Law Commons^™

Buskers Enrich Our Streets And Laws Dont Have To Hinder They Can Help, Luke Mcnamara, Julia Quilter

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

Street performers have been part of cityscapes for centuries, yet buskers have often had an ambiguous relationship with the law. At various times they have been policed as “beggars in disguise,” or treated as an urban nuisance.

Review Of The Effectiveness Of The 1.30am Lock Outs, 3am Cessation Of Liquor Sales, 10pm Take-Away Liquor Laws And The Annual Liquor Licence Fee Program, Julia Quilter, Luke J. Mcnamara

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

No abstract provided.

New Laws For The High Seas: Four Key Issues The Un Talks Need To Tackle, Harriet Harden-Davies, Genevieve Quirk, Robin M. Warner

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

United Nations negotiations begin today in New York on the elements of an international agreement to govern the conservation and sustainable use of the high seas.

The Impact Of Section 18c And Other Civil Anti-Vilification Laws In Australia, Luke J. Mcnamara, Katharine Gelber

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

This paper reports on the findings of a large scale study of the impact of anti-vilification (or ‘hate speech’) laws,1 on public discourse in Australia over more than two decades.2 Its scope includes, but is not limited to s 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth). We investigated the ways in which legislation might have affected public discourse over time. Our task was methodologically challenging, for connecting changes in public discourse to the introduction or enforcement of hate speech laws is fraught with difficulty. We triangulated data from a range of primary and secondary sources, to investigate the relationship …

Explainer: How Do Australia's Laws On Hate Speech Work In Practice?, Luke Mcnamara, Katharine Gelber

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

The Abbott government’s intention to amend national racist hate speech law has reignited a debate that has raged in Australia for decades: is there a place for laws that condemn public conduct that is likely to cause harm or generate ill-feeling towards racial minorities?

It’s an important question, and diverse views should be ventilated.

But the grand claims made from both corners – that hate speech laws have no place in a democracy, or that they are a valuable way of protecting minorities – are rarely backed up with evidence. This is unfortunate and unnecessary. Today, more than 20 years …

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, …

Blending Fairness And Efficiency: An Analysis Of Its Desirability In The Context Of Insider Trading Laws In Australia, Afroza Begum

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

Purpose - The regulatory approach to insider trading (IT) in Australia is premised on a "blend" of fairness and efficiency which has generated an important controversy. The study aims to investigate this controversy by critically analysing the way the policy maker and judiciary have been striving to accomplish the regulatory goals based on this blend.

Design/methodology/ approach - This research is based on existing primary and secondary legal resources.

Findings - Regulation of insider trading (IT) with an appropriate enforcement mechanism has become an important issue in Australia. As part of this, a range of legal studies have unveiled significant …

Review Of Robert G. Vaughn, The Successes And Failures Of Whistleblower Laws, Brian Martin

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

Whistleblower laws are a source of both hope and frustration. When whistleblowers suffer reprisals, as so many of them do, the solution is widely assumed to be legal protection. When journalists ring me about whistleblowing matters, they frequently ask about whistleblower laws, assuming they are more important than anything else. However, many whistleblowers have learned to their dismay that legal protection looks much better on paper than it pans out in reality.

For two decades, members of Whistleblowers Australia have pushed for whistleblower laws, and at the same time have been persistent critics of the weaknesses of the laws on …

Unprecedented Factory Fire Of Tazreen Fashions In Bangladesh: Revisiting Bangladeshi Labour Laws In Light Of Their Equivalents In Australia, S M. Solaiman

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

Right to life is a core human right, but workers' lives seem to be dreadfully cheap in Bangladesh. This is so because the government appears to be complacent by offering a small amount of money to the families of victims of fires at garment factories and collapses of factory buildings. Previously, at least 1,000 workers have been killed in garment factories alone in Bangladesh from 1990 to 2012, ironically, all went unpunished. Recently, the devastating fire at Tazreen Fashions Ltd. which killed 112 in November 2012 and, just a few months apart, the horrifying collapse of Rana Plaza which housed …

Making Sausages And Law: The Failure Of Animal Welfare Laws To Protect Both Animals And Fundamental Tenets Of Australia's Legal System, Elizabeth J. Ellis

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

Laws are like sausages. It is better not to see them being made.

The above aphorism, attributed to Bismarck, was quoted by Philip Ruddock when addressing lawyers in 2007 on the subject of law reform. Interestingly, Mr Ruddock also referred to the rule of law in the same speech. Apparently the juxtaposition of the rule of law with a preference for secret law-making did not strike the (then) federal Attorney-General as odd. Perhaps this is unsurprising: the rule of law is commonly invoked for effect and may be used for a multitude of purposes. For this, and other reasons, the …

Applying Australian Laws To Seize Illegally Harvested Logs From Indonesia (Wuhan Colloquium 2009), Gregory L. Rose

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

Outline:

Transnational organised crime

Environmental crime linkages

Logging case study

Transnational enforcement

Investor Protection And Civil Liabilities For Defective Prospectuses: Bangladeshi Laws Compared With Their Equivalents In India And Malaysia, S M. Solaiman

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

The Bangladesh securities market came into being in 1954, but it still remains in its infancy. The Disclosure-Based Regulation (DBR), a regulatory regime useful for the developed securities markets, was adopted in January 1999 for an embryonic securities market in Bangladesh by discarding the previous merit regulation. The new philosophy came into effect without any significant changes being made in the old legal and regulatory framework of initial public offerings (IPOs).