Papafox

Andrew Inglis Clarke

I'm in the process of writing a major artcle on Clark. I've done about 2,500 words so far, but I suspect it will be 5,000-8,000 by the time I'm finished. When I started writing this article, I thought it would be a matter of an evenings' work - paraphrase the ADB entry and add a few images. Well, the ADB entry sucks. Its not bad at covering his early life and political career, but barely covers the most important part of Clarks' life - the development of the Constitution. It's pretty poor about his time on the bench, as well.

Clark did sooooo much. I mean, being a reforming Attorney-General (the most important Tasmanian A-G of the 19th century) wasn't enough. He also was

• The father of the Australian Constitution, with 86 of 128 sections clearly coming from his draft of 1890

• A social reformer, champoining trades unions, universal sufferage (including female sufferage) and fair trials (criminal procedure reform).

• An important barrister, and later, Supreme Court justice (but not the High Court!)

• A friend of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr (he named his third son Wendell)

• One of the founders of the University of Tasmania, later a Vice-Chancellor

• A major social figure for Hobart

Clark has been compared to Thomas Jefferson. You can see why.

I've been side tracked into reading "Andrew Inglis Clark" by F.M. Neasy and L.J.Neasy (booth finished post-mortum by the son). I grabbed the copy from the LaTrobe Uni library. As far as I can tell, I'm the second person to have read it since the book was acquired in 2000. Remember, Clark is one the most important people in Australian constitution history, and nobody is reading him.

Library is closed during Easter, so I can't go and lookup Clark in Dictionary of Biography for the Common Law. This reference covers lawyers and judges who affected the development of the Common Law in UK/US/Canada/Australia/NZ. Clark is apparantly one of the few Australians who have an entry.

Thomas Barnes Cochrane

Thanks a lot for improving the article Thomas Barnes Cochrane, 11th Earl of Dundonald. We nearly lost it all!!!

With compliments.

DAFMM.