Sir Anthony Frank Mason AC KBE GBM KC HonFAIB DistFRSN (born 21 April 1925) is an Australian judge who served as the ninth Chief Justice of Australia, in office from 1987 to 1995.

His father, a World War I veteran and Military Cross recipient, was a registered surveyor who developed a substantial practice on the North Shore of Sydney.

[2] Mason received his early education at Kincoppal, Elizabeth Bay, where he was an acquaintance of future federal attorney-general Tom Hughes.

He was commissioned as a flying officer in November 1944 and undertook training in Canada as a navigator, logging over 100 hours in Avro Ansons.

[4] He served his articles of clerkship with Clayton Utz in Sydney and was also an associate to David Roper, a judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales.

For five years he lectured in law at the University of Sydney, his students including three future High Court Justices, Mary Gaudron, William Gummow and Dyson Heydon.

[9] In 1966 he appeared opposite future High Court colleague William Deane, successfully arguing that the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council should reject an appeal from the High Court case of R v Anderson; Ex parte IPEC-Air Pty Ltd.[10] He served until 1969 and during this time contributed greatly to the development of the Commonwealth's administrative law system.

Initially a conservative judge, his tenure as Chief Justice can be seen as the high-water mark of the movement away from the "strict legalism" which characterised the High Court under Sir Owen Dixon.

Mason was more flexible in his attitude to precedent than many other judges, viewing it more as a policy for consistency than something which would strictly coerce and constrain his decisions.

Over the years the Court has moved uneasily between one interpretation and another in its endeavours to solve the problems thrown up by the necessity to apply the very general language of the section to a wide variety of legislative and factual situations.

The interpretation which came closest to achieving that degree of acceptance was that embodying the criterion of operation formula which we shall subsequently examine in some detail.

[citation needed] In 2012, statements in some of Kerr's papers, released by the National Archives following a request by Professor Jenny Hocking, were given publicity in her biography, Gough Whitlam: His Time.

However, at Kerr's request, Chief Justice Barwick did provide written advice, which was that he did have power to dismiss a Prime Minister who could not obtain supply and was unwilling to either resign or agree to a general election.