Law Commons^™

"Bush Law 101": Realising Place And Conscious Pedagogy In The Law Curriculum, Amanda Kennedy, Trish Mundy, Jennifer Nielsen

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

In 2012, a team of academics from six universities worked on an OLT-funded project, ‘Rethinking Law Curriculum: developing strategies to prepare law graduates for practice in rural and regional Australia’. The project was motivated by the declining proportion of lawyers being attracted to and remaining in practice in rural and regional Australia. The main outcome of the project was an open education resource designed to sensitise students to the realities of the rural and regional legal practice context in the form of a customisable curriculum package that can be embedded as components within existing units of study, or developed as …

The Definition And Significance Of 'Intoxication' In Australian Criminal Law: A Casestudy Of Queensland's 'Safe Night Out' Legislation, Julia Quilter, Luke J. Mcnamara, Kate Seear, Robin Room

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Australian criminal law is being actively reconfigured in an effort to produce a more effective response to the problem of alcohol-related violence. This article uses the Safe Night Out Legislation Amendment Act 2014 (Qld) as a case study for two purposes: i) to introduce a set of conceptual tools and typologies that can be used to investigate the relationship between 'intoxication' and criminal law; and ii) to raise a number of concerns about how the effects of alcohol and other drugs are implicated in laws governing police powers, criminal responsibility and punishment. We draw attention to the different and sometimes …

Impact Of The “Nirbhaya” Rape Case: Isolated Phenomenon Or Social Change?, Tina P. Lapsia

Honors Scholar Theses

In December 2012, a twenty-three year old college student, who was given the pseudonym “Nirbhaya” (“fearless”), was fatally gang-raped on a private bus in Delhi, India, galvanizing the country to swiftly adopt new legislative measures and catapulting the issue of violence against women in India into the international spotlight. Although assault and rape cases have made India infamous for its high volume of crimes against women, the reaction to this particular incident was much different from before. This paper investigates whether the governmental and societal responses represent social change, as indicated by changing attitudes towards violence against women in India. …

"'The Law’S The Law, Right?' Sexual Minority Mothers Navigating Legal Inequities And Inconsistencies.”, Emily Kazyak

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

LGB parents face a number of legal inequities and confront a legal landscape that not only varies drastically by state but also quickly changes. Research has shown that some LGB parents and prospective parents have inaccurate knowledge about the laws relating to parenting. Drawing on data from 21 interviews, I ask how sexual minority mothers gain knowledge about the law. I found that people were very aware of the legal inequities they face and sought to become knowledgeable about the law before they had children. Sexual minority mothers reported using four primary methods to learn about the law: doing independent …

Anti-Zionism In The Courts Is Not Kosher Law, Gregory L. Rose

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

A German court in Wuppertal held last month that an arson attack on a synagogue causing fire damage was not anti-Semitism but political expression. Also in February, five youths who vandalised 300 Jewish graves and a Holocaust monument in Alsace, France, claimed that the action was not motivated by anti-Semitism.

In general, an attack specifically targeting Chinese would be considered anti-Chinese. Only in an exceptional case, it might not be. Why is the exceptional case becoming the rule for Jews, so that targeting Jews as a group is generally not anti-Jewish but “political”?

Legal artifice is being constructed to make …

Questioning Law’S Capacity, Fleur Beaupert, Linda Roslyn Steele

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

The past ten years have witnessed an increased public awareness of the marginalisation and discrimination experienced by people with disability in the Australian legal system, and an associated proliferation of law reform reports on disability law.

The Refugee Limbo: Negotiating The Bar Of Australian Law, Benjamin Hightower

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Often refugees and asylum seekers are said to be in some sort of limbo: physical, social, and/or legal. This article picks apart the limbo-concept through the expanded metaphor of the Limbo dance; a performance that illustrates an ‘inner history’ that evolved from the conditions aboard the slave ships of the Middle Passage. ‘Playing‘ the Limbo allows the experiences of the slaves to be reenacted: due to the limited space and terrible conditions, slaves had to arch their backs in order to fit inside the ship’s hulls. They had to remain limber or limba before they could re-emerge on the other …

The Moral Choice Of Infamous: Law And Morality In Video Games, Michael Barnett, Cassandra E. Sharp

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

With increasing capacity for real-life simulation, high definition graphics, and complex interactive narrativity, video games now offer a high level of sophisticated engagement for players, which contribute significantly to their widespread popular support. As an extremely prevalent sub-culture of new media, they also provoke jurisprudential investigations. This article acknowledges the culturally constructed nature of playing video games, and helps to explore the normative expectations of law that might be facilitated by the narrative structures inherent within the game itself. It does so by exploring one game series within this framework and asks what meaning can be transformed about issues of …

Through The Looking Glass: The Framing Of Law Through Popular Imagination, Cassandra E. Sharp

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

It has been 150 years since the first publication of Lewis Carroll’s acclaimed children’s fiction Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,2 and it remains a book that is appreciated widely across culture for its unique representation of the world. Indeed, the enduring quality of both Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass,3 is evident in the way they have inspired creations of art, theatrical performances,4 judicial decision-making,5 cinematic portrayals,6 videogame plot development,7 and of course, the desire for adventure.

The Rise Of The Global South, The Imf And The Future Of Law And Development, Gabriel Garcia

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Following the onset of the Asian Financial Crisis the world has witnessed a re-accommodation of the global financial system. In the particular case of middle-income countries they have disentangled themselves from the conditionality of the IMF and grown into more assertive actors in international forums, proposing new alternative mechanisms to become more financially independent and for the provision of development assistance. This article critically reviews the new reality by assessing the strategies deployed by developing countries to reduce the IMF's influence, and explores the potential consequences of the rise of middle-income nations for Law and Development.

Capitalism, Regulation Theory And Australian Labour Law: Towards A New Theoretical Model, Brett Heino

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

This article employs the methodology of the Parisian regulation approach to periodise Australian capitalism into distinct models of development. Within such models, labour law plays a key role in articulating the abstract capitalist need to commodify labour-power with the concrete realities of class struggle. Given the differential ordering of social contradictions and the distinct relationship of social forces within the fabric of each model of development, such formations will crystallise distinct regimes of labour law. This is demonstrated by a study of the two successive models of development that have characterised Australian political economy since the post-Second World War era: …

Facilitating The Participation Of Children In Family Law Processes, Felicity Bell

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

This Discussion Paper was prepared as part of a larger research project, Facilitating the Participation of Children in Family Law Processes, being conducted by the Centre for Children and Young People at Southern Cross University in partnership with Legal Aid NSW.

Institutional Influences On The Parameters Of Criminalisation: Parliamentary Scrutiny Of Criminal Law Bills In New South Wales, Luke J. Mcnamara, Julia Quilter

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Within criminalisation scholarship, there has been little engagement with the work of ‘real-world’ mechanisms for promoting principled law-making, like the activities of parliamentary scrutiny committees. This article reports on an examination of the New South Wales (‘NSW’) Legislation Review Committee’s findings and recommendations in relation to all criminal law bills during the period 2010–12 and assesses the impact of the Committee’s recommendations on the passage of bills through the NSW Parliament. It considers whether the potential for scrutiny committees to play an effective role in delineating the legitimate boundaries of criminalisation is realised in practice.

New Media, Censorship And Gender: Using Obscenity Law To Restrict Online Self-Expression In Japan And China, Mark J. Mclelland

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

The widespread take-up of Internet technologies from the mid-1990s has proven challenging to nation states that seek to limit access to ideas, information or images that the political class considers dangerous or inappropriate for the general population. As a largely deterritorialized technology, the Internet allows access to material that circumvents national legislatures and ignores local ratings systems and in so doing facilitates all kinds of inter-cultural and transnational flows of communication. Different countries have different sensitivities regarding the kinds of material that should not be freely available to their citizens and although the entry of such material is closely scrutinized …

How Law Shapes Experiences Of Parenthood For Same-Sex Couples, Nicholas K. Park, Emily Kazyak, Kathleen S. Slauson-Blevins

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Gay, lesbian, and bisexual (GLB) parents are increasingly common and visible, but they face a number of social and legal barriers in the United States. Using legal consciousness as a theoretical framework, we draw on data from 51 interviews with GLB parents in California and Nebraska to explore how laws impact experiences of parenthood. Specifically, we address how the legal context influences three domains: the methods used to become parents, decisions about where to live, and experiences of family recognition. Law and perception of the law make some pathways to parenthood difficult or unattainable depending on state of residence. Parents …

Shelby County V. Holder - Brief Contextualized, Mark W. Wolfe

Student Publications

This paper begins with three major factors that set the stage for Shelby: first, a history of the VRA; second, an overview of Northwest Austin with a focus on how it led directly to Shelby; and finally, Shelby County’s motivations for bringing the suit. An examination of racial demographics compared to statistics on voter registration and minority officeholders in Alabama and Louisiana—two states originally subject to preclearance—follows in light of the Court’s claims on the matter. A conclusion will take a brief look at laws passed since Shelby with an eye towards a future critique. [excerpt]

Regulation Theory And Australian Labour Law: From Antipodean Fordism To Liberal-Productivism, Brett Heino

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

This paper employs the methodology of the Parisian Regulation Approach to periodise Australian political economy into distinct models of development. Within such models, labour law plays a key role in articulating the abstract capitalist need to commodify labour-power with the concrete realities of class struggle. Given the differential ordering of social contradictions and the distinct relationship of social forces within the fabric of each model of development, such formations will crystallise distinct regimes of labour law. This is demonstrated by a study of the two successive models of development which characterised Australian political economy since the post-World War II era; …

Theatrical Jurisprudence And The Imaginary Lives Of Law In Pre-1945 Australia, Marett Leiboff

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

If there is anything like an imagined pre-1945 past in Australia, it is one steeped in an Anglophone legal ascendancy. But this is an imaginary past in so many ways. Non-British Europeans came to Australia long before 1945. These earlier Europeans were marked by differences of voice and face, but were eager British subjects, as likely to actively take advantage of law as they were to be subjected to its strictures. By theatricalising their ordinary and extraordinary legal lives through archive and memory, we are reminded that there is more to law of the South than formal accounts which have …

Planning For Offshore Co2 Storage: Law And Policy In The United Kingdom, Ben Milligan

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

‘Offshore CO2 storage’ refers to the injection of liquefied CO2 into deep geological formations beneath the seabed (e.g.depleted oil and gas reservoirs, and saline aquifers) for the purpose of storing it there on a permanent basis. The storage in this manner of captured CO2 emissions from industria linstallations and power plants has attracted considerable scientific and technical interest as a potential mitigation response to climate change. A key issue facing policymakers in several countries is how to reconcile policy commitments to develop offshore CO2 storage with other competing – and potentially conflicting – uses of the marine environment. With a …

Submission To United Nations Committee On The Rights Of Persons With Disabilities Draft General Comment On Article 12 – Equal Recognition Before The Law, Fleur Beaupert, Linda Roslyn Steele

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

We support the Draft General Comment on Article 12 – Equal Recognition Before the Law (‘Draft General Comment’). Our submission is primarily concerned with drawing the Committee’s attention to issues around mental capacity. We argue that despite the Committee’s urging in the Draft General Comment for a split between legal capacity and mental capacity, mental capacity (and the related disciplines, professions, institutions and practices of psychology, psychiatry and neuropsychology through which mental capacity is defined and assessed) will continue to have cultural and material significance to the realisation of article 12 and the human rights of people with disability generally. …

D.H. Lawrence's Plural Jurisprudence: An Enquiry Into Desmond Manderson's Post-Positivist 'Law And Literature', Luis Gomez Romero

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

The border means more than a customs house, a passport officer, a man with a gun. Over there everything is going to be different; life is never going to be quite the same again after your passport has been stamped and you find yourself speechless among the money-changers.

Graham Greene, The Lawless Roads

This article draws on Desmond Manderson's theorisation of ‘law and literature’ in order to undertake a jurisprudential reading of the last two ‘leadership novels’ that D.H. Lawrence published in the 1920s: Kangaroo and The Plumed Serpent. This reading demonstrates the strengths and weaknesses in Manderson's methodology while …

The Law Of The Sea And Commercial Ships In The Search For Mh370, Stuart Kaye

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

The first ship to reach the area of Indian ocean being searched for the missing flight MH370 is the Norwegian commercial car carrier, the Höegh St Petersburg.

At the request of the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA), the ship diverted its voyage from Mauritius to Melbourne and searched for debris with spotlights overnight.

Customary international law has long recognised that all mariners have a duty to come to the assistance of individuals in distress on the sea.

While the duty is not absolute - in the sense an individual is not required to risk their own life - maritime law …

Conserving Marine Biodiversity In The Global Marine Commons: Co-Evolution And Interaction With The Law Of The Sea, Robin Warner

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

As global shipping intensifies and technological advances provide more opportunities to access the resources of the high seas and the deep seabed beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ), the catalogue of threats to the marine environment and its biodiversity increase commensurately. Beyond these threats, new and emerging uses of ABNJ including more intrusive marine scientific research, bio-prospecting, deep seabed mining and environmental modification activities to mitigate the effects of climate change have the potential to harm the highly interconnected and sensitive ecosystems of the open ocean and the deep seabed if not sustainably managed now and into the future. Modern conservation norms …

One-Punch Laws, Mandatory Minimums And 'Alcohol-Fuelled' As An Aggravating Factor: Implications For Nsw Criminal Law, Julia Quilter

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

This article critically examines the New South Wales State Government's latest policy response to the problem of alcohol-related violence and anxiety about 'one punch' killings: the recently enacted Crimes and Other Legislation Amendment (Assault and Intoxication) Act 2014 (NSW). Based on an analysis of both the circumstances out of which it emerged, and the terms in which the new offences of assault causing death and assault causing death while intoxicated have been defined, I argue that the Act represents another example of criminal law 'reform' that is devoid of principle, produces a lack of coherence in the criminal law and, …

Dispute Settlement In The Law Of The Sea Convention And Territorial And Maritime Disputes In Southeast Asia: Issues, Opportunities, And Challenges, Lowell Bautista

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

The 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (LOSC) provides for a dispute settlement regime that establishes a compulsory and binding framework for the peaceful settlement of all ocean-related disputes. In Southeast Asia, despite the long-standing myriad of territorial and maritime disputes, there appears to be a general reluctance to utilize the dispute settlement provisions of LOSC. The region has very little experience in international litigation involving territorial and maritime disputes, and a reluctance to utilize the dispute settlement provisions of LOSC.While the LOSC legal framework offers some options, the highly complicated nature of the disputes in …

Educating Law Students For Rural And Regional Practice: Embedding Place Based Perspectives In Law Curricula, Amanda Kennedy, Trish Mundy, Jennifer Nielsen, Caroline Hart, Richard Coverdale, Reid Mortensen, Theresa Smith-Ruig, Claire Macken

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

The attraction and retention of professionals generally in rural and regional Australia is an on-going concern. Recent attention has focused upon the recruitment of lawyers and legal professionals to rural and regional areas, where the proportion of lawyers practising has steadily declined over the past twenty years. While the precise extent of the decline is difficult to assess, and the causes of recruitment and retention issues for lawyers in rural and regional areas are nuanced and can vary from region to region, it is clear that concern about attraction and retention is a national one. A national survey conducted in …

'Dred Scott V. Sandford' Analysis, Sarah E. Roessler

Student Publications

The Scott v. Sandford decision will forever be known as a dark moment in America's history. The Supreme Court chose to rule on a controversial issue, and they made the wrong decision. Scott v. Sandford is an example of what can happen when the Court chooses to side with personal opinion instead of what is right.

The Real Legal Realism, Michael S. Green

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

''Get Your Asphalt Off My Ancestors!'': Reclaiming Richmond's African Burial Ground, Mai-Linh Hong

Faculty Journal Articles

By treating spatial conflict as one way communities wrestle with the memory and legacy of slavery, this article unites critical landscape analysis, a tool of legal geography, with legal and cultural analysis and recent scholarship on African American reparations. A slave cemetery lay beneath a parking lot in Shockoe Bottom, a neighborhood of downtown Richmond that was once a major slave-trading hub. In recent years, controversy arose over the site’s use, generating racially charged local debate and two failed lawsuits seeking to preserve the site. This article examines the significance of the African Burial Ground controversy by analyzing its symbolic, …

Underwood, Warner Lewis, 1808-1872 (Sc 2678), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 2678. Letters of Warner Lewis Underwood of Bowling Green, Kentucky, written to his family from Texas, Washington, D. C., Scotland, and Frankfort, Kentucky. He writes to his wife of business and household matters,and of political affairs during his service in the Kentucky Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives. A letter to his son-in-law from Scotland, where Underwood was serving as consul, praises his Civil War service. Correspondence with his son discusses the younger Underwood’s law studies in Albany, New York.