He was sympathetic to the labour movement, and in 1904 briefly served as Attorney-General in the Labor Party minority government led by Chris Watson.

Ina Higgins, an early feminist, was his sister and Nettie Palmer, poet, essayist and literary critic, was a niece.

He supported advanced liberal positions, such as greater protection for workers, government investment in industry, and votes for women.

In 1897, he was elected as one of Victoria's delegates to the convention which drew up the Australian Constitution, coming tenth of the ten successful candidates.

At the convention, he successfully argued that the constitution should forbid the establishment of any religion, or the imposition of religious tests for the holding of government office.

He also disdained the protectionist motive which he detected in the agitation for federation: the Victorian 'manufacturing classes', he wrote 'expected to exploit the markets of New South Wales, protected against the formidable competition of English and European goods'.

In November 1899 he supported the successful leadership challenge of Allan Maclean, a staunch anti-Federationist, to the premier, George Turner.

Higgins also opposed Australian involvement in the Second Boer War, a very unpopular stand at the time, and as a result, he lost his seat at the 1900 Victorian election.

Robert Garran, the Secretary of the Attorney-General's Department, found Higgins difficult to work with, stating that "for the first week or two I could not induce him to sign even the most routine and trivial paper until after a full explanation [...] the slowing-up of the machine was often embarrassing".

[3] Higgins also received criticism for his failure to regularly attend parliament, which left Watson and Billy Hughes having to explain his ministerial actions.

[7] Higgins was an awkward colleague for the Protectionist leadership, and in 1906 Deakin appointed him as a Justice of the High Court of Australia as a means of getting him out of politics, although he was undoubtedly qualified for the post.

In this role, he continued to support the labour movement, although he was strongly opposed to militant unions who abused the strike weapon and ignored his rulings.

[8] During World War I, Higgins increasingly came into conflict with the Nationalist Prime Minister Billy Hughes, whom he saw as using the wartime emergency to erode civil liberties.

Higgins was remembered for many years as a great friend of the labour movement, of the Irish-Australian community and of liberal and progressive causes generally.