Wilfred Fullagar
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Sir Wilfred Kelsham Fullagar, KBE, KC (16 November 1892 – 9 July 1961) was a judge on the High Court of Australia.
Wilfred Kelsham Fullagar was born in Malvern, Melbourne, on 16 November 1892. He was educated at Haileybury College. He studied at the University of Melbourne, where he resided at Ormond College. He graduated from the university with a Master of Arts and Master of Laws, also winning the Supreme Court of Victoria's Prize in Law.
During World War I he served in the 27th Battery, Australian Field Artillery, part of the First Australian Imperial Force, enlisting as a Gunner on 28 October 1916 and retiring as a Sergeant in 1919. In October of that year, he married Marion Lovejoy in London, with whom he would later have five sons (including Richard Fullagar, a future Judge of the Supreme Court of Victoria). After returning to Australia, he was employed by the Government of Australia, first in the Repatriation Department, and then in the Department of Immigration. He was admitted to the Victorian Bar in 1922.
Fullagar lectured at the University of Melbourne from 1923 to 1928, in tort and legal procedure. He would later return to lecture from 1943 to 1945 in Australian constitutional law. He made several appearances before the High Court, and in 1932 appeared in three cases argued before the Privy Council, including the inconspicuously named but significant Dried Fruits case, and Attorney-General (NSW) v Trethowan, the case that considered whether a referendum was necessary to abolish the Legislative Council of New South Wales. Fullagar was junior counsel in those cases to Sir William Jowitt, a future Lord Chancellor, and Sir John Latham, a future Chief Justice of Australia, respectively.
In 1933 he was made a King's Counsel and in 1938 he served as the Vice-President of the Law Council of Australia. In 1942 he was appointed as a director of Argus & Australasian Limited, the company that owned The Argus newspaper. Also in that year he remarried, to Mary Taylor.
On 1 August 1945 he was made a Judge of the Supreme Court of Victoria. He held that position until his appointment to the High Court on 8 February 1950, when he filled the vacancy left by the resignation of Sir Hayden Starke. Later that year he was made a Knight of the British Empire.
Fullagar sat on the bench of the High Court until his death in 1961.
[edit] References
- Graham, Fricke (1986). "Wilfred Fullagar: The Scholarly Judge", Judges of the High Court. Melbourne: Century Hutchison Australia. ISBN 0-09-157150-2.
