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Judicial system in australia and more
Judicial system in australia and more
Judicial system in australia and more
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The High Court is well known for being the highest court present in the Australian judicial system. It was first established in 1901 by section 71 of the federal Constitution. The purpose the High Court includes to interpret and apply Australian law, to decide cases of special federal significance including challenges to the constitutional validity of laws and to hear appeals from other Federal, State and Territory courts. The location of the High Court is in Canberra, whereby it is situated within a space, otherwise known as the ‘Parliamentary Triangle’. The High Court building consists of three courtrooms, the chambers of the Justices’, the Court's main registry and corporate services facilities. The High Court was erupted by three prominent …show more content…
In “The High Court of Australia - reflections on judges and judgments”, Mason argues that the Justices had favoured and implemented an approach that ultimately would result in the States becoming finally dependant on the Commonwealth, which statutes were put in place in order to ensure the significance of the Commonwealth law is not overshadowed by the inconsistency of the State law (2013, p.g. 16). As a result, this allowed Australia to implement changes to the way it performs; whereby, communities were separated by States and the economy remained as a mutual national component. Additionally, The High Court was also responsible for the development of an Australian common law, such as private international …show more content…
In 1952, Sir Owen Dixon was made Chief Justice, which erected the return of joint judgements. The idea behind joint-judgements essentially was to enforce the concept that judges should write their own judgement in cases that included Dixon, apart from criminal cases which was an exception so that confusion was not created during trial. According to Sir Frank Kitto, he argues that “the judge could not satisfy his judicial duty unless he thought his way through in detail to a conclusion by writing his own judgement”. Therefore, Kitto is contending that in order for each judge to perform their judicial duty, they must create a judgement of their own according to the case. The main issue to why joint judgements is seen to disadvantage the court, is due to points stated by Justice Heydon in his article ‘Threats to Judicial Independence: the enemy within’, whereby he states that judges who uphold dominance, tend to impose their own views upon other judges and that there are judges who are easily willing to comply with demands, without proper consideration of the
The milestone judicial decision in Cole v Whitfield pronounced a pivotal moment in Australian jurisprudence in relation to the interpretation of s92 of the Australian constitution. This essay will critically analyse the constitutional interpretation approach utilised in Cole v Whitfield. This method will be compared with the interpretational methods exemplified in Commonwealth v Australian Capital Territory. Although within these two cases there appears to be a preference towards a particular interpretational method, each mode has both strengths and weaknesses. Accordingly, the merit of each should be employed in conjunction with one another, where the court deems fit, complementing each other. This may provide a holistic approach to interpreting the constitution.
The roots of Australian laws are similar to traditional Aboriginal laws, dating back to before the Norman Conquest in 1066, where each separate village had their own laws developed to their own customs. This changed however, after a centralized legal system was established after 1066. A common law was formed, that applied to all of England. This was later combined with equity law and mercantile law, which is the basis of Australian law today, known as ‘statute law’.
Since the dawn of time for a society to work it needs to have a level of structure that applies to everyone and is understood by everyone. Australian legal system is broad and complex. It is the nature of the encompassing laws and regulations which reflect how people, organisations and governments behave on the many different levels of operation and these are created to make sure that everyone understands their rights and obligations. There are two sources of Law in Australia: Statute Law regulated by Parliament and comprise of legislations and acts; and Judge-made Law or Common Law where decisions made by judges are based on previous cases.
In theory all jury systems (which have existed for almost 800 years) are fair and just.
The Effectiveness of the Law in Achieving Justice for Indigenous People In relation to Australia, the term ‘Indigenous peoples’ refers to two distinct cultures of people who inhabited the land prior to European settlement – The Aboriginals and the Torres Strait Islanders. This population declined dramatically over the 19th and early 20th century due to the introduction of new diseases from European settlement, Government policies of dispersal and dispossession, the era of protection, assimilation and integration causing a cultural disruption and disintegration of the Indigenous peoples. In the 20th century the recognition and protection of Indigenous peoples land rights and human rights have been at the forefront of Global Issues where the International community has sought to address the issues and ratify Human Rights and Land Rights for Indigenous People as a legitimate subject to be implemented into international law and the domestic law of member states such as Australia. To evaluate the effectiveness of the law in achieving justice for Indigenous Australians we must look at the Australian Legal System, and the extent to which it addresses it’s obligations to International Law in relation to Australia’s
In determining whether there is any legal or symbolic significance in Australia, it is important to understand the original purpose of the Magna Carta. In Magna Carta King John agreed to a series of regulations of his rights under feudal custom, largely as they affected large landholders of Britain. In 1215 Magna Carta did not offer the protection of law to all the king’s subjects, but within a few years it was being quoted in individual actions in courts and in petitions, as a defence of the rights of all against
This essay will discuss two advantages of Australia federating and two disadvantages of Australia doing so. The advantages that will be outlined and discussed in this essay will be that federation helped Australia’s economy & federation was essential for Australia so it would not be colonised by another country due to a stronger defence force. The disadvantages that will be shown and explained are: there was to be one uniform law system that fits all instead of having separate law systems to best suite each colony & federation was a way to make the perfect “white Australia”.
The merits of both the adversarial and inquisitorial system will be explored throughout this paper. The Australian rule of law best describes as all law should be applied equally and fairly. The five vital operations of the rule of law includes fairness, rationality, predictability, consistency, and impartially. The adversarial system adopts these operations by having a jury decide on the verdict and the judge being an impartial decision maker. In contrast, the inquisitorial system relies heavily on the judge. This can result in abusive power and bias of the judge when hearing evidence and delivering verdicts. The operations of the rule of law determine why the rule of law is best served by the adversarial system in Australia.
The high court of Australia was established in 1903, its located at Canberra within the parliamentary triangle.
This extract from Western Australian Senator Alexander Matheson enforces the obvious contempt shown by the Australian general public perspective and the intent to suffocate the Indigenous population. The Aboriginal Rights Movement emerged in the 1930’s and celebrated a victory in 1967, as Aboriginals were entitled to vote in federal elections and gained equal citizenship. The Mabo case confronted the current Australian Legal system from two
The decision for Australia to adopt the Federal system was on the principle of which the State’s governments wanted to keep their power. For this reason there was the separation of powers between the newly formed Commonwealth government and the existing State governments. At a constitutional level, there are rulings in which the powers are separated, these rulings due to disputes have slightly changed since 1901. These changes all fell towards the one government, the Commonwealth (Federal) government. However this was not just a landslide event, the Constitution of Australia set up this imbalance of powers between the Commonwealth and State governments. We will explore this further in the points discussed later in this essay.
Facts: Two residents of Virginia, Mildred Jeter a colored woman and Richard Loving a white man, got married in the District of Columbia. The Loving's returned to Virginia and established their marriage. The Caroline court issued an indictment charging the Loving's with violating Virginia's ban on interracial marriages. The state decides, who can and cannot get married. The Loving's were convicted of violating 20-55 of Virginia's code.
Law reform is a crucial aspect of the Australian legal system due to its operation significantly contributing to the types of laws that are in effect at any time in society. The following report delineates the definition of law reform, the conditions that give rise to law reform, the agencies of law reform, the mechanisms of law reform, as well as the law reform process. It divulges these main aspects regarding law reform as a whole and incorporates a case study to further the salience of this particular feature to the functionality of the legal system.
This essay will examine the doctrine of Judicial precedent that helps form the English Legal System. It will illustrate various views that have been raised by Judges and relating cases to the use of ‘Stare decisis’ when creating precedents. In addition it will discuss how the developments in the powers of the courts now also allow them to depart from these precedents to an extent.
This shows that judges in fact, do possess a certain amount of discretion. It has even been argued that in practice, judges seemed to have first come to decisions or conclusions of their own before actually searching and relying on precedents in line with their decisions to back them up. In the case of Merritt v Merritt [1970] CA, Balfour v Balfour [1919] was a prima