Heydon, AFR left federal court judges 'angry and dispirited'

"The angry reaction of these people, often working long hours, usually on the weekend, to keep up with the flow of work, was often not fit to print. But to my observation, dismay and concern, that expression of anger was often followed by an expression of dispirited feeling, of self-questioning as to the worth of the service. They were not being thin-skinned. They objected to unfair criticism."

In a speech to the HS Nicholas Dinner Club, Mr Heydon noted that in 2017 seven judges in the NSW Supreme Court took more than a year to deliver judgment in 13 cases. In the Federal Court, 14 judges took more than a year to deliver judgment in 32 cases.

The Financial Review reported that since 2011, more than half of the Federal Court's judges have taken more than a year to complete a judgment.

"If all other solutions fail, the only remedy may be the persistence, intensity, even savagery, of judicial, professional and public criticism," Mr Heydon said. "Judges have shown themselves to possess exceptionally thin skins in the last respect."

In Chief Justice Allsop's speech – delivered on January 21 but only made public on February 8 – he did not name Mr Heydon, only referring to him as a "senior judicial officer".

'It was wrong'

"I know every judge in both courts and calling their work, their performance as judges, and the work of their courts shameful should never have happened, because it is not true. With the utmost respect to one so distinguished in legal intellectual achievement, it was wrong to say it."

He suggested a three-month benchmark for judgments was problematic.

"Some judges can do this. Sometimes, that is because of their extraordinary talent, which may not, sadly, be universal. Sometimes, it is by their steadfast refusal to do more than one thing at a time – this latter attitude not being very helpful collegiately or institutionally when 'mucking-in' is necessary."

Chief Justice Allsop conceded that "some [judgments of the 12-month list]] should not have taken so long" but said it could have been "for reasons of work allocation and workload, time allocation, illness or the pressure of other work".

'Institutional blindness'

"The cause may be seen as my fault as head of jurisdiction. But the metric does not tell one anything of itself, in particular that those judges have, or the court as a whole has, some shameful culture of slackness."

The Chief Justice of the NSW Supreme Court, Tom Bathurst, also criticised the Financial Review articles in a recent address.

However, he said said there was "always a risk of institutional blindness – that judges sitting on a court will not be able to see flaws in process in the same way an outsider may be able to".

Chief Justice Bathurst ended his speech on a jovial note: "After all that I have said, I am still a reader of the AFR."