ALHR Congratulates The Hon Susan Kiefel AC and The Hon James Edelman on their appointments to the High Court and looks forward to a new era of leadership over our great institution.

February 28, 2017

ALHR has written to the the Hon Susan Kiefel AC to express our congratulations on her appointment as Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia and to the Hon James Edelman congratulating him on his appointment to the Court.

The appointment of the Hon Susan Kiefel AC as  Chief Justice is historic by virtue of her Honour’s status as one of the youngest appointments to the Court.

The High Court represents many things to many groups of people throughout Australia and overseas.

To Australian society, the Court represents an independent arm of government, free of influence, full of integrity, and representative of the liberal democracy that Australian citizens so proudly respect and hold dear. The Court is charged to protect the citizenry from excesses of the executive and parliamentary arms of government and thereby hold a solemn guardianship over the basic building blocks of our democratic Australian way of life, whether they be basic common law rights and freedoms or those rights found in legislation

To the international community and Australia’s neighbours, the Court symbolises nationhood, sovereignty and a reverence for the rule of law, all of which assist in maintaining a stable, secure, system of government and geopolitical region.

The High Court of Australia holds fundamental democratic importance, particularly in such tumultuous political times as the present. It presides over a national system of courts for all Australians, and it must promote the just and fearless protection of the essential legal rights of all Australians. As the indispensable third pillar of our constitutional democracy, the judiciary requires as much health, vitality, courage and ingenuity as the other arms of government; perhaps even more, in order to keep the other arms properly in check.

ALHR wishes them both an illustrious career on the High Court of Australia and looks forward to a new era of leadership over our great institution.

You can read our letters attached below.

Yu can also read a reply received from the Hon James Edelman