Chief Justice Debra Mortimer

Judges were not afraid to vent their spleen in 2023, but lawyers were not the only object of judicial scorn last year, as judges waded into public discourse and sounded off over issues including complex legislation, media reports, famous social media commentators, and the involvement of government departments in legal proceedings. 

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has lost its bid to pursue a disciplinary case against former Grant Thornton director Bradley Taylor over his 2018 audit of fintech firm iSignThis while criminal proceedings are ongoing.

A retiring Federal Court judge who served on the bench for almost two decades has railed against court fees “that no ordinary person can afford” and overly complex legislation, including the Corporations Act, which he called a “blight on our community”.

A group of former Jewish and Israeli students at Brighton Secondary College have won hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation and an apology from the Victorian government after a judge found the school principal failed to address racially-charged bullying and hundreds of cases of swastika graffiti.

The Full Court has rejected class action claims that the age pension discriminates against Indigenous Australians because of differences in life expectancy.

The Federal Court has come out in defence of one of its own, characterizing some media coverage of Justice Mordy Bromberg’s appointment to the Australian Law Reform Commission as “ill-informed”, in a statement strongly backed by lawyers and a leading judicial expert.

A human rights group has told the Federal Court it will file for habeas corpus in a bid to compel the federal government to bring home Australians stuck in Syrian detention camps, with eight women, all Australian citizens, and 18 children being held in Camp Roj in the country’s northeast. 

Prime minister Anthony Albanese breached workplace law by cutting the number of staff allocated to cross-benchers from four to one, according to new court documents in a lawsuit by Independent Monique Ryan’s chief of staff.

The Federal Court’s new Chief Justice Debra Mortimer will bring a sense of adventure to her role as top judge, which she foreshadowed will be approached holistically in a welcome ceremony before pre-eminent members of the legal community. 

The legal industry has praised the historic appointment of Debra Mortimer as the first female Chief Justice of the Federal Court, noting her modern approach to managing cases and compassionate nature.