Welcome - The Honourable Justice Stephen McLeish

ADDRESS AT THE WELCOME ON THURSDAY 12 MARCH 2015 TO THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE STEPHEN MCLEISH UPON HIS APPOINTMENT TO THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE SUPREME COURT OF VICTORIA BY DAVID J O’CALLAGHAN QC, JUNIOR VICE PRESIDENT OF THE VICTORIAN BAR COUNCIL

The Victorian Bar is absolutely delighted at your Honour’s appointment to this Honourable Court.

The President of the Bar Council, Mr Peters, is unable to be here today because he is detained by your Honour’s colleagues on a formula 1 matter.

But as with all jammed briefs, his loss is my gain and I am delighted to have the privilege, on behalf of The Victorian Bar, to congratulate Your Honour on your appointment.

Your Honour has come to this court having practised as a barrister for more than 21 years – 7 as Silk, including more than 4 years as Solicitor-General for the State of Victoria.

Your Honour excelled at the highest levels in every aspect of your education, professional training and practice, both at the independent Bar and in the service of this State – and did so, if I am may be permitted to say, with enormous humanity, humility and grace.

Your Honour was educated at Scotch College, the University of Melbourne and Ormond College and at the Harvard Law School.

At Scotch College, you were Dux of the School.

At Ormond College, Your Honour won the Centenary Scholarship.

At the University of Melbourne, Your Honour graduated with an Arts degree in Latin, Mathematics and the History & Philosophy of Science. At Law School Your Honour won numerous exhibitions and prizes too many to mention, culminating in your placing first in the Final Honours List; being awarded a First Class Honours Degree; the Supreme Court Prize and the EJB Nunn Scholarship.

After graduating Your Honour served Articles at the firm then known as Arthur Robinson & Hedderwicks.

After a short time as an employee solicitor, Your Honour became Associate to the Honourable Sir Anthony Mason, the then Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia.

It is a great honour to us all that Sir Anthony and Lady Mason have come to Melbourne to attend this ceremony and are in Court this morning.

I am reliably informed that Sir Anthony has always regarded your Honour as an outstanding Associate and as a lawyer destined to rise to the highest ranks in the Law.

Sir Anthony cannot recall a single incident which he could now bring up to the discomfiture of your Honour, which I am also reliably informed is not something he can say about all of his past associates!

After your time with the Chief Justice Your Honour was awarded a Frank Knox Memorial Fellowship for graduate study at Harvard University – where you earned the Master of Laws degree.

Whilst at the HLS your Honour took a seminar-style course called “Re-inventing Democracy” with the legendary Prof Roberto Unger. It was a course with some 40 or so students. It was in the vein of the Critical Legal Studies movement – the theory that runs along the lines that law reflects cultural and political values; and has been an instrument of oppression of the underprivileged and minorities.

All of that, I suppose, is not especially remarkable. What was remarkable was that Your Honour took the course with one Barack H. Obama.

History does not recall which of your Honour, or the 44th President of the United States, was the more vocal in class participation or who scored the highest grade – but my money is on your honour.

Your Honour returned from Cambridge Mass to Melbourne, and resumed work as a solicitor at Arthur Robinson and Hedderwicks for a little over a year.

Your Honour then came to the Bar and joined the March 1993 Readers’ Course - and read with Dr Susan Kenny – now Justice Kenny, formerly of this Court and now of the Federal Court.

Justice Kenny describes Your Honour as a model pupil – “really fun to work with” – and actively engaged intellectually in everything you worked on.

From the start Your Honour quickly established a wide and varied practice – essentially general commercial work and public law work – but also including water law, trusts – and even a case on a probate in solemn form.

One of your very early major cases, very soon after you came to the Bar, was a dispute between passionately opposed groups concerning the Sikh Cultural Centre in Preston and Trust Funds.

Your Honour was briefed late and there were folders and folders of materials that Your Honour had to digest in a hurry.

The matter ran some 3 ½ weeks before Master Evans. Finally, a critical moment came to settle the case. You found yourself first at, and then outside, the Kent Hotel in Rathdowne Street, North Carlton at 11 o’clock at night, on a frosty mid-winter night, in settlement discussions – it is rumoured that you, literally, had to hold physically apart the protagonists.

Your Honour had 6 Readers. Liza Miller (March 2003); Greg Robinson (March 2004); Kris Walker (September 2004); Alistair Pound (March 2005); Chris Young (September 2006); and Ben Gibson (September 2007). Each of them speaks of Your Honour’s unstinting generosity and thoughtfulness; and of your continued and active support and mentoring.

Your readers and many other members of the Bar to a person speak of your Honour’s keen intelligence, your integrity, your profound knowledge of the law and your open-mindedness, fairness and sound judgment.

Your Honour is also known for your quiet and dry wit. Many of us, it must be said, are sometimes not entirely sure whether Your Honour is joking or not!

Your Honour took silk in 2007 and, on the second of February 2011, you were appointed Solicitor-General for the State of Victoria.

I am honoured to be joined at the Bar Table this morning by my learned friend Mr Grant Donaldson SC, the Solicitor-General for the State of Western Australia, who has made the long trip across the Nullarbor and beyond, to be here for your Honour’s welcome.

The nine Solicitors-General – for the Commonwealth and for each of the States and Territories – often strategize together in cases where they have common arguments. Michael Sexton SC, the senior States & Territories Solicitor-General, speaks very highly of Your Honour’s contributions to that process.

Your former fellow Solicitors-General rejoice in Your Honour’s well-deserved appointment – but you will be missed, of that there can be no doubt.

Your Honour has also always been an active contributor to the community of the law, and to the specialist community of the independent Bar.

At the University, Your Honour and Lynne Saunder were the Editors of the Melbourne University Law Review.

At the Bar, Your Honour was a Reporter for the Victorian Reports; you then became a Reporter for the Commonwealth Law Reports– for an overall total of more than a decade.  And, in 2011, Your Honour became a Member of the Council of Law Reporting in Victoria.

For many years, Your Honour was Secretary of the Public Law Section of the Commercial Bar Association.

Your Honour also served as a Director of the Victorian Bar Superannuation Fund.

Your Honour has worked on submissions to Government and Law Reform Agencies on ad hoc committees and working groups – and has been a Member of many Bar and Supreme Court Standing Committees.

Your Honour has also been the Victorian Secretary of the Harvard Club of Australia and a Harvard Club of Australia Councillor.

Your Honour and your Honour’s wife are a dual career family. Your wife, Pip Nicholson, is a full Professor at the University of Melbourne Law School – the Director of the Asian Law Centre – and the Centre’s Associate Director (Vietnam) and Director of the Comparative Legal Studies Program. Your Honour is devoted to your wife and to your children, Millie and Oliver, as each of them is to you.

I am told that although your Honour was what one might call a “late vocation” to snow skiing, Your Honour is now a budding Jean-Claude Killy – and radiated that as you taught your daughter Millie to ski.

Your Honour is also a keen bushwalker and you have taken your son Oliver to the peak of Mt. Feathertop.

Your Honour has excelled – and at the very highest level – at every stage of your education, professional training and practice in the Law – and you have done so – because it bears repeating - with remarkable humanity, humility and grace.

On behalf of the Victorian Bar, I wish Your Honour a long and satisfying time on the Bench. The Bar has no doubt your honour will serve with great distinction.

May it please the Court.