William Owen (judge)

Sir William Francis Langer Owen, KBE, QC (21 November 1899 – 31 March 1972) was an Australian judge who served as a Justice of the High Court of Australia from 1961 until his death in 1972.

The Right Honourable

Sir William Owen

KBE QC
Justice of the High Court of Australia
In office
22 September 1961 – 31 March 1972
Nominated byRobert Menzies
Preceded bySir Wilfred Fullagar
Succeeded bySir Anthony Mason
Personal details
Born21 November 1899
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Died31 March 1972

Early life

Owen was born in 1899 in Sydney, New South Wales. He was educated at Sydney Grammar School, where he was in the school's cadet unit.

Military service

During World War I, from 1915 to 1919, Owen served in the First Australian Imperial Force. Owen enlisted on 31 December 1915, and was assigned as a sapper in the 9th Field Company Engineers, part of the Australian 3rd Division. Owen was wounded in action on 20 September 1917, during the Battle of Menin Road, part of the Battle of Passchendaele . Owen returned to service on 7 October 1917. He was wounded a second time at the Battle of the Somme on 23 May 1918, and was evacuated to a military hospital in Orpington, United Kingdom. On 29 August he was reassigned to the Training Depot of the Australian Flying Corps. By the end of the war, Owen had been promoted to the rank of Lieutenant.[1]

After returning to Australia, Owen completed the bar examinations and was admitted to the New South Wales Bar in 1923. In 1935, Owen was made a King's Counsel.[2]

New South Wales Supreme Court

In 1936 Owen served as an Acting Judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, and in 1937 was made a full judge. In the late 1940s, Owen's associate was Laurence Street, a future Chief Justice of New South Wales. In 1942 Owen succeeded Owen Dixon as chair of the Central Wool Committee, and in 1945 was the Australian delegate to the Imperial Wool Conference. From 1954 to 1955, Owen chaired the Royal Commission on Espionage, the Royal Commission which resulted from the infamous Petrov Affair.[2]

High Court of Australia

In 1957 Owen was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, and on 22 September 1961 he was appointed to the bench of the High Court, at the age of 61 and ten months. He remained the oldest person ever appointed to the High Court until the 2015 appointment of Justice Geoffrey Nettle. Owen was elevated to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in 1963. He died in 1972.[2]

gollark: We could use Lua. Lua is very easy to sandbox.
gollark: Why did states happen in the *first* place if they aren't good and there's a stable alternative?
gollark: > Collectivization will take place naturally as soon as state coercion is over, the workers themselveswill own their workplaces as the capitalists will no longer have any control over them. This iswhat happened during the Spanish Revolution of 1936, during which workers and farmers seized andmanaged the means of production collectively. For those capitalists who had a good attitude towardsworkers before the revolution, there was also a place - they joined the horizontal labor collectivesUm. This seems optimistic.
gollark: > "Legally anyone can start their own business. Just launch a company!”. These words oftenmentioned by the fans of capitalism are very easy to counter, because they have a huge flaw. Namely,if everyone started a company, who would work for all these companiesThis is a bizarre objection. At the somewhat extreme end, stuff *could* probably still work fine if the majority of people were contracted out for work instead of acting as employees directly.
gollark: The hierarchical direct democracy thing it describes doesn't seem like a very complete or effective coordination mechanism, and it seems like it could easily create unfreedom.

References
  1. "Owen, William Francis Langer - Service record". National Archives of Australia. Retrieved 24 December 2005.
  2. Weeks, Phillipa. "Owen, Sir William Francis (1899–1972)". Australian Dictionary of Biography. Melbourne University Press. ISSN 1833-7538 – via National Centre of Biography, Australian National University.
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