Kenneth Hamilton Bailey was born in Melbourne in 1898. When he succeeded Harrison Moore in 1928, he became Melbourne's first Australian-born dean of Law.
Bailey was dux of his high school, Wesley College, in 1916, but shortly after commencing his studies at the University of Melbourne, he volunteered to join the Australian Imperial Force. After serving in France with the Australian Field Artillery, he was discharged in Melbourne and resumed his studies.
Bailey was awarded the Rhodes scholarship for Victoria in 1919, and at Oxford he graduated in law and arts.
In 1924 he returned to the University of Melbourne, where he was lecturer in history and vice-master of Queen's College before becoming professor of jurisprudence and then professor of public law. One of his former students, Zelman Cowen, has recalled that ‘Bailey’s courses were searching, stimulating and complex’.
Bailey’s expertise in international and constitutional law was increasingly called upon during the late 1930s. In 1937 he was an Australian envoy to the League of Nations in Switzerland, and in 1942 he took leave of absence from the University to act as an advisor to the Attorney-General’s Department. In 1945 Bailey was asked by Dr H.V. Evatt to act as an advisor to the Australian Delegation to the United Nations at the time when the draft Charter of the United Nations was being considered. In 1946 he resigned from his position as professor to accept the post of Solicitor-General.
In 1958 Bailey was knighted, and in 1964 he was appointed Australia’s high commissioner to Canada. In 1972 the University of Melbourne awarded him an honorary doctorate, at a special conferring ceremony in Canberra.
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