Ever since Bentham attempted to “pluck the mask of Mystery from the face ofjurisprudence”, courts have been accused of legitimating their decisions by hiding their real grounds, which are necessarily subjective and partisan, behind a smokescreen of artificial and esoteric ratiocination. Such iconoclasm has, in our century, been a staple of American realism, Marxism and more recently the critical legal studies ‘movement’, all of which have inevitably influenced Australian legal theory.

It has sometimes been argued that in constitutional cases the High Court has used ‘legalism’ to confer on essentially political decisions a speciously apolitical appearance. This argument is made most carefully and thoroughly by Brian Galligan, a political scientist, in his recent study of the High Court. His argument deserves to be carefully assessed, especially if he is right to predict that a more ‘realistic’ account of judging is destined to supplant ‘legalism’ in academic and legal circles, and in the public mind.