It was flattering to be cited in a recent speech by a High Court judge. However, it reflects poorly on Robert Beech-Jones that he took cheap shots rather than discussing the substance of the matter.

Whipping up a moral panic, the newest member of the High Court could learn something from Judge Judy. If you are going to rant, keep it short and sensible.

Displaying more emotion than logic, the judge took shots at others as he set forth his views about constitutional method in a speech to the North Queensland Law Association in Townsville on 16 May.

It would not be surprising if a Labor or Greens politician launched his unhinged attacks. But when a sitting High Court judge uses a public address to try to diminish a conservative legal group called the Samuel Griffith Society and attacks US Supreme Court judges as “supine”, it raises eyebrows from many of Australia’s most senior lawyers. Those lawyers will remain nameless for reasons that will become clear.

The consensus among them is that Beech-Jones’s speech was profoundly inappropriate coming from a sitting judge. Trying to dress up offensive attacks as humour doesn’t justify him claiming he’s just having a little fun on a Saturday morning.

One can only wonder what people in Townsville listening to Beech-Jones thought of his incendiary attacks. With due respect to the Samuel Griffith Society, this is a niche body mostly made up of constitutional legal nerds. Mostly very smart people who are committed to exploring and discussing the Constitution. Most believe the nation’s rule book should be interpreted by judges with appropriate deference to their place in a democracy. That means judges should not legislate from the bench by dreaming up new parts to the Constitution that happen to magically suit their policy preferences. This should not be controversial.

Beech-Jones seems to think a convincing way to discredit this constitutional legal method, often called originalism, in Australia is by pointing to the US Supreme Court’s recent interpretation of the Second Amendment. The High Court judge had fun wading into recent US Supreme Court decisions like the 2021 decision in Bruen, a prominent case on gun laws: “Only a fool would think this is not the intended outcome of a sustained politicised and political process of stacking courts with ­supine judges.”

Not exactly measured language for a High Court judge, Your Honour. Nor is it convincing to grab at strawmen only to rip them down – a pattern running throughout Beech-Jones’s speech. Our High Court, no matter how constituted, is not about to unleash guns on the country. After all, we don’t have a Second Amendment.

The bigger point is that Beech-Jones’s disagreement with originalism as a legal philosophy does not make it wrong – no matter how much he might wish that to be so. Maybe the judge was thoughtlessly channelling those on the left who take great umbrage at a legal philosophy that prevents judges from being philosopher kings and queens.

Beech-Jones reached for words such as “ominous” and “animus” to describe the society’s activities in the nation’s law schools. Let’s be clear about what the Samuel Griffith Society is doing. It is encouraging law students in the nation’s law schools to understand why judicial humility matters when interpreting the Constitution. Like the Federalist Society in the US, the Samuel Griffith Society believes that promoting legal conservatism and identifying talented young lawyers as potential judicial appointees is, in the long run, good for the rule of law, and the country. It sure beats judges using the Constitution to satisfy their impulses to make laws that ought to be made by parliament.

On one level, if the judge is seriously worried by the workings of the Samuel Griffith Society, he needs to get out more. However, legal sources believe there are deeply troubling parts to Beech-Jones’s speech. Attacking judges of the US Supreme Court embarrasses the High Court, they say. And warning law students to steer clear of the Samuel Griffith Society is equally unprofessional.

Borrowing the language of road rage, Beech Jones says “they have driven into my lane and they have driven into yours”. What lane is the judge in when he threw a broad, rather unsubtle, hint to law students who might want to join the Samuel Griffith Society: “If you are a law student contemplating all of this, is that the way you wish to define yourself?”

“He is using his position as a High Court judge to deter young people from participating in the ­society’s events,” one silk told Inquirer. “Beech-Jones must know that his comments may well be heeded by young law students who will think, ‘well, I want to get ahead so I had better not have anything to do with the Samuel Griffith Society’.”

Another senior silk described the implied threat from a High Court judge to law students as “wicked”.

Is it any surprise that the silks who spoke to Inquirer, many of whom appear in the High Court before Beech Jones, want to remain anonymous? Beech-Jones must understand that all too well.

Inquirer asked Chief Justice Stephen Gageler a series of questions, including whether he had seen a copy of the speech before it was delivered, whether he shares Beech-Jones’s intemperate views about the Samuel Griffith Society and the US Supreme Court, and whether threatening law students is the role of a High Court judge.

There was no response.

Senior lawyers have told Inquirer that they would be surprised if Beech-Jones did not share his intended speech with the Chief Justice prior to delivering it.

Regard­less, how do Beech-Jones’s attacks, including on judges who have attended Samuel Griffith Society events, fit with this statement from the Chief Justice about judicial virtue: “Observance of … individual constraint is an institutional imperative.”

One of the nation’s most eminent silks, Allan Myers KC, is president of the Samuel Griffith Society. In a scathing rebuke of Beech-Jones, Myers denounced the judge for “fretting” that the Samuel Griffith Society is telling university students that “the High Court is not doing a good job of interpreting the Constitution”.

“He says that judicial decisions can ‘be criticised’ but not in a ‘tenor, tone and uniform direction’ that he does not like. Too bad. If you do not like criticism write more persuasive reasons for judgment.”

Many lawyers have said that the judge’s Townsville address was likely aimed at an audience further south. His 23-page, fully footnoted paper read like a job application to the Albanese government for the role of chief justice.

More than 10 pages of Beech-Jones’ “revised” paper on the High Court website read like an emotional rant jotted down after a few bottles of red with an artsy crowd wallowing in Trump Derangement Syndrome. The judge hits the critical notes that would make Labor hearts sing: attacking legal conservatives in Australia and conservative judges on the US Supreme Court.

The speech appears to be carefully planned and probably equally carefully timed. The Chief Justice steps down in 2028, and the jockeying for that position has begun.

Though Beech-Jones is a junior member of the High Court, even junior judges rarely underestimate their value.

What’s most disappointing about a speech from a High Court judge is the low-rent quality of his arguments. They wouldn’t stand up in a courtroom. He attacked the Samuel Griffith Society as a political organisation. That is factually incorrect. A devotion to constitutional originalism is not political. It is a philosophy about judicial method not about politics.

Soon after Beech-Jones’s speech attacking the society as having a dark influence on the country, the society invited the judge to its upcoming conference. He declined. In his letter to the society, he wrote that even if he wasn’t busy, it wouldn’t be appropriate to speak at the conference because the Guide to Judicial Conduct says that attendances at a political gathering should be avoided. The italics were his.

The judge added that he is justified in this assessment of the conference after learning “about one of the confirmed speakers for this year’s conference”.

The He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named speaker the judge alludes to is John Howard, who will open the conference. That’s really funny, because in his Townsville speech, Beech-Jones seemed keen to mention another famous political figure, none other than Karl Marx.

Another speaker at the upcoming August conference is Federal Court judge Michael Lee who will deliver the Sir Harry Gibbs Oration. Legal sources are wondering whether Beech-Jones was trying to imply to the Labor government that Lee, whose name is mentioned as a possible High Court contender, will be behaving inappropriately by speaking at what Beech-Jones considers to be a “political gathering”.

It’s a shame that Beech-Jones chose to lob a grenade in north Queensland only then to shy away from debate in his hometown of Sydney, where the conference will be held. The society is used to robust debates, including about issues Beech-Jones raised in his Townsville speech. Serious legal giants, sitting High Court judges have spoken to the society, or at its functions, including James Edelman, Simon Steward, Pat Keane and Dyson Heydon. Former High Court judge Ian Callinan was president of the society for 14 years. Former High Court chief justice Sir Harry Gibbs was the society’s founding president. Susan Kiefel delivered an address to the society when she was sitting Chief Justice of the High Court. So did sitting chief justices from the Federal Court and State Supreme Courts, including James Allsop, Wayne Martin, Chris Kourakis and Paul de Jersey. More than 40 sitting and former judges have addressed the Society.

Is the bloke who’s been on the High Court for barely 2½ years seriously trying to smear these judges, and that of future judges who speak at SGS conferences, by suggesting their conduct is inappropriate? If so, this is self-aggrandising nonsense.

Myers wasn’t impressed either. Clearly not bowling for line or length but aiming for a wicket, the silk told Inquirer that, “If the judge is worried about being embroiled in political debate then he need only confine himself strictly to the performance of his judicial functions: No speeches, no papers. Just do your job as a judge.

“The Beech-Jones address is deeply troubling for all those Australians who want their Judges to stay out of politics and stick to the job of deciding cases according to law. In the meantime, the Samuel Griffith Society will provide a forum for discussion of the decisions of the High Court of Australia and of all matters affecting the rule of law in Australia,” Myers said.

If Beech-Jones can’t bring himself to apologise to the society, which he should, he should at least apologise to the judges whose reputations he has implicitly besmirched.

Beech-Jones’s apparent moral outrage over court stacking is equally foolish. In Australia, where judges are appointed by the government of the day, court-stacking is a common pursuit of both sides of politics. Be careful, Your Honour. This is not Animal Farm, where some judges are more equal than others.

The reported observation from great maverick Wilson Tuckey that some new judges who have been there barely two weeks start thinking they got there on merit is a common trap, especially on the left. But when conservatives appoint a judge, it’s apparently grubby political court stacking involving obsequious judges.

By trying to humiliate conservative appointments as “supine”, the judge invites questions about his own appointment. When the then Labor attorney-general Mark Dreyfus appointed Beech-Jones in 2023, Labor would have counted on him being a safe Labor appointment. Perhaps Dreyfus looked very kindly indeed on Beech-Jones’s attacks on Labor’s political enemies Christian Porter and former royal commissioner into union corruption Dyson Heydon.

Happily, Beech-Jones’s attacks on the work of the Samuel Griffith Society have provided the legal group with publicity it could not buy. Their phone has been ringing hot with support. And the person at the other end of that phone is thrilled.

Beech-Jones has provided a welcome baptism of fire for Mia Schlicht, who in April became the first woman to be appointed as executive director of the society. At 25, Schlicht is unperturbed by the High Court judge’s attacks.

“We’ve received enormous support,” she told Inquirer this week as news of Beech-Jones’s speech filtered through the legal community. “People are coming forward, saying this is the exact reason why we need the Samuel Griffith Society to speak about why constitutional conservatism is so integral.

“When you have a body like the society critiquing High Court decisions, it’s so uncomfortable to the court that we have one of its judges coming out and slamming the work of the society.”

In response to Beech-Jones’s criticisms that the society is fighting culture wars, Schlicht says the society is not alone.

“Let’s have a look at every other single legal body, all of them on the left. Tell me that they aren’t also fighting the culture wars. The society’s just more overt about it. We understand that law is a part of culture, but for him to single out just the Samuel Griffith Society and not acknowledge all the other legal institutions that are also part of these culture wars, I think that just speaks for itself.”

She points to the voice where every state law society and bar association signed up to the voice before the wording had even been released.

“The voice is the best example of the ideological monoculture at universities too,” Schlicht adds. “Not a single one engaged seriously with the debate, and not a single one came out against the voice. That’s why the work of the society is so important, because at the moment, we really are a lone ranger.”

Schlicht says the society will continue to be vocal on important constitutional debates. Beech-Jones may need to toughen up.

In the meantime, it is fortunate that Beech-Jones was not at the Samuel Griffith Society conference when I spoke a few years ago. It was about the rule of law and the presumption of innocence. Scary stuff.