Sir John Greig Latham KBE CMG PC KC (26 August 1877 – 25 July 1964) was an Australian judge and politician who served as fifth Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia for seventeen years, from 1935 to 1952.

Latham was born in Ascot Vale, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia. His father was a prominent citizen, whose achievements as Secretary for the Society for the Protection of Animals were deeply respected. John Latham won a scholarship and became a successful student at Scotch College and the University of Melbourne, studying logic, philosophy and law. At one point, he was the recipient of the Supreme Court Judges' Prize. In November 1902, Latham became the first secretary of the Boobook Society (named for the Southern Boobook owl), a group of Melbourne academics and professionals which still meets.

During World War I, he was an Intelligence officer in the Royal Australian Navy, holding the rank of lieutenant commander. He was the head of Naval Intelligence from 1917, and was part of the Australian delegation to the Imperial Conference and then the Versailles Peace Conference, for which he was appointed Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in the 1920 New Year Honours.^[1] He grew to dislike William Morris Hughes, the Australian Prime Minister.

John Latham in the 1920s

Latham had a distinguished legal career. He was admitted to the Victorian Bar in 1904, and was made a King's Counsel in 1922. In 1920, Latham appeared before the High Court representing the State of Victoria in the famous Engineers' case, alongside such people as Dr H.V. Evatt and Robert Menzies.

In 1922, Latham was elected to the Australian House of Representatives as an independent, running on a campaign of 'Get Rid of Hughes'. Although his philosophy was close to Hughes' Nationalist Party, Latham's experience of Hughes in Europe ensured that he would not serve under him in a Parliament. He won the Victorian seat of Kooyong. On Hughes' removal, he subsequently joined the Nationalist Party and from 1925 to 1929, he served as the Commonwealth Attorney-General in the Nationalist government under Stanley Bruce and Earle Page. After Bruce lost his Parliamentary seat in 1929, Latham served as leader of the Nationalist Party. After Joseph Lyons led defectors from the Labor Party across the floor, Latham resigned as Opposition Leader in favour of Lyons. In 1931 he was appointed Attorney-General again, this time in the United Australia Party government of Lyons. At the same time, he was also the Minister for External Affairs and (unofficially) the Deputy Prime Minister. Latham held these positions until 1934, when he retired from the Commonwealth Parliament.

Latham was appointed Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia on 11 October 1935. From 1940 to 1941, he took leave from the Court and travelled to Tokyo to serve as Australia's first Minister to Japan. He retired from the High Court in April 1952.

He died in 1962 in the Melbourne suburb of Richmond. Latham was a prominent Rationalist, after abandoning his parent's Methodism at university. He was also a prominent campaigner for Australian literature, being part of the editorial board of The Trident, a small liberal journal, which was edited by Walter Murdoch. The board also included poet Bernard O'Dowd. Latham had three children, two of whom predeceased him. His wife, Ella, also predeceased him.

Footnotes

References

• Sir John Latham and Other Papers, by Zelman Cowan
• Latham, Sir John Greig (1877 - 1964), Australian Dictionary of Biography

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