Kenneth Madison Hayne (born 5 June 1945) is a former Justice of the High Court of Australia, the highest court in the Australian court hierarchy. Early life and education Hayne was born in Gympie, Queensland and attended Scotch College, Melbourne. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws (Honours) from the University of Melbourne, during which time he resided at Ormond College. Hayne was Editor of the Melbourne University Law Review. He then graduated with a Bachelor of Civil Law from Exeter College, Oxford University. He was also a Rhodes Scholar. He is the husband of another High Court Judge, Michelle Gordon. Career Kenneth Hayne was admitted as a barrister and solicitor of the Supreme Court of Victoria in 1971 and was appointed as a Queen's Counsel (QC) in 1984. Judicial activity Kenneth Hayne joined the bench in 1992 when he was appointed as a judge of the Supreme Court of Victoria. From 7 June 1995 he sat on the Court of Appeal of the Supreme Court of Victoria, which is the highest court in the Australian State of Victoria. Hayne was appointed as a Justice of the High Court in September 1997. He retired in 2015 upon reaching the mandatory retirement age of 70, in accordance with Section 72 of the Australian Constitution. He was replaced on the High Court by his wife, Federal Court judge Michelle Gordon. Hayne has been described as being a part of a 'core' of judges during his time on the High Court, usually forming the majority, and often writing joint reasons with Justice William Gummow. One notable exception was Hayne's dissent in Thomas v Mowbray, where he joined Justice Michael Kirby in holding the Commonwealth's regime of interim control orders applied in respect of suspected terrorists to be unconstitutional. Another, more recent, example is Kuczborski v Queensland [2014] HCA 46 in which Hayne J was the sole dissenter. Royal Commissioner In December 2017 Hayne was appointed to head the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry. The inquiry received continual media coverage and the report was delivered on 1 February 2019. Later public life In July 2019 (published in early August), in his first public statement since the Commission, Hayne diagnosed an increasing demand for royal commissions as a symptom that "[t]rust in all sorts of institutions, governmental and private, has been damaged or destroyed".