Book Review: Lives of the Australian Chief Justices: 'Sir James Martin' by J M Bennett , The Federation Press, Sydney, 2005, v-xxii, 384pp, ISBN 1-86287-589-8; 'Colonial Law Lords' by J M Bennett, The Federation Press, Sydney, 2006, v-vi, 49pp, ISBN 1-86287-598-7; 'Callaghan's Diary: the 1840's Sydney Diary of Thomas Callaghan of the King's Inn, Dublin, Barrister-at-Law' edited and translated by J M Bennett, Francis Forbes Society for Legal History, Sydney, 2005, ii-xx, 222pp, ISBN 0-9751103-2-2.

Abstract

It is no easy task keeping up with the output of the distinguished legal historian Dr J M Bennett. In recent years Dr Bennett has published, at a remarkable rate, biographies of the Chief Justices of the Supreme Courts of the various Australian States before federation, and the first book which is the subject of this review is his latest in this series, a biography of the fourth Chief Justice of New South Wales, Sir James Martin. Perhaps by chance, but certainly fortuitously for a reader, Dr Bennett's other recent publications -- Colonial Law Lords, and (as editor) Callaghan's Diary -- complement this latest judicial biography. Read together, the three books, in very different ways, provide a fascinating insight into the formative period of the legal profession in New South Wales and the pivotal role that the profession played in the creation and development of responsible government.There is little doubt that the career of Sir James Martin is one of the most remarkable in Australian colonial history. There is also little doubt that Dr Bennett is a fan; at the conclusion of what is the longest of the biographies thus far published, he comments: 'Sydney's Martin Place perpetuates the name and memory of a man of rare genius.'