are so many words – reformist, radical, humanitarian, civil libertarian, egalitarian, democrat — they are all abstractions. My words are no better; but, for me, and perhaps for those of us who believe in justice based on practical equality, Lionel Murphy was – Lionel Murphy is – the electric light of the Law. He would take an ordinary old abstraction – like equal justice — he would expose it, he would illuminate the abstraction, he would make its form stark, and so he could then say as he did in McInnis' case, these words: "Where the kind of trial a person receives depends on the amount of money he or she has, there is no equal justice". Law professor Jack Goldring concluded that Murphy's approach as a High Court judge was "marked by a number of features: a strong nationalism conceding and welcoming the existence of States as political (albeit subsidiary) entities; a stalwart belief in democracy and parliamentary rule; a firm support for civil liberties; and overall a 'constitutionalism' in the classical, liberal sense of seeing a constitution as not simply a legal document, but rather as a set of values shared by the community". Notes Books and a film on Lionel Murphy Lionel Murphy – a Political Biography Five Voices for Lionel In the Name of Lionel The Judgments of Lionel Murphy Justice Lionel Murphy Lionel Murphy: A Radical Judge FILM: Mr Neal is entitled to be an Agitator References Bibliography External links Lionel Murphy Foundation Whitmont, Debbie; Ferguson, Sarah. The Murphy Scandal. ABC Four Corners, 20 November 2017 Mr Neal is Entitled to be an Agitator 58 min documentary film about the life of Lionel Murphy. DVD. Dir: Daryl Dellora. Australian Human Rights Award. Justice Lionel Murphy address to Press Club of Australia, 17 August 1983 The Hon. Justice Lionel Murphy QC Speeches 1922 births 1975 Australian constitutional crisis 1986 deaths Attorneys-General of Australia Australian humanists Australian Labor Party members of the Parliament of Australia Australian people of Irish descent Australian King's Counsel Deaths from cancer in the Australian Capital Territory Justices of the High Court of Australia Labor Left politicians Members of the Australian Senate Members of the Australian Senate for New South Wales People educated at Sydney Boys High School Sydney Law School alumni University of Sydney alumni 20th-century Australian judges 20th-century Australian lawyers 20th-century Australian politicians