Frank Gavan Duffy

Sir Frank Gavan Duffy (29 February 1852 – 29 July 1936) was an Australian judge who served as the fourth Chief Justice of Australia, in office from 1931 to 1935. His total service on the High Court of Australia was from 1913 to 1935. Prior to his judicial career, he was one of Victoria's most prominent barristers.

Early life Duffy was born in Dublin, Ireland, on 29 February 1852, the son of Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, who was later to become a member of the Victorian Legislative Assembly, and the eighth Premier of Victoria.

He travelled to Australia with his family in 1856, but later went to England to study at Stonyhurst College in Lancashire. In 1869, Duffy returned to Australia and attended the University of Melbourne, graduating in 1872 with a Bachelor of Arts.

At this time, he began to work in the public service, and started to study law. In 1907, Duffy became the editor of the Victorian Law Reports. In 1908, with William Ah Ket, he successfully represented James Minahan before the High Court, in a landmark decision which recognised the principle of legality for the first time in Australian common law. By 1910, Duffy was widely regarded as the most prominent Victorian lawyer, and the unofficial leader of the Victorian Bar. Seventeen years later, in 1931, when Sir Isaac Isaacs was made Governor-General, he took over as Chief Justice of the High Court. Gavan Duffy was considered largely ineffectual as a judge, let alone as Chief Justice.

As Chief Justice on the infrequent occasions he penned his own judgments they were extremely brief and he sat on less than half of the full court cases. He agreed to retire from the bench in 1935, at age eighty-three, to make way for John Latham.

He had planned to deliver a series of lectures on Australian constitutional law at Harvard University's tercentenary early in 1936, but was too ill. He died after a brief illness on 29 July 1936, at Mount St Evin's Private Hospital, Fitzroy. He was survived by his wife and three sons,

Honours Duffy was created a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG) in 1929. Duffy had been made a member of the Imperial Privy Council in 1932.

Family Duffy's son Sir Charles Leonard Gavan Duffy served on the Supreme Court of Victoria. His half-brother, George Gavan Duffy, was an Irish politician and later (from 1936) a judge of the Irish High Court, serving as its President from 1946 until his death in 1951. His half-sister Louise Gavan Duffy was raised in France by his sisters and was an Irish nationalist involved in the 1916 Easter Rising as well as an Irish language enthusiast who founded an Irish language school for girls in Dublin.