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Book Review: The High Court – Legitimacy and Change: Review Essay: Haig Patapan, Judging Democracy – the New Politics of the High Court of Australia

In the last ten years, the position of the High Court of Australia has undergone a remarkable transformation. The course of its decisions handed down from the early 1990s and the innovative, yet often perplexing, methodology upon which those decisions rested have garnered for the Court unprecedented attention and sparked a reconsideration of its place in the Australian polity. On many occasions this has taken the form of harsh criticism of the Court and its judges from representatives of the other arms of government and the media.1 In response to this barrage of criticism, and in light of the Commonwealth Attorney-General's sustained disinclination to fulfil his traditional role in representing and defending the judiciary,2 the High Court has increasingly been forced to justify its role and method – to a much more pronounced extent than at any earlier time in its history. The moves by the High Court to do this have taken a number of different forms. The letter written by Chief Justice Brennan to the Acting Prime Minister in 1997 at the