Gerard Brennan’s Articles and Speeches

Maintaining the Law’s Skeleton of Principle

Volume 1: Justice According to Law

Edited by Frank Brennan

Hardback, 650 pages, $79.95

ISBN: 9781923224698

Release Date, July-August 2025

This rich collection of articles and speeches by Sir Gerard Brennan, spanning over half a century, reveals his humanity, his morality, his perspicacity, but above all else, his commitment to the practical implementation of the rule of law within a democratic state. His essential message was that the rule of law must recognize the individual dignity of every person. Yet in delivering justice according to law, the judicial role required disciplined restraint to avoid breaching the appropriate division of powers. Sir Gerard’s extra-judicial writings demonstrate his sophisticated antennae for this delicate balance. Like an engineer attending complex machinery or a surgeon operating, he delivered justice without fracturing the skeleton of our legal system.

- From the Foreword, Gerard Carney, Executive Associate to Sir Gerard Brennan

‘To the question of what Sir Gerard Brennan added to Australian public law, the answer can be given with a precision which would have pleased him. I give that answer now. He added its essential unity. He added its guiding principle. He added its moral compass.’

- Chief Justice Stephen Gageler AC

‘The qualities of the man necessarily informed his judgments. The idea of egalitarianism infused his thinking; he said that “[p]eople are entitled to equal treatment in equal circumstances”. He often referred to the inherent dignity of the individual, to independence and to autonomy. He regarded “the absence of unjustified discrimination, the peaceful possession of one’s property, the benefit of natural justice, and immunity from retrospective and unreasonable operation of laws” as of critical importance. His recourse to these fundamental values was not, as he put it, an invitation to “unstructured idiosyncrasy”; rather, he saw them as values which served to explicate and illuminate the common law, tempered by the need for the law to develop incrementally and in accordance with precedent, the judicial method and the separation of powers. Unprincipled judicial discretion was anathema to him. What was necessary was consistency and predictability.’

- Chief Justice Susan Kiefel AC

‘Putting to one side the strength and scope of his intellect and knowledge and his irrepressible sense of the ridiculous, for me the most important of Ged’s qualities was that he cared so profoundly. Not only about (his wife) Pat, their family and many friends. But about people and things generally, particularly injustice and those in need.’

Sir William Deane AC KBE KC

Fr Frank Brennan SJ AO, a son of Sir Gerard, is Adjunct Professor at the Thomas More Law School at ACU and Adjunct Research Professor at the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture. He chaired the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance’s Review of the Australian Journalists’ Code of Ethics. He chaired the National Human Rights Consultation for the Rudd Government and was a member of the Turnbull Government’s expert panel which conducted the Religious Freedom Review. The Morrison Government appointed him to the Voice Co-Design Senior Advisory Group to help guide the Co-Design process to develop options for an Indigenous voice to parliament. His Order of Australia was for services to Aboriginal Australians, particularly as an advocate in the areas of law, social justice and reconciliation. He is the author of 16 books.