Another Study in Judging: Sir Owen Dixon and Yerkey v Jones

Abstract

Sir Owen Dixon’s judgment in Yerkey v Jones (which held that there was a special married woman’s equity) can be seen as embodying the creative yet bounded decision making that Dixon understood as lying at the heart of common law judging.Not only does Dixon’s judgment cohere with the principal cases dealing with this aspect of the law, it also gives effect to the underlying premise upon which this body of law had developed — the belief that in a relationship of confidence and trust such as marriage, husbands could take advantage of their wives in ways that were not actionable in the courts — in a more convincing fashion than the competing formulation proposed by modern judicial critics of his judgment.