Despite the dominance of legal themes in popular culture, judges do not always make an appearance, and when they do, tend to be secondary and/or caricatures. Despite (or even because of) their relative absence and unimportance in popular culture, the portrayal of judges still gives insight into assumptions and values about the relationship of judges to the law and justice. This chapter explores two key themes in the portrayal of judges in the contemporary Australian television series such as Rake and Janet King and the classic Australian series SeaChange. The first is the portrayal of judges as marginal or secondary characters and the second is the desire expressed by characters for a ‘good judge’. Drawing upon the insights of the jurisprudence of American realists, this chapter interrogates the concept of a good judge in terms of authority, legitimacy and the relationship with law. How is the concept of the good (and of course the bad) constructed? There is also an interrelationship between the two themes: despite the desire for the good judge, the secondary role of judges in popular culture often reflects the tendency to regard the role of judges as primarily objective representatives of the institution of the court and law rather than as individuals.

This chapter examines the role and responsibilities of a chief justice. Using the judicial legitimacy values propounded by Richard Devlin and Adam Dodek, we argue that a ‘successful’ chief justice will promote and protect these values as they negotiate and manage the many relational dimensions of the role with other judges, with the executive, the Parliament, the profession, the academy, the media, and the wider public. Our study highlights interpretative disputes, including as to whether an individual chief justice has responded to genuine, as opposed to improperly perceived, threats to judicial values and about how a chief justice might best navigate between the values, particularly as new values, such as representativeness and efficiency, can appear in opposition to more traditional values. Such questions are symptomatic of ongoing disagreement about the fragility of judicial values, particularly independence, as well as the subjective nature of any attempt to evaluate judicial performance. We argue that there is a need for a more developed normative framework to better understand – and critique – the individual choices and actions of chief justices.

This chapter considers the (often hidden) role of judicial collegiality in a multi-member court, looking at the Australian High Court experience within a comparative perspective. In unravelling the tensions within the different deployments of the concept of ‘collegiality’, it explores the potential for various inter-judicial dynamics to affect the performance and achievement of the judicial mission. It traverses the institutional influences on collegiality and how the concept contributes to institutional dynamics. Finally, it grapples with the argument of whether collegiality is emerging as a judicial value, and what this means for the role of the judge and the court.

Australia has a uniquely developed constitutional discourse as to the nature of judicial power. However, this focus on constitutionality has at times tended to obscure a deeper reflection on the underlying concept of the scope of the judicial role. This approach elevates the permissible over the ideal.

It is against this context that this chapter presents a systematic and coherent articulation of the judicial function as a conceptual, rather than constitutional, inquiry. It argues that this function involves a unique institutional blend of dispute resolution and social governance. In the current Australian judicial environment, with its particular focus on efficiency and ‘collegiality’, this explicit recognition of the dualist nature of the judicial role is controversial but critical.

The chapter develops a taxonomy for the systematic characterisation of dispute resolution methods generally, which clearly delineates the judicial form of dispute resolution. It outlines how dispute resolution mechanisms can operate as tools of social governance and explores specifically how the judiciary operates s such an institution. The expansive articulation of function set out in this chapter invites a critical reflection of the limits, constraints, and purposes of the judicial role. The chapter concludes by exploring how this approach may better inform a number of issues facing the contemporary Australian judiciary

The relationship between judges and the media has changed. While the hearings and decisions of courts have long been the subject of intense media scrutiny, there was a time when this focus was not usually directed to judges in a personal sense. Judges did not engage with the media in a direct sense. Judges were also discouraged from direct or close contact with the media by many legal principles and professional conventions. The media now treats judges differently, often commenting as much about judges as the cases they decide.Much of the media commentary about judges and their decisions is unfair and inaccurate. As the media has grown more willing to criticise judges and their work, attorneys-general and other politicians have become more reluctant to speak on behalf of judges and the courts. These changes have seen the decline of many of the professional norms that discourage judges from responding to the media but the extent to which judges can or should respond to, or deal with, the media are hampered by the unique nature of the judicial function.

For much of its history, Australia’s judiciary has been highly homogenous — comprising white, middle-aged males from privileged socio-economic backgrounds. In recent years, there have been calls to redress this ‘diversity deficit’, namely, the gap between the composition of the judiciary and the composition of the population at large. This chapter examines the challenges faced by this social project by asking (1) why judicial diversity matters; (2) what characteristics are important for a diverse judiciary; (3) how we measure the diversity deficit; and (4) what action is needed to redress the diversity deficit. The chapter argues that we should broaden our categories of interest, guided by the underlying justifications for diversity and understandings of the social fabric derived from the national census. The changing nature of Australian society requires us to look beyond gender and race in fashioning an inclusive judiciary that is fit for purpose in the 21st century.

Judicial life is perhaps one of the most individual – and lonely – of professional callings. On appointment, a judge takes an oath to ‘do right to all manner of people according to law without fear or favour, affection or ill-will.’1 At that moment, she shoulders an individual responsibility to meet the highest expectations of the law.2 This expectation, and concomitant scrutiny, will continue throughout the judge’s career. Legal, political and public commentary may welcome her on appointment, examining the appropriateness of her credentials, experience and political neutrality. There may be ongoing critique of the quality of her judicial conduct in court, her decisions and reasoning, all of which must, subject to few exceptions, be performed in the public eye. Even upon her retirement, her conduct and any transgressions it reveals, may be the subject of critical public comment. In performing her institutional role, the judge is afforded no personal anonymity.

The publication of a dissenting judgment is overt evidence of judicial disagreement and judicial difference. This chapter starts to explore the factors that underpin this judicial difference. Drawing on a method of content analysis of legal judgments grounded in theories and techniques from psychology, this chapter highlights the values that underpin decision making and disagreement in the High Court of Australia. The value analysis provides an insight into division in the High Court reframing the discussion of dissent from differences in understandings of the law to differences in the values espoused and affirmed by the individual decision maker. Rather than a binary decision between one outcome and another, value analysis of the judgments frames judicial decision-making as a nuanced balancing of competing value(s) by the individual Justices. In doing so, the chapter presents a value-decision paradigm with differential patterns of values expression associated with opposing positions in hard cases. Value expression provides an element of consistency in decision making across these difficult cases, but the analysis of values also highlights the complex nature of the High Court decision-making process and the many factors that may influence the final outcome.