In 1958 he took up a post in the Faculty of Law at the University of Adelaide and in 1967 was appointed a professor.
Justice Michael Kirby notes that one of the earliest references is a decision of the High Court of Australia in Mabo v Queensland (No 2) (1992) 175 CLR 1, a significant case in the history of Australia decided by the Court in 1992.
He also wrote a book on the legendary 1935 Sydney murders known as the Shark Arm case.
The book was called The Shark Arm Murders, published by Wakefield Press, Australia in 1995, which became a best-seller.
A second posthumous book was published in 2003, Lawless Harvests or God Save the Judges: Van Diemen's Land 1803-55, a Legal History (with Stefan Petrow and Kate Ramsay).