Sir Ninian Stephen has described Sir Owen Dixon as the ‘greatest of Australian lawyers’. Dixon was born in Hawthorn, Victoria in 1886. He attended Hawthorn College, a small private school, and in 1904 began studying at the University of Melbourne. Although he did not excel at university, he graduated BA (1906), LLB (1908) and MA (1909). He was admitted to the Bar on 1 March 1910 and made his first appearance before the High Court in 1911. He was appointed King’s Counsel in 1922.
In 1926, Owen Dixon spent several months as an acting judge in the Supreme Court of Victoria, but refused a permanent post. Some have suggested that his refusal was based on his vehement opposition to capital punishment, and Dixon himself vowed that he ‘would never be a judge’. Despite this in 1929, at the age of 42, he accepted an appointment to the bench of the High Court of Australia.
In 1942, Dixon was appointed Australian Minister in Washington and in 1950 he became a United Nations representative, mediating in the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan. He was appointed Chief Justice of the High Court on 18 April 1952 and retired in 1964.
Oxen Dixon died on 7 July 1972.
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