Australian Legal Case: The Mabo Case The Mabo case commenced in the late 70's about an Aborigine Eddie Mabo who fought for his land on Murray Island, part of the Torres Strait. The issue that started the court case was when Mr Mabo appealed for a permit from the Queensland Government to visit the island. His proposal was declineed so he was unable to return home to visit his homeland. In 1981, in James Cook University where Eddie Mabo was working at the time, the students called a discussion on land rights in Australia. It was decided at the conference that the issue of a land claim by the Murray Islanders to traditional title would be taken to the High Court. With major local party support, including legal experts with significant experience in land rights legislation they set off to claim that Mabo had the right to visit his homeland.. The aim of the case was to make the law decide that the Islanders owned the land not the Euopeans [IMAGE] The case was motioned to the High Court at first, however they had to take it to their State Court the Supreme Court of Queensland first. The Queensland Government acted in response and they passed an unexpected piece of legislation through the House without any debate - the Torres Strait Islands Coastal Islands Bill. The Act quoted: 'Any rights that Torres Strait Islanders had to land after the claim of sovereignty in 1879 is hereby extinguished without compensation'. This was how the Mabo case started with an honourable aim. The main aim of the case was to prove that the Queensland Government breached the Bill breached the Racial Discrimination Act of 1975. It was also a case to make the Commonwealth government aware that Native Australians had the right to the so called "terra nullius", the name given to Australia when the Europeans first arrived meaning empty land. The case went back to the Supreme Court of Queensland where Justice Moynihan gave a presentation of the facts of the case.
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Show MoreThe 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.
Suppose a special prosecutor tired you on purpose to put you in jail, and you didn’t plead guilty to show that you are truly innocent. Is it fair to you when the prosecutor tried knowingly and willfully while you are innocent? What do you do if you are harshly punished because you do not want to plead guilty to show that you’re innocent for real? This thing has been happening in our court system in criminal cases for many decades. In criminal cases, punishing defendants who didn’t plead guilty harshly creates severe problems to its citizens. To avoid those problems, judges and juries should not lessen the punishments, whether defendants plead guilty, or they should not harden the punishment for people who did not plead
On the 29th o April, 1977 Captain Cook, commander of a British fleet, landed on the eastern shore of Australia, in an attempt to claim the land under the name of Britain. The land was to be claimed by Britain as a land where the British government could send convicts; in an attempt to ease the struggle in the over flowing prisons. Upon Cooks arrival, he was ordered to follow three rules of claiming a foreign land. They were;
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It said that aboriginal people should be treated equally with land rights, as indigenous Australians were the first on our land that we are on today. This challenged many different previous Australian legal statements to do with Aboriginals including one of the main ones being that Aboriginal or Torres Strait Island communities or people owned no land before the arrival of the British in 1788. This statement was called Terra Nullius, which means land belonging to no one. This Native Title Act of 1993 recognized native title and recognizing and that the aboriginal’s community owns the land, as they are the original owners. The Mabo decision was one of Australia’s firsts steps in recovering all the injustices towards the Indigenous people that were happening in the past and giving them back the land they hold so dearly that they own. The Mabo decision contributed to the collective Identity of Indigenous people as is gave back there cultural land and bringing the most major part back to the aboriginal culture which is the land and the connection between them and the land. This Native Title Act of 1993 allowed the aboriginals to enhance there collective identity due to the fact that it was the first time they were positively recognized and the first time they got something back that was once taken from them all making there beliefs, rituals stronger and overall enhancing there collective identity of being aboriginal. Since the Mabo decision there has been many other cases and different changes and different things added to the native title. The Mabo Decision first did the recognition and giving back of the aboriginal land and it was one of the first to recognize that the land title was wrong and that it did belong to the
In theory all jury systems (which have existed for almost 800 years) are fair and just.
Indigenous issues on an international level became more acutely visible to Mabo following his move to Townsville in 1959. During this time, Indigenous Australians were beginning to be motivated by a more aggressive sense of aboriginal patriotism. Indigenous
The Queensland Drug Court system (CDP) aims at diverting offenders accused of minor drug offences from the criminal justice system (Department of Justice and Attorney-General, 2012). The program aims to rehabilitate drug offenders from abusing substances and conducting in related criminal activity by providing court enforced rehabilitation services (Australian Indigenous HealthInfoNet, 2015). The Queensland Drug Court system offers offenders the chance to earn themselves bail if they agree to get help, or face jail time and serious fines if they refuse (Emma Sykes 2013). Considering this aim it is unfortunate to observe that minor drug offences have continued to rise annually since 2009 (Queensland Police Services, 2015). In theory a court
Our client Ms. Melody Larson (“Ms. Larson”) has contacted our office to seek advice on whether she has any legal recourse. She wants to have Ferdinand Sahayko (“Mr. Sahayko”) to stop his operation of the industrial plant he owns or making him handle the operation in a way that will allow her to be able to return to do business as before. This determination will be based on whether the operation Mr. Sahayko’s plant constitute a nuisance under the laws of Florida.
Ernesto Miranda was a Mexican immigrant living in Phoenix, Arizona. Miranda was picked out of a police lineup by a woman who accused him of kidnapping and raping her. Police questioned Miranda for two hours until he confessed to the crimes. Police never told Miranda about his Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights during the interrogation. The case went to court and Miranda's confession was used against him. Miranda was convicted and sentenced to twenty to thirty years in prison. Miranda's attorney appealed to the Arizona Supreme Court, they affirmed. He then appealed to the United States Supreme Court and they decided to hear the case.
Phillips, Michael. "A Start-up, the Supreme Court, and the Future of TV." newyorker.com. The New Yorker, January 15, 2014. Web. January 15, 2014.
In the Matal v. Tam court case, the court settled certain aspects of the First Amendment law while it opened up new issues in trademark law. It is a challenge for the uninitiated to follow a coherent path through the court’s First Amendment. Tam and his band, The Slants, sought to register the band’s name with the U.S. Trademark Office. The Office denied the application because it found that the name would likely be disparaging towards “persons of Asian descent.” The office cited the Disparagement Clause of the Lanham Act of 1946, which prohibits trademarks that “[consist] of or [comprise] immoral, deceptive, or scandalous matter; or matter which may disparage or falsely suggest a connection with persons, living or dead, institutions, beliefs,
In your grievance filed at Lumley Unit, you are requesting an out of state transfer to Texas to be closer to your family. You further claim you are being tortured and harassed by ADC staff.
The term ‘Mabo’’, as described in media reports refers to all the issues concerning the Australian High Court Judgment in the Mabo against Queensland Case. The Mabo decision was named after Eddie Mabo, a Torres Strait islander who regarded the Australian Law on land ownership wrong and challenged the Australian legal system. Eddie Mabo was born on the 29th of June 1936 on Murray Island. Murray Island is between mainland Australia and Papua New Guinea. In his early days of childhood, at the age of 16, Mabo was banished from Murray Island for breaking a customary law and moved to Queensland, where he worked various jobs such as a deck hand and cane cutter. At the age of 23 he married Bonita Nehow and settled in Townsville and had ten children. In Townsville he was a spokesperson for the Torres Strait Islander community and was involved in the Torres Strait islander advancement league. While working as a groundskeeper on James Cook University in 1974, he discovered that his people’s traditional land was actually owned by the government.
The Australian Legal System has a rich and detailed history dating from 1066. Law is made in Parliament. We have four sources of law and three courts with different jurisdictions that interpret the law when giving out justice. Important doctrines act as the corner-stones of our legal system. There is a procedure in the courts for making appeals. Separation of powers exists between officials in the courts, the parliament and the Executive. Everyone in Australia is treated equally under the Rule of Law, no matter their office or status. The Law is always changing as society changes, but it can never be perfect and cannot please everyone.