Roderick Meagher

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Roderick Pitt "Roddy" Meagher QC AO is an Australian Jurist.

Meagher was a Justice of the NSW Supreme Court and the NSW Supreme Court of Appeal from 1989-15 March 2004.A descendent of William Pitt the Younger and a cousin of Patrick White Justice Meagher whose family owned a chain of country stores completed a BA LLB in 1956 at the University of Sydney's St John's College after being Head Prefect or 'Captain of the School' at St Ignatius' College, Riverview in 1949.

Meagher was admitted to the NSW Bar in 1960, lecturing at the Sydney University Faculty of Law within the same year. After taking Silk, Justice Meagher served as President of the New South Wales Bar Association from 1979-81. With William Gummow he co-edited five editions of "Jacobs on Trusts" and again with Gummow and Lehane he co-authored "Equity, Doctrines and Remedies" and has contributed to Quadrant Magazine[1]. Thus, Meagher was described by NSW Chief Justice Jim Spigelman as "one of the intellectual giants of our legal history"[2]. Patrick Atiyah has criticised his conservative view of legal doctrine in the Law Quarterly Review. In 2005 he was admitted as an Officer of the Order of Australia "for service to the judiciary, particularly judicial administration, to reform of the building and construction industry, and to the community through the Australian Naval Reserve and conservation and arts organisations"[3].

He currently serves as a patron to the Macquarie University "Macquarie Journal of Business Law"[4]. He has been deemed by "Crikey" to be a "great Sydney civil libertarian"[5].

[edit] Individual Cases and Incidents

When John Laws was fined $50000 for using "gross and coarse" terms on 2UE, Justice Meagher dissented and called for a jail term, stating that $50,000 was the sort of money Laws would spend "on a small cocktail party."[6]

Justice Mary Gaudron, in a speech to the Women Lawyers Association of NSW, brought Meagher into controversy by deeming his comment that "The bar desperately needs more women barristers [because] there are so many bad ones that people may say that women ... are hopeless by nature"[7] as evidence of a brooding "wilfully unreconstructed" view of women in Law.

He notably opposed the Sydney University school of Law's move from a City to Darlinghurst campus, saying, "As long as it was in the city, the school had lots of barristers and solicitors prepared to lecture there, but those people will not be prepared to struggle up to the University. There has never been a close inter-relationship between the professions and the academics in law ... There's a certain amount of co-operation at the moment but even that amount is going to vanish"[8].