Retirement of J J Spigelman as Chief Justice of New South Wales

It is appropriate to note on this blog the recent retirement of J J Spigelman as Chief Justice of New South Wales. A number of his judgments and speeches over the course of his tenure as Chief Justice constitute significant contributions to Australian private international law.

They are identified in his chapter entitled ‘Between the Parochial and the Cosmopolitan’ in the recently published collection Constituting Law: Legal Argument and Social Values (Federation Press, 2011) edited by Justin Gleeson and Ruth Higgins. That chapter also provides an overview of the former Chief Justice’s views on the approach of the judiciary to the foreign elements that arise in cases, including cross-border issues, venue disputation, enforcement of judgments, judicial co-operation and determining questions of foreign law.  The chapter is based on a speech given by the former Chief Justice in June 2010, the text of which may be found here.