Rhian,

I agree with you on two important points upfront: adjacency can matter, and legitimacy in the eyes of affected communities is not trivial. Where I still differ is in how far those considerations can reasonably be taken without undermining the very pool of people qualified to run such inquiries.

The Catholic Church hypothetical involves direct institutional liability of the same body under examination. Bell's prior work, including Brown v Tasmania, is adjacent only at a high level of abstraction and does not pre-judge factual or causal questions about antisemitism, violence, or state negligence.

On the question of legitimacy, I'm wary of "unifying figure" becoming a de facto veto exercised by whichever groups are most distrustful of prior constitutional reasoning. In polarised environments, any judge who has decided hard cases will be perceived as "aligned" by someone. That can't, on its own, be disqualifying without incentivising judicial invisibility.

I take the Heydon comparison seriously, but I think that failure had more to do with inquiry design and overt political signalling than with mere perception of prior views. The safeguard here, in my view, lies less in biographical neutrality and more in transparent process, multi-member composition, and evidentiary discipline.

We may ultimately disagree on Bell herself, but I think the harder institutional question is how far we allow perceived alignment, rather than demonstrated conduct, to narrow the field of those we trust to do this work.

Murdoch tries to control Bondi RC with his boy Justice Michael Lee
http://youtu.be/5Tu2KvSkUX8