Biographies of Australian judges are rare. Philip Ayres’s notable biography of Sir Owen Dixon appropriately acknowledged his unrivalled standing as a jurist from his appointment to the High Court in 1929 to his retirement in 1964 after twelve years as Chief Justice. Professor Mark Finnane’s biography of Sir John Barry is a welcome extraction from this underworked lode. Barry was appointed on January 14, 1947, to a place on Victoria’s Supreme Court created for him by the Cain Labor government. Knighted in 1960, he died in office aged only sixty-six in November 1969. Barry was a much-published author and an…