South Australian chief justice George Murray (1916-42) conservative and traditional in the way of Samuel Way
George Murray won a South Australian scholarship, enabling him to read law at Trinity College, Cambridge.
Image courtesy State Library of South Australia
George Murray (1916-42) was the reluctant South Australian supreme court judge who became chief justice when Samuel Way died in 1916 and senior puisne judge John Gordon declined the position due to ill health. Murray, the conservative son of a Scots pastoralist and politician, was chosen by Crawford Vaughan’s Labor government in a new non-partisan approach to appointments.
As under Way, Murray brought little innovation but held strongly to a traditional view of law’s role in society.
Born in 1863 at Murray Park, Magill, a son of Scots pastoralist and politician Alexander Borthwick Murray, George Murray in 1874-75 attended the High School, Edinburgh, after early tuition at John Lorenzo Young’s Adelaide Educational Institution.
Back from Scotland, at the Collegiate School of St Peter, Murray showed outstanding academic and sporting ability. He won an entrance scholarship to Adelaide University in 1880, taking an arts degree with first-class honours. A South Australian scholarship enabled him to read law at Trinity College, Cambridge, with financial support from the colonial government.
At Cambridge, Murray represented his college in cricket and rowing, and was equal first in the law tripos exams for the bachelor of laws in 1887. F. W. Maitland, the distinguished English legal historian, suggested that Murray consider studying of legal history. But, financed by his family and an Inns of Court scholarship, Murray completed admission to the bar and was called to the Inner Temple in 1888.
Returning to Adelaide next year, while recovering from an accident that curbed his sporting activities, he was admitted to legal practice in South Australia at a bedside ceremony conducted by Way as chief justice.
By began his long-standing professional relationship with Way as an associate on the supreme court in 1889-91. Later, in private practice, he specialised in civil matters. He built a big clientele as a commercial solicitor. As a barrister he was not forceful but developed a solid reputation for logic and clarity. In mid career, he visited England and completed the Cambridge master of laws in 1909.
Murray became deeply involved with Adelaide University. He had lectured at the law school during the absence of F. W. Pennefather in 1891 when was elected to the university council and became chancellor. During his 50-year association with the university, Murray had a deep interest in legal education, the attributes of professors and the curriculum.
Way suggested that it was Murray’s patriotic duty to join the supreme court in 1912. Murray went on to dominate the court in his reserved way.
His traditionalism came to the force when he helped resist efforts to have the state industrial court president Dr Jethro Brown appointed also to the supreme court.
