A bold new way for Australia's High Court chief and other news and views of the day

Robert French first joined the High Court as Chief Justice. His successor, Susan Kiefel, assumes the office after having spent the best part of a decade already on the Court. Her record shows her to be, like French, a judge who is consistently in the majority. ... Kiefel assumes the office of Chief Justice at a time when she has consistently achieved an extraordinarily low rate of dissent on par with that of the former Chief Justice. There is no doubt that she is a key part of the majority that almost always determines the outcome of matters before the Court. In remarks delivered early in her new position, the new Chief Justice made clear her commitment to the continuance of the ‘collegiate approach’ to judicial decision-making that was so evident on the High Court under her predecessor. ... In the case of Kiefel, she became Chief Justice having already driven a significant change of direction on the Court. Arguably, her most important intellectual contribution to date relates to the use of proportionality in the balancing of rights and interests in constitutional contexts. It appears that her interest in and development of the subject has led the Court to embark upon a major reassessment of its use in the context of the implied freedom of political communication. McCloy v New South Wales, 68 a joint judgment comprising French CJ, Kiefel, Bell and Keane JJ, opens by setting down an elaborate reformulation of the proportionality test, heavily influenced by German jurisprudence. This structured approach represents a bold, new method of addressing such questions in Australian law, and may have a wider impact on how the Court balances rights and interests in other contexts 
Oprah is dropping hints again she might run for president - Macleans

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