The Dyson Heydon rehabilitation tour rolls on
Disgraced former High Court judge Dyson Heydon is disgraced no more, at least as far as some senior members of the judiciary are concerned.
Nearly five years ago, this masthead revealed Heydon had been found by an independent High Court inquiry to have sexually harassed six female associates.
But after a period of relative exile, the former judge self-published a hefty textbook, Heydon on Contract: Particular Contracts earlier this year, and there's nothing like a legal tome to seemingly provide a ticket to redemption.
The book has been popping up in barristers' chambers and law firms around the country. As CBD reported earlier this year, it received a glowing foreword from Heydon's High Court colleague Michael Kirby, while guests at a book launch included the Federal Court's number one media darling Michael Lee, of Bruce Lehrmann defamation trial fame. More recently he has been busily savaging Qantas in its illegal outsourcing case.
And Heydon himself was recently invited to Friday after work drinks at the Federal Court, something which wouldn't have gone down well a few years ago, when the legal profession was still pretending to take matters of sexual harassment seriously.
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Now, the latest stop on Heydon's rehabilitation tour is in Perth, where he will be a speaker at conservative legal pressure group The Samuel Griffith Society's annual conference in August. It'll be a chance to hobnob with other eminent figures, with current High Court judge Simon Steward and former Western Australian premier Richard Court also on the speakers' list.
An email to members sent this week announcing Heydon's appearance also contained a hefty plug for his book from the society's president, Allan Myers, KC, a top barrister, philanthropist and former University of Melbourne chancellor.
'Those who wished to stifle Dyson's work have failed. They have failed because he has written Particular Contracts. They have failed because you, all of you, and all of those whom you will influence, will purchase Particular Contracts,' he wrote.
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