1984–2014: The Life of the (Non-constructive) Trust in the High Court

The High Court of Australia has handed down at least 30 judgments on the law of trusts in the period 1984–2014. This presents as an opportune time to consider what the timeframe of a generation has contributed to trusts law at the highest judicial level in Australia. Leaving aside the constructive trust, which is jurisprudentially distinct and well served by academic literature, this paper focuses on the High Court developments in the law of trusts within this era. It concludes that, while not revolutionary, the case law has revealed incursions into what may previously have been assumed to be accepted principle and a consequent fluidity in the concept of the trust and its incidents.