Joe McIntyre

Justice Lex Lasry is a titan of the law in Victoria, with a well-deserved reputation for impeccable integrity, who leaves behind a ‘significant legacy’. But the resignation of Justice Lasry is a sad cautionary tale of the dangers of formal judicial complaints processes. These bodies exist to promote judicial accountability by allowing an easy mechanism of public complaint. But the potential for mechanisms to cause more harm than good cannot be dismissed.

Gabrielle Appleby

The Australian Law Reform Commission’s (ALRC) recent Report on judicial impartiality and the law on bias, Without Fear or Favour, makes important connections between a number of much needed regulatory reforms and the foundational judicial value of impartiality. These include connecting impartiality to judicial appointments, and to the structure and reporting of the training and ongoing professional development of judges. The ALRC has also recommended that the government establish a federal judicial commission to create an alternative mechanism for raising allegations of bias. In the ALRC’s survey of lawyers this was ranked as the most important reform that could be achieved to maintain public confidence in judicial impartiality. The Attorney-General, Mark Dreyfus QC, has indicated that he supports such a proposal.