George Rich

Sir George Edward Rich

In his legal work, Rich was principally an equity specialist. From 1890 to 1910, Rich lectured in equity part-time at the University of Sydney's law school. He was also the co-author of the first New South Wales-specific textbook on equity practice.^[1] With Reginald Kerr Manning he established and edited The Bankruptcy and Company Law Cases of New South Wales.^[2] He was made a King's Counsel in 1911, and in the same year was appointed as an acting judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales. He was made a full judge in 1912.

In 1913, Rich was appointed to the newly created seventh seat on the bench of the High Court of Australia, taking up his seat on 5 April of that year. He was appointed following the resignation of Albert Piddington, who never took up his seat on the High Court but quit amid a controversy over his appointment. There has been some suggestion that Rich was a "safe" choice, because of his uncontroversial and uncombative nature, but Rich's legal ability was rarely questioned.^[1]

Rich had a long career on the High Court, not retiring until 5 May 1950. During

Rich's judgments are generally considered to be clear and concise. Some commentators attribute this more to laziness than to a knack for clarity. It was often rumoured that fellow justice (and later Chief Justice) Owen Dixon wrote many of Rich's judgments for him, and Dixon recorded in his papers that on one occasion (the case of Isaacs v McKinnon), in an appeal from the Federal Court of Bankruptcy, Rich's judgment was written by the judge whose decision was being appealed.^[3]

Rich, who retired at age 87, holds the record for being the oldest justice to sit on the bench of the High Court. This record will almost certainly not be broken, since High Court justices now

Prime Minister Billy Hughes invited Rich to join the official Australian delegation to the Third Assembly of the League of Nations, held in 1922 in Geneva, Switzerland. He represented Australia on two committees – one dealing with "legal and constitutional questions" and the other dealing with "political questions" (including League of Nations mandates). The head of the delegation, former prime minister Joseph Cook, wrote Hughes that Rich's "legal knowledge and experience were most valuable in dealing with the numerous legal points that cropped up from time to time". Rich's membership of the delegation was the first of only three occasions on which a sitting High Court judge has filled a diplomatic role. The other instances occurring during World War II, when John Latham and Owen Dixon held ambassadorships. Rich returned to Australia via the United States, where he conducted a speaking tour. He gave speeches in New York City, Buffalo, and Chicago, promoting the League's activities and criticising the U.S. for refusing to join.^[4]

Rich retired on his eighty-seventh birthday in 1950. Geoffrey Sawer has suggested that Rich delayed his retirement until after the 1949 federal election (at which the conservative Menzies government came to power) in order to prevent the Labor Chifley government from being able to appoint a judge.^[1] Billy Hughes, who had chosen Rich for the High Court as Attorney-General in 1913, was still active in politics at the time of Rich's retirement, and remained a member of parliament until his death in 1952.

Following his retirement, the members of the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple elected Rich as an Honorary Master. Later that year, he married his second wife, Letitia Strong (née Woodward); Betha had died in 1945. Rich died in Sydney in 1956, at age 93. An obituary in the Australian Law Journal described Rich as:

"...patient, helpful to counsel, wise in his sense of judgment and he had a rare but unobtrusive humour. His contribution as a Justice of the High Court to constitutional problems is by no means as insignificant as the brevity of many of his judgments might suggest, for he had the facility for expressing complex propositions in clear and succinct terms."^[5]