From the High Court of Australia

John Dyson Heydon AC was appointed to the Court in February 2003, after having been a judge of the New South Wales Court of Appeal since 2000. He graduated in arts from the University of Sydney, and, as the Rhodes Scholar for New South Wales in 1964, graduated as Master of Arts and Bachelor of Civil Law from Oxford University.

He was admitted to the New South Wales Bar in 1973 and was appointed a Queen’s Counsel in 1987. At age 34, he was elected dean of the University of Sydney Law School for 1978–79. He practised at the Bar from 1979 until his appointment to the Court of Appeal. He has published a number of legal texts, including his first book, The Restraint of Trade Doctrine, in 1971. Justice Heydon AC was appointed a Companion in the General Division of the Order of Australia in 2004.

Here's a link to His Honour's swearing in ceremony as a Judge of the Supreme Court of NSW in 2000 with lots of biographical information.

Here's how the SMH saw his appointment to the High Court.

In 1989 Nick Greiner as Premier of NSW commissioned His Honour and the late Justice Roddie Meagher to produce this little known 218 page report on union officials and their responsibilities.

The report is apparently available at the State Library of NSW.   I'm told by a reliable and happy judicial source that the report recommended union finances should be administered similarly to companies - with provisions for minority shareholder rights and the like.   There may well have been no need for this Royal Commission had those recommendations been adopted.

Here's a link to the eulogy His Honour delivered for the late Roddie Meagher.

And after his departure from the High Court, The Age published this report summarising His Honour's essay "The Enemy Within" - a treatise on the judiciary.

Retired High Court judge Dyson Heydon has fired a parting salvo at his fellow judges in an essay that categorises them as overbearing personalities and weaker spirits, with a herd mentality that poses a threat to judicial independence.

In a thinly veiled critique of the dynamic on the High Court, the most solitary figure on the bench in recent years attacked a tendency for some judges to dominate, in an essay subtitled ''The enemy within'', published in the Law Quarterly Review.

 This Royal Commission is in fine hands.   An inspired choice to uncover and tell us the truth about unions.