In appointing Justice Jayne Jagot to the High Court, the Albanese government has made history: for the first time, the court will have a majority of women on its bench.
We have come a long way. At the turn of the 20th century, women were not permitted to practise law in any Australian jurisdiction. And even when those formal barriers to admission were eventually removed, informal barriers meant the law remained a man’s world.
For more than 80 years after its establishment in 1903, the High Court of Australia remained the exclusive preserve of men. It was not until 1987 that Mary Gaudron became the first woman to serve on the court.
Women have been appointed to the High Court with some regularity over the past decade. Yet only seven women have been appointed of a total of 56 justices. The first woman to serve as Chief Justice of the High Court, Susan Kiefel, was sworn in in 2017.
Why do women judges matter?
In answering this, it is worth remembering the classic quote from Ruth Bader Ginsburg in response to questions about when there will be “enough” women judges on the US Supreme Court. Ginsburg replied there would enough when there were nine (that is, all of them). Acknowledging that people were shocked by this response, Ginsburg famously countered, “There’s been nine men, and nobody’s ever raised a question about that”.
Australia is certainly not the first apex court to have a majority of women justices. For example, the Federal Court of Malaysia has a majority (8/14) of women. But compared with other Western democracies Australia has been progressive on this issue. In the UK, there is currently one woman on a bench of 12; in the US there are 4/9, New Zealand has 3/6 and Canada 4/9.
Source: Making history in the High Court – Law Society Journal