Ghosts from the high court's past: Evidence from computational linguistics for Dixon ghosting for Mctiernan and rich

Sir Edward McTiernan was a member of the High Court of Australia (hereafter High Court) from 1930 to 1976, making him the Court's longest serving Justice. Sir George Rich was a member of the High Court from 1913 to 1950. The High Court terms of both McTiernan and Rich overlapped to a considerable extent with that of Sir Owen Dixon, who was a Justice of the High Court from 1929 to 1952 and Chief Justice from 1952 to 1964. It is well known that McTiernan and Rich had a tendency to join in the judgments written by Dixon, or to write a short concurring judgment agreeing with him.1 Sir Hayden Starke considered McTiernan a 'parrot' because he often agreed with Dixon. Legg writes: 'Sir Edward McTiernan was not regarded with as much awe as his brethren on the Bench. On one occasion, much to everyone's amazement, Sir Owen Dixon concurred in one of his judgments. About 99 per cent of the time it was the other way around'.