Fallible Podcast

It’s been six years since Michael Kirby retired from the High Court of Australia. An ordinary workday will still find him high above the Sydney law courts, padding through a cream-carpeted, book-lined office, mind furiously at work. Six stories below, workers escape their offices for appointments at the dentist, while across the road NSW politicians debate infrastructure and live tweet The Bachelor. Fiercely intelligent, formidably voiced but surprisingly open, Kirby moved through Australia’s late 20th century legal system with devastating ease. He was appointed to a series of senior judicial roles while still a young man, becoming the first chairman of the Australian Law Reform Commission and presiding over the NSW Court of Appeal. In 1996, he arrived at the High Court of Australia. Here, his genius was let loose and earned a reputation for high rates of dissent and a steadfast refusal to see Australian law as isolated from international precedent. Even after retiring, Kirby’s mind was deployed by th