Following Labor's victory at the 1972 federal election, Gough Whitlam appointed Murphy as Attorney-General and Minister for Customs and Excise.

[5] Unusually, two years prior to his graduating with and possessing a law degree, Murphy passed the Barristers' Admission Board examination and was admitted to the New South Wales Bar Association in 1947.

In the Senate pre-selection convention in the Sydney Trades Hall in April 1960, he had the backing of Ray Gietzelt but lacked factional endorsement.

However, he drew first position in addressing the delegates and won support with an impassioned but well-structured and infectiously optimistic seven-minute speech on the Labor Party's historical commitment to civil liberties and human rights.

[8] One of Murphy's more dramatic actions as Attorney-General was his sudden visit to the Melbourne headquarters of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) on 16 March 1973.

This came about because ASIO officers were unable to satisfy his requests for information concerning intelligence on supposed terrorist groups operated by the Ustaše in Australia.

Murphy's concern about the matter was heightened by the impending visit to Australia of the Yugoslav Prime Minister Džemal Bijedić.

Murphy's belief was that, though a security service was an important part of the Australian social fabric, like any other arm of executive government it must be accountable to the relevant Minister.

[9] According to journalist George Negus, then Murphy's press secretary: "Lionel had asked for the files of the six most dangerous or subversive people in Australia".

Using this provision he appointed about a hundred Civil Celebrants and urged them to provide marriage ceremonies of dignity, meaning and substance for non-church people.

Murphy himself told me the story of how he was opposed by his own staff, the public service, his fellow Members of Parliament s and officials of the Labour Party.

[14] As Attorney-General, Murphy drew up a Human Rights Bill (which lapsed with the double dissolution of 1974) giving as among the reasons: "in criminal law, our protections against detention for interrogation and unreasonable search and seizure, for access to counsel and to ensure the segregation of different categories of prisoners are inadequate.

[15] Murphy also introduced important legislation substantially abolishing appeals to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, removing censorship, providing freedom of access to government information, reforming corporations and trade practices law, protecting the environment, abolishing the death penalty and outlawing racial and other discrimination.

However, on 27 February 1975, the Premier of New South Wales, Tom Lewis, controversially appointed Cleaver Bunton, a person with no political affiliations, to replace Murphy in the Senate, beginning the chain of events which led to the 1975 Australian constitutional crisis.

These events provided the impetus for the 1977 constitutional change that ensures such an appointment cannot be repeated, although a State Government can still achieve a similar result by declining to fill a Senate vacancy.

[19] In the summer of 1983/84, during the term of the first Hawke government, both The National Times and The Age published transcripts of telephone conversations illegally recorded from 1979 to 1981 by the New South Wales Police.

[1]: p.305 (2000 edition)  Despite being a well-educated judge, Murphy's defence rested on an unsworn, or “dock statement” (typically used by those who are unable to communicate fluently, or represent themselves), which avoided the possibility of being cross-examined in court.

[26][27][b] Due to the seriousness of the allegations, Attorney-General Lionel Bowen, acting on what he said was his belief that the Justices of the High Court were minded to take some independent action to assess Justice Murphy's fitness to return to the Court, introduced legislation for a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry, consisting of three retired judges, to examine "whether any conduct of the Honourable Lionel Keith Murphy has been such as to amount, in its opinion, to proved misbehaviour within the meaning of section 72 of the Constitution".

(Section 72 specifies that a High Court judge may be removed only by the Governor-General and both houses of Parliament "on the ground of proved misbehaviour or incapacity".)

[3] In July 1954, he married Russian-born Nina Morrow (née Vishegorodsky; known as Svidersky), a comptometrist, at St John's Church in Darlinghurst, Sydney.

[citation needed] In 1969, Murphy married Ingrid Gee (née Grzonkowski), a model and television quiz-show compère who had been born in German-occupied Poland.

[29] In 2021, the ABC investigative series Exposed: The Ghost Train Fire aired an allegation, for which they provided no evidence, that Murphy and NSW Premier Neville Wran had conspired with organised crime figure Abe Saffron to help Saffron's relatives obtain the Luna Park lease after the 1979 Sydney Ghost Train fire, which caused the deaths of six children and an adult.

[30] The history of the Aboriginal people of Australia since European settlement is that they have been the subject of unprovoked aggression, conquest, pillage, rape, brutalisation, attempted genocide and systematic and unsystematic destruction of their culture…a law aimed at the preservation, or the uncovering, of evidence about their history is a special law with respect to the people of this race.

That freedom has been asserted by men and women throughout history by resisting the attempts of government, through its legislative, executive or judicial branches, to define or impose beliefs or practices of religion.

In the effort to uphold "the one true faith" courts have often been instruments for the repression of blasphemers, heretics and witches…Most organised religions have been riddled with commercialism, this being an integral part of the drive by their leaders for social authority and power in conformity with the "iron law of oligarchy".

[33]The absence of a constitutional guarantee does not mean that Australia should accept judicial inroads upon freedom of speech which are not found necessary or desirable in other countries.

[34]The Constitution s.80 states: "The trial on indictment of any offence against any law of the Commonwealth shall be by jury…" This Court has construed this section to mean that if there be no indictment there must be a jury but there is nothing to compel procedure by indictment…In a famous dissent Dixon and Evatt JJ described this construction as a mockery of the Constitution and considered that anyone charged with any serious offence against the laws of the Commonwealth was entitled to trial by jury (Lowenstein (1938) 59 CLR 556, 582).

[49] Murphy normally rejected public honours (such as a knighthood) but accepted this because of the symbolic resemblance to his own impact on human rights in Australian law and its lasting significance as a "signpost" to space travellers.

[53] Mary Gaudron, who herself would become a justice of the High Court, stated at Lionel Murphy's Memorial Service at Sydney Town Hall: There are so many words – reformist, radical, humanitarian, civil libertarian, egalitarian, democrat — they are all abstractions.

[54][55]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".