John Jefferson Bray

In March 1967 South Australian AttorneyGeneral Don Dunstan appointed his state’s most outstanding barrister as Chief Justice. In public, Bray’s appointment brought barely a ripple, but in the murky waters of Adelaide’s corridors of power this decision unleashed waves of outrage and bitter revenge seeking, which would eventually lead to the sacking of a police commissioner, the resignation of Dunstan as South Australian Premier and the early retirement of Bray. After his successful defence of Rupert Murdoch’s News in 1960 in a seditious libel case, Bray made a powerful enemy who coveted the position of Chief Justice that Bray would come to hold – an enemy who would then ruthlessly target Bray’s unconventional private life. This is the story of an extraordinarily gifted man whose judicial writings continue to be cited across the Commonwealth and who determined to defend not only his own natural right to a private life but also that of all citizens. As Michael Kirby relates in his Foreword, ‘the abuse of power, recorded in those pages, stands as a warning to us’.