17 September 2026
MEDIA RELEASE
The High Court records with sadness the recent passing of the Honourable William Montague Charles Gummow AC, who served as a Justice of the High Court from 1995 to 2012.
Bill Gummow was born in Sydney in 1942. He graduated from the University of Sydney in arts and law and was admitted to legal practice as a solicitor in New South Wales in 1966. He was called to the New South Wales Bar in 1976 and was appointed Queen’s Counsel in 1986.
From 1986 until his appointment to the High Court, he served as a Justice of the Federal Court of Australia. He was conferred an honorary Doctor of Laws by the University of Sydney in 1992 and was made a Companion of the Order of Australia in 1997 for his service to the law.
As well as having been a practitioner and a judge, Bill Gummow was a teacher and an author. He lectured in intellectual property and equity at the University of Sydney Law School from 1966 until 1995. With Roddy Meagher and John Lehane, he co-authored Equity: Doctrines and Remedies, first published in 1975. With Roddy Meagher, he co-authored four editions of Jacobs’ Law of Trusts in Australia, published between 1971 and 1997.
After his retirement from the High Court, he held professorial appointments at the Australian National University College of Law and the University of Sydney Law School. In 2013, he was appointed as a Non-Permanent Judge of the Court of Final Appeal of Hong Kong, an appointment he continued to hold until his death.
Justice Gummow was a deeply learned, rigorously analytical and highly collegiate member of the High Court who contributed greatly in that capacity and throughout his professional life to the content and trajectory of Australian law.
The Justices of the Court extend their sincere sympathies to Justice Gummow’s family. A ceremonial sitting of the Court to honour him will be held on a date to be advised by the Court.