed by the [[Gorton government]] to a three-year term on the council of the [[Australian National University]].<ref>{{cite news|url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/107896307|title=Appointed to ANU council|newspaper=The Canberra Times|date=6 October 1969}}</ref> He served on the Supreme Court until 1972, when he was appointed to the bench of the [[High Court of Australia]]<ref>{{cite news |title=Appointed a Justice |url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/101996062 |work=The Canberra Times |date=25 July 1972}}</ref> and received a knighthood ([[Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire|KBE]]). After fifteen years on the High Court, and following the retirement of Sir [[Harry Gibbs]], in 1987 Mason was appointed Chief Justice; he retired in 1995 on reaching the constitutionally mandatory retirement age of 70.

Mason had a significant influence over the High Court. Initially a conservative judge, his tenure as Chief Justice can be seen as the high-water mark of the movement away from the "strict legalism" which characterised the High Court under Sir [[Owen Dixon]]. Mason was more flexible in his attitude to [[precedent]] than many other judges, viewing it more as a policy for consistency than something which would strictly coerce and constrain his decisions.

During the years of the "Mason Court", a variety of important cases were decided.  These included:
*''[[Cole v Whitfield]]'' (1988): a landmark decision on the meaning of [[Constitution of Australia|Constitution]] section 92.  The unanimous judgment observed (par. 7):

{{blockquote|No provision of the Constitution has been the source of greater judicial concern or the subject of greater judicial effort than s.92. That notwithstanding, judicial exegesis of the section has yielded neither clarity of meaning nor certainty of operation. Over the years the Court has moved uneasily between one interpretation and another in its endeavours to solve the problems thrown up by the necessity to apply the very general language of the section to a wide variety of legislative and factual situations. Indeed, these shifts have been such as to make it difficult to speak of the section as having achieved a settled or accepted interpretation at any time since federation. The interpretation which came closest to achieving that degree of acceptance was that embodying the criterion of operation formula which we shall subsequently examine in some detail. That formula appeared to have the advantage of certainty, but that advantage proved to be illusory. Its disadvantage was that it was concerned only with the formal structure of an impugned law and ignored its real or substantive effect.}}

:For the first time, the Constitution was interpreted with systematic reference to records of the [[Constitutional Convention (Australia)|constitutional conventions]] of the 1890s in which the text of the Constitution had been agreed (a good edition of the records had recently appeared).  The Court also examined not only the "legal" operation of a law (its effects upon legal relations) but also its "practical" operation (its "real or substantive", i.e. social or economic, effects).  However, the facts in ''Cole v Whitfield'' were relatively simple and the Court soon divided in attempts to apply the criterion of practical operation to more complex facts:  ''[[Bath v Alston Holdings Pty Ltd|Bath v Alston Holdings]]'' (1988) and ''[[Castlemaine Tooheys Ltd v South Australia|Castlemaine Tooheys v South Australia]]'' (1990).
*''[[Polyukhovich v Commonwealth]]'' (1991): Mason was in the 4:3 majority who decided, although for a variety of reasons, that retrospective war crimes legislation applying to events in Europe during World War II was a valid exercise of the external affairs power, Constitution section 51(xxix), and was consistent with the judicial power of the Commonwealth, Constitution ch III.  
*''[[Eddie Mabo & Ors v The State of Queensland (No.2)|Mabo v Queensland (No.2)]]'' (1992):  the colonialist doctrine of ''[[terra nullius]]'' was superseded by introducing "[[native title]]" into Australian law.  The decision provoked allegations of "judicial activism", but was soon given statutory form in the [[Native Title Act 1993]] (Cth).
*''[[Australian Capital Television Pty Ltd v Commonwealth|Australian Capital Television v Commonwealth]]'' (1992) and (decided on the same day) ''[[Nationwide News Pty Ltd v Wills|Nationwide News v Wills]]'' (1992):  an important stage in the emergence of a constitutionally implied "freedom of political communication".  The Mason Court continued this development until 1994, but it was not to receive unanimous support on the Court until after Mason's departure, in ''[[Lange v Australian Broadcasting Corporation]]'' (1997).  This freedom was considered to be implicit in Constitution sections 7 and 24, which provide that the Commonwealth Parliament shall be "directly chosen by the people".  However, the Court has remained reluctant to find further implied freedoms.  It has also continued to understand such a "freedom" as a limitation upon legislative power and not, at least directly, a personal freedom or right.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Williams |first1=George|last2=Brennan|first2=Sean|last3=Lynch|first3=Andrew|title=Blackshield and Williams Australian Constitutional Law and Theory |year=2014 |edition=6 |publisher=Federation Press |location=Leichhardt, NSW |isbn=978-1-86287-918-8 }} chs 28–29</ref>
*''[[Dietrich v The Queen]]'' (1992):  an accused is entitled to publicly funded legal representation where that is necessary to a fair trial (Mason among the majority).
*''[[Minister of State for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs v Teoh|Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs v Teoh]]'' (1995):<ref>[http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/HCA/1995/20.html ''Minister of State for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs v Ah Hin Teoh''] [1995] HCA 20; (1995) 183 CLR 273</ref> the high point in Australia of the idea of "legitimate expectation", which Mason favoured although in this and other cases other members of the Court criticised it for illogicality and fictionality.  The decision provoked formal ministerial objections, but bills to reverse the precedent failed three times with the calling of a general election.  The Court has since considerably reduced the scope of the idea.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Williams |first1=George|last2=Brennan|first2=Sean|last3=Lynch|first3=Andrew|title=Blackshield and Williams Australian Constitutional Law and Theory |year=2014 |edition=6 |publisher=Federation Press |location=Leichhardt, NSW }} pp. 887–891</ref>

After retiring from the High Court, in 1997 Mason was appointed one of the Non-Permanent Judges of the [[Court of Final Appeal (Hong Kong)|Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal]], a position that he held until 2015.<ref>"Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal – Former Judges – Sir Anthony Frank MASON, GBM". 20 August 2015. Retrieved 3 June 2016.</ref> He was also President of the Court of Appeal of the [[Solomon Islands]] and was a judge on the [[Supreme Court of Fiji]].<ref>Susan Boyd (2003), "Australian judges at work internationally", 77 ''Australian Law Journal'' 303 at 305.</ref>

In addition to those judicial roles, from 1994 to 1999 Mason served as Chancellor of the [[University of New South Wales]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.recordkeeping.unsw.edu.au/university-archives/online-exhibitions/chancellors-exhibition|title=Chancellors Exhibition &#124; Records & Archives - UNSW Sydney|website=www.recordkeeping.unsw.edu.au|accessdate=30 July 2023}}</ref> From 1996 to 1997, he was a professor of legal science at the [[University of Cambridge]] and served as Chairman of the National Library of Australia Council from 1995 to 1998.<ref>{{cite web |title=Members of Council 1995–96 |work=36th Annual Report 1995–1996 |publisher=National Library of Australia |date=1996 |url=https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-2177571331/view?partId=nla.obj-2185194605#page/n14/mode/1up |pages=9 |access-date=9 January 2025}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |author=National Library of Australia |year=1998 |title=Appendix 2. The Council of the National Library of Australia |journal=Annual Report, 1997–1998 |url=http://www.nla.gov.au/policy/annrep98/appendix2.html |archive-url=http://webarchive.nla.gov.au/awa/19991002052344/http://www.nla.gov.au/policy/annrep98/appendix2.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=2 October 1999 |access-date=16 February 2017 }}{{cbignore|bot=medic}}</ref> He is also a visiting fellow at the Faculty of Law at the [[Australian National University]].