page_title: Richard Edward O'Connor
section_title: High Court justice
hierarchical_section_title: Richard Edward O'Connor / High Court justice
context_page_description: Richard Edward O'Connor QC was an Australian politician and judge.
  A barrister and later Queen's Counsel, O'Connor was active in the campaign for Australian Federation and was a close associate of Edmund Barton. He served as New South Wales Minister for Justice in the Dibbs ministry from 1891 to 1893 while a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council, and was a member of the constitutional committee at the Federal Convention that drafted the Australian Constitution. A member of the first federal ministry as Vice-President of the Executive Council, O'Connor led the government in the Senate from 1901 to 1903, playing a key role in the development of that chamber's role in Australian politics.
  O'Connor resigned from Parliament in 1903 to become one of the inaugural justices of the High Court of Australia, which he had helped to create. He had a reputation as a liberal and independent-minded justice who occasionally voted with the progressives on industrial matters after 1906. He was also the first president of the Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration from 1905 to 1907, and he continued to serve on the High Court until his early death in 1912.
context_section_description: O'Connor was a liberal justice who saw judges as "not only the interpreters, but also the guardians of the Constitution", advocating the Court's primacy over the Privy Council on these matters. He worked well with Griffith and Barton, although he was the most frequent dissenter in their decisions. The Court demanded a high standard of advocacy and acquired a reputation for overturning decisions made by the state supreme courts, and the justices' travelling expenses were cut by Sir Josiah Symon, Attorney General in the short-lived Reid government, in December 1904. O'Connor argued that abolishing tipstaves was a more efficient way of dealing with the Court's increasing expenses and no decision was reached until Isaac Isaacs, taking office with the expansion of the Court in July 1906, was able to broker a compromise.
  O'Connor was appointed the first president of the Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration in February 1905, a position he accepted with reluctance. He found it difficult to keep up with both positions, despite taking "a good deal of trouble with [arbitration] decisions", and resigned from the Arbitration Court in 1907. With the appointment of H. B. Higgins to the High Court with Isaacs in 1906, that body had become far less unanimous, with O'Connor sometimes agreeing with the two new justices on industrial matters. Assailed by ailing health but forced to continue working since he still lacked a pension, he travelled overseas in 1907–08 and 1912.
caption: The opening of the High Court in the chambers of the Supreme Court of Victoria, 6 October 1903
exif: {}