David Dudley Field's visit to Australia, 1874

Abstract

Legal contacts between the USA and Australia in the nineteenth century appear to have been quite exiguous. One important episode about which little is known is the visit of the famous American codifier David Dudley Field to Australia in 1874. Field was an inveterate traveller but also related by marriage to the Governor of South Australia, Sir Anthony Musgrave. His visit included four colonial capitals—Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane—and was extensively reported in the press of the day. He had several meetings with important legal personages. This article tells the story of this unusual event on the nineteenth-century Australian legal scene, and then asks whether Field's visit caused Australians to seek inspiration for legal ideas outside the usual Imperial sources—and whether Field himself was enthused by Australian innovations such as the Torrens system of lands titles registration and the secret ballot.