Sir Owen Dixon OM GCMG PC (28 April 1886 – 7 July 1972) was an Australian judge and diplomat who served as the sixth Chief Justice of Australia.

He was the son of Edith Annie (née Owen) and Joseph William Dixon, who were both English immigrants originally from Yorkshire.

However judges swear individual oaths, so they cannot delegate decision-making; they may debate the application or development of legal principles in particular cases with colleagues, but judicial independence includes 'independence from each other'.

[9]) Dixon rapidly established himself as a dominant intellectual force on the High Court bench, and many of his judgments from the 1930s and 1940s are still regarded as classic statements of the common law.

[14] Dixon had reservations about the appointment of Labor politicians Herbert Vere Evatt and Sir Edward McTiernan by the Government of James Scullin in late 1930 (and is said to have considered resigning in protest).

He nevertheless forced himself to get along with all his colleagues, and at one point acted as an intermediary between them and the conservative judge Sir Hayden Starke, who refused to have any direct communication with them.

On 27 May 1950, Dixon was invited by the United Nations to act as their official mediator between the governments of India and Pakistan over the disputed territory of Kashmir.

In 1951, Dixon was appointed a member of the Privy Council, the English judicial organ which, at that stage, was the final court of appeal in Australian legal matters.

In Dixon's view, the council had a limited understanding of Australian constitutional law, allowed appeals on trivial matters and published confusing judgments.

[20] In Tait v R he dramatically intervened to prevent the hanging of a mentally ill murderer before his appeal to the High Court could be heard.

[21] In 1952, and again in 1955, Dixon was called upon by the Governor of Victoria to give advice when the upper house of the Parliament of that State refused to pass supply bills.

Dixon has sometimes been described as a product of his times; for example, he was a strong supporter of the White Australia policy, and was, as Philip James Ayres's biographical work shows, a classicist and rationalist, deeply sceptical in regard to all religions.

[4] Despite this, Dixon is remembered primarily for his attitude of "strict and complete legalism" in his approach to contentious issues and is considered by some to be among the least politically influenced judges his country has ever known.

On the contrary, in Australian National Airways Pty Ltd v Commonwealth he had said of constitutional interpretation: "We should avoid pedantic and narrow constructions in dealing with an instrument of government and I do not see why we should be fearful about making implications.