Owen Woodhouse—an unlikely revolutionary?

Seminar Series: "How to write about a life: current (auto)biography and memoir in Aotearoa New Zealand"

Presenter: Professor Jim McAloon

Owen Woodhouse (1916-2014) was a Judge of the Supreme Court (now the High Court) from 1961 until 1974 and then of the Court of Appeal until 1986 (President from 1981). He was then the first president of the Law Commission. He is perhaps most widely remembered as the chair of the Royal Commission on Compensation for Personal Injury, and as the lead author of its 1967 ‘Woodhouse Report’, which set out a plan for what became New Zealand’s accident compensation system. His reputation as a social reformer dates from that report, and likewise as a judge he is remembered as a progressive.

There are few substantial biographies of New Zealand judges, especially of those who were active in the second half of the twentieth century. I have been working on this biography (around other commitments) for two years and from the beginning have intended to emphasise his ‘public’ life. Perhaps fortunately, the length of Woodhouse’s career is matched by the extent of his papers. The material relating to Accident Compensation is voluminous. There is an extensive personal correspondence. There are judgments, directions to juries, and sentencing notes. In addition, Woodhouse published one volume of memoirs and drafted another. How does this large archive facilitate, and hinder, a biography? What should be left out? Is Woodhouse unusual among judges in that his long career might lend itself to a full-length biography? Is ‘judicial biography’ a particular genre?

Jim McAloon is a Professor of History at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington. He has extensive research interests in the history of Aotearoa and New Zealand, including economic and political history in the twentieth century.