Commentary The High Court Of Australia has now unanimously rendered its judgment in the Peter Ridd case. The facts of the Ridd case are well known. James Cook University sacked Peter Ridd, a physics professor, in 2018 for criticising his colleagues’ research on the preservation of the Great Barrier Reef. Professor Ridd went public with his criticism, denouncing on Sky News Australia the University’s Australian Institute of Marine Studies as ‘untrustworthy.’ He disagreed with the research finding of his colleagues, who linked climate change and polluted water to the coral bleaching of the Barrier Reef.  For Ridd, the reef was not in substantial decline, and any deterioration could be reversed. The university disciplined him on two occasions, and it also imposed a confidentiality obligation on him, which he was eventually unable to honour. The Federal Court in the first instance upheld Peter Ridd’s claims—that his right to academic freedom had …