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Sir Isaac Isaacs and Lady Isaacs. Photo by Sam Hood- Wikimedia commons

Top 10 Outstanding Facts about Sir Isaac Isaacs

Sir Isaac Alfred Isaacs GCB GCMG (August 6, 1855 – February 11, 1948) was an Australian legal expert, politician, and judge who served as Australia’s ninth Governor-General from 1931 to 1936. He previously served on Australia’s High Court from 1906 to 1931, such as Chief Justice from 1930.

Isaacs was born in Melbourne and raised in the suburbs of Yackandandah and Beechworth (in country Victoria). At the age of 15, he began working as a schoolteacher before moving to Melbourne to work as a clerk and study law part-time at the University of Melbourne.

Isaacs was admitted to the bar in 1880 and quickly rose to prominence as one of Melbourne’s most well-known barristers. In 1892, he was appointed to the Victorian Legislative Assembly and subsequently appointed as Solicitor-General under James Patterson and Attorney-General under George Turner and Alexander Peacock.

1.His family background and how he was raised

Alfred Isaacs, tailor, and his wife Rebecca, née Abrahams, had six children. Two sisters and one brother survived childhood. Alfred Isaacs was born in what was then Russian Poland, but moved to London in the 1840s.

He married Rebecca in 1849, and they moved to Victoria in September 1854. Rebecca, who was born in London, possessed a powerful mind, varying educational preferences, and the ability to comprehend and examine complicated issues. She was an ambitious and domineering woman who wielded enormous power over her first-born.

2.Alfred’s educational background and great career later on in life

Isaac Alfred, Governor-General of Australia. Photo by National Library of Australia- Wikimedia commons

His first formal education was from sometime after 1860 at a privately owned institution. He won the school mathematics prize when he was eight, and his photograph was won by the schoolmaster, who was also a photographer and bootmaker. Isaacs joined as a student at Yackandandah State School when it opened in 1863.

He got good grades, especially in mathematics and languages, but he was a common trouble maker, walking away to spend time in neighboring mining camps. In order to provide Isaacs with a better education, his family relocated to nearby Beechworth in 1867, enrolling him first in the Common School and then in the Beechworth Grammar School. He exceeded expectations at the Grammar School, becoming dux in his first year and winning multiple scholarly prizes.

In his second year, he worked part-time as an assistant teacher at the school and tutored other students after school. Isaacs passed his examination as a pupil teacher in September 1870, when he was only 15 years old, and taught at the school until 1873. Isaacs was then hired as an assistant teacher at Beechworth State School, the Common School’s successor.

Isaacs got his first taste of the law while working at the State School, when he was an unsuccessful litigant in a County Court case in 1875. He resigned as part of a disagreement with his school’s headmaster over a payment process.

He advanced his interest in the law after returning to teaching, this time at the Grammar School, by reading law books and watching court hearings.

He enrolled the Crown Law Department in Melbourne in 1876 and researched law part-time at the University of Melbourne, graduating with first-class honours and a Master of Laws in 1880. In 1882, he was admitted to the Victorian Bar and began topping up his earnings by composing judicial reports for the press.

3.Isaac was bilingual and knew over three languages over the years of his learning journey 

Isaacs learned Russian as a child, which his parents spoke frequently, as well as English and some German. Isaacs later learned Italian, French, Greek, Hindustani, and Chinese to varying degrees.

4.He was a well acclaimed lawyer from a very early start of his career

By 1890, he had made a name for himself, appearing nineteen times before the Full Supreme Court and taking briefs on behalf of huge commercial clients such as banks, the stock exchange, land and finance companies, and local governments.

During the 1890s, he featured in numerous company court cases, as well as situations involving civil penalty, signed agreement, insurance, debt restructuring, mining, and local government law.

Sir John Latham recalled Isaacs’s close and thorough emphasis to his cases, the comprehensiveness of the arguments he displayed, and his pertinacity in activism. He possessed a phenomenal arsenal of legal knowledge.’

5.Isaac’s first attempt in the government as a member of parliament

Isaacs was appointed to the Victorian Legislative Assembly as a liberal in 1892. He represented Bogong from May 1892 to May 1893, and again from June 1893 to May 1901. In the Patterson administration, he was appointed Solicitor-General in 1893.

He was Attorney-General in Turner’s ministry from 1894 to 1899, and he also functioned as acting Premier on several instances. In 1897, he was appointed to the convention that drafted the Australian Constitution.

Nevertheless, he was not appointed to the committee formulating the legislation; Alfred Deakin credited this failure to “a plot disreputable to all involved in it,” and he believed that this antagonizing and embarrassing heckle intensified Isaacs’ “natural inclination to minute technical criticism….so as to frequently bring him into conflict” with the committee.

Isaacs had many bookings about the draft constitution, but he advocated in its favor after the Australian Natives’ Association endorsed it wholeheartedly, dismissing his request for further evaluation.

6.His personal life and family as young man

On July 18, 1889, he married 18-year-old Deborah (Daisy) Jacobs, daughter of Isaac Jacobs, a tobacco vendor who had been president of the St Kilda Hebrew Congregation and was to be president of the Chamber of Manufactures in 1889-90. The marriage produced two daughters in 1890 and 1892.

The family moved regularly, but one permanent residence was a country house on Mount Macedon. Isaacs maintained close daily contact with his mother and, in fact, in the early years of his marriage, left his family for brief periods to visit her.

Even when he was over 50 and a High Court justice, he would write to ‘My sweet darling Mammie’: she relinquished little of her power over him prior to her death in 1912.

7.Isaac was once appointed as a Federal Member of the Parliament from 1901 to 1906

Sir Isaac Isaacs and Lady Isaacs. Photo by Sam Hood- Wikimedia commons

In 1901, Isaacs was appointed to the first federal Parliament from Indi as a staunch supporter of Edmund Barton and his Protectionist government.

 He was one of a group of backbenchers pushing for more progressive ideas, and he irritated many of his co-workers with his self assuredness and self-righteous attitude toward politics.

Isaacs was elected as a Attorney-General by Alfred Deakin in 1905, however, he was a complicated co-worker, and Deakin was eager to get him out of politics by electing him to the High Court bench in 1906.

He was the first minister to resign from the House of Commons.

8.Isaac had no say in the Australian constitution regardless of what he had to say

Despite his strong support for the Australian constitution, Isaacs was not appointed to the drafting committee. He had a public image for nitpicking, and his incapability to disengage from utterance made him irrelevant, though it’s difficult to say how much of this hostility was due to jealousy of his intellect or anti-Semitism.

9.The successful politician was once a member of the High Court

Isaacs joined H. on the High Court. B. Higgins served as a radical minority on the court, opposing Chief Justice Sir Samuel Griffith. He worked in the court for 24 years, establishing a public image as a studied and revolutionary but uncollegial justice. 

Isaacs was made a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George in the King’s Birthday Honours of 1928 for his service on the High Court.

Isaacs is one of only eight High Court justices who have previously served in the Australian Parliament; the others are Edmund Barton, Richard O’Connor, H. B. Higgins, Edward McTiernan, John Latham, Garfield Barwick, and Lionel Murphy.

Alongside Higgins, he was one of two Victorians to have served in Parliament. The 75-year-old Isaacs was assigned chief justice by Labor Prime Minister James Scullin in April 1930, succeeding Sir Adrian Knox.

10.Isaac’s retirement and how he died

Isaac Alfred, Governor-General of Australia. Photo by National Library of Australia- Wikimedia commons

He became physically weak and deaf as he aged, but his mind remained sharp until the end. After several weeks of illness, he died in his sleep on 11 February 1948 at his South Yarra home, aged 92. He was buried in Melbourne General Cemetery following a state funeral and a religious service at which his old friend Rabbi Jacob Danglow delivered the farewell speech.