38 Facts About Lionel Murphy

Lionel Keith Murphy QC was an Australian politician, barrister, and judge.

Lionel Murphy was a Senator for New South Wales from 1962 to 1975, serving as Attorney-General in the Whitlam government, and then sat on the High Court from 1975 until his death in 1986.

Lionel Murphy initially graduated with a degree in chemistry, but then went on to Sydney Law School and eventually became a barrister.

Lionel Murphy specialised in labour and industrial law, and took silk in 1960.

Lionel Murphy was elected to the Senate at the 1961 federal election, as a member of the Labor Party.

Lionel Murphy became Leader of the Opposition in the Senate in 1967.

Lionel Murphy oversaw a number of reforms, establishing the Family Court of Australia, the Law Reform Commission, and the Australian Institute of Criminology, and developing the Family Law Act 1975, which fully established no-fault divorce.

In 1975, following the death of Douglas Menzies, Lionel Murphy was appointed to the High Court.

Lionel Murphy is the most recent politician to be appointed to the court.

Lionel Murphy was convicted of perverting the course of justice in 1985, but had the conviction overturned on appeal and was acquitted at a second trial.

In 1986, a commission was established to determine whether he was fit to remain on the court, but it was abandoned when Lionel Murphy announced that he was suffering from terminal cancer.

Lionel Murphy was the youngest of five sons, and sixth of seven children of William, a native of County Tipperary, and Lily Lionel Murphy.

Lionel Murphy was educated at government schools in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs, including Kensington Public School in Kensington, where he was dux after repeating his final year in 1935, and Sydney Boys High School from 1936 to 1940 in nearby Moore Park, graduating with A levels in English, Mathematics, and Chemistry and B levels in Physics and French.

Lionel Murphy excelled in his final year, graduating from the School of Chemistry, Faculty of Science with a Bachelor of Science with Honours in Organic Chemistry.

In 1945, Lionel Murphy commenced studying law at the Sydney Law School of the University of Sydney and, in 1949, graduated with a Bachelor of Laws with Honours.

In 1944, in his third year of his science degree, Lionel Murphy was elected to the Students' Representative Council but was dismissed two hours after his election victory, on a "constitutional technicality".

Unusually, two years prior to his graduating with and possessing a law degree, Lionel Murphy passed the Barristers' Admission Board examination and was admitted to the New South Wales Bar Association in 1947.

Lionel Murphy was a member of the Australian Labor Party from an early age.

Lionel Murphy was elected to the Australian Senate in 1961, and, in 1967, he was elected Opposition Leader in the Senate.

Lionel Murphy's belief was that, though a security service was an important part of the Australian social fabric, like any other arm of executive government it must be accountable to the relevant Minister.

Lionel Murphy was highly involved in the behind-the-scenes machinations and parliamentary debates around the appointment of DLP Senator Vince Gair as Ambassador to Ireland in 1974, which preceded Whitlam's calling of a double dissolution election for May 1974.

Lionel Murphy used an existing provision of the Marriage Act 1961 to establish the Civil Marriage Celebrant programme.

Lionel Murphy himself told me the story of how he was opposed by his own staff, the public service, his fellow Members of Parliament s and officials of the Labour Party.

Lionel Murphy defied all, and, on July 19,1973, in the dead of night typed the first appointment himself, found the envelope and stamp, walked to a post box and posted it himself.

Lionel Murphy took an enthusiastic interest in this programme - sending telegrams of congratulation to the first several hundred couples married by civil celebrants and would often unexpectedly turn up uninvited to weddings performed by celebrants to delight in his achievement.

Lionel Murphy introduced important legislation substantially abolishing appeals to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, removing censorship, providing freedom of access to government information, reforming corporations and trade practices law, protecting the environment, abolishing the death penalty and outlawing racial and other discrimination.

Furthermore, Lionel Murphy established a systematic legal aid service for all courts, set up the Australian Law Reform Commission with Michael Kirby as its inaugural chairman and set up the Australian Institute of Criminology.

Lionel Murphy took the French Government to the International Court of Justice to protest against its nuclear tests in the Pacific.

Lionel Murphy resigned from the Senate on 9 February 1975 to take up the appointment.

Lionel Murphy was the last High Court justice to have served as a Member of Parliament, and the last politician appointed to the High Court.

Additionally, Murphy was one of only eight justices of the High Court to have served in the Parliament of Australia prior to his appointment to the Court, along with Edmund Barton, Richard O'Connor, Isaac Isaacs, H B Higgins, Edward McTiernan, John Latham, and Garfield Barwick.

Lionel Murphy replaced them with decisions from the Supreme Court of the United States.

Lionel Murphy returned to the Court for one week of sittings.

Lionel Murphy had a distinctive profile and a large nose that was broken in a 1950 car accident in England and left largely untreated.

In 1969, Lionel Murphy married Ingrid Gee, a model and television quiz-show compere who had been born in German-occupied Poland.

Lionel Murphy normally rejected public honours but accepted this because of the symbolic resemblance to his own impact on human rights in Australian law and its lasting significance as a "signpost" to space travellers.

Lionel Murphy asked for a large mounted photo of SNR N86 from the scientific paper and placed it in his High Court chambers in the place where the other High Court justices usually hung a portrait of the Queen.

The Lionel Murphy Foundation was co-founded by Gough Whitlam, Neville Wran, and Ray Gietzelt in 1986.