The relationship between courts and social change can be viewed from at least two perspectives. The first, frequently explored in the literature, invites consideration of how courts respond to social change, real or apparent. The second directs attention to whether the courts themselves can bring about social change.

The role of student-edited law reviews and whether or not they have a future has been the subject of controversy for many decades.

When Justice Michael Kirby published a defence of law reviews a few years ago, he said: ‘To justify a new journal, the publisher must offer something that current journals do not provide. As well, law schools, proliferating in such number, need to differentiate their products.’

From 1935 when Melbourne University Law School commenced to publish Res Judicatae, which became the Melbourne University Law Review in 1957, until today when there are almost 30 university law reviews, the Federal Law Review is the only one that identified a specialist field from the outset. In 1964 it became the seventh university law review following Melbourne, Queensland, Western Australia, Sydney, Tasmania and Adelaide. Sir Kenneth Bailey, then Solicitor-General of the Commonwealth in a Foreword to the first issue of the review emphasised the distinctive contribution that the focus of attention on federal matters would make to Australian legal literature.

The relationship of the King to the persons who actually perform the work of government has changed profoundly over the last 250 years. The purpose of this article is to analyse those changes and to analyse how the common law reacted (or failed to react) to them.

For this purpose I propose first to consider the structure of English government in about 1750. Although the structure was already evolving into a more modern form, in 1750 it was still a relatively simple governmental structure based upon a sovereign Monarch and upon public officers, many of them in regional areas.

At that time the common law clearly distinguished between the Monarch and his officers. Although the extent and importance of the various legal powers and immunities of the Monarch are now often overstated, the Monarch did possess special powers and immunities which reflected or, at least, were derived from his sovereignty.

This article will attempt to identify and define those constitutional principles, derived from the doctrine of the separation of powers, which govern the relationship between Parliament and the Chapter III courts in the precise situation where Parliament purports to amend the law which is applicable in pending legal proceedings (whether they are awaiting first instance hearing, or are on appeal). Arguably, these principles are also applicable in circumstances where proceedings are being contemplated, but have yet to be commenced. The fundamental enquiry is whether the separation of judicial power in Chapter III of the Commonwealth Constitution places limitations on the legislative competence of Parliament to affect the resolution of legal issues in the pending case. This issue has been the subject of greater judicial and academic scrutiny in the United States, providing considerable assistance in defining relevant constitutional limitations applicable in Australia. It is the aim of this article to undertake a detailed examination of the United States position to assist in the appreciation and development of principle in Australia.

There has been renewed interest in the constitutional dimensions of choice of law. This interest was reignited by the High Court’s decision in John Pfeiffer Pty Ltd v Rogerson, where the Court appealed to ‘constitutional factors’ as guiding the selection of the lex loci delicti as a common law choice of law rule in intra-national tort cases. While the central importance of the overarching constitutional framework to intra-national choice of law questions may be accepted, the High Court struggled to identify with precision the relevance of constitutional provisions and implications for the choice of law inquiry. In particular, it failed to respond adequately to concerns expressed in earlier majority judgments about the continued capacity of State legislatures to direct their courts as to the legal standards to be applied in a case involving out-of-state elements. Because of the fact pattern that arose in Pfeiffer, the High Court was able to avoid the more difficult questions that arise in intra-national choice of law cases, particularly the question of which legal standards apply when there is an ‘inconsistency’ between two or more State legislative provisions.

On 10 April 2005 Justice Bradley Selway died. He was 50. For those who knew and worked with Brad, as he was universally known, this was crushing news. Like many I came across Brad through a shared interest in public law, an area in which he excelled, and like many a professional interaction it turned into a cherished friendship.

My first meeting with Brad was when he agreed to chair a continuing legal education seminar in Adelaide on section 90 of the Constitution. As an inexperienced academic I was nervous and clearly portrayed that lack of confidence. He, as was his way, calmed the situation by reminding all that he should be the nervous one having just lost the States $5 billion with the High Court’s decision in Ha v New South Wales.

The early cases on the Australian territories approached them not as constituent parts of the Commonwealth, but as subordinate to it, with the result that the territories power, s 122 of the Constitution, was held to be unaffected by other constitutional provisions. Most strikingly, Ch III of the Constitution was wholly inapplicable to the courts and judicial proceedings of the territories. Even the important doctrine that Ch III is exhaustive of the judicial power of the Commonwealth did not restrict the Parliament’s power to confer appellate jurisdiction on the High Court under s 122.

In more recent cases, majorities of the High Court have adopted a more cohesive approach which considers s 122 in the context of the Commonwealth Constitution as a whole. The view that the territories are disjoined from the Commonwealth is no longer tenable, if it ever was.

The ‘free trade’ provision in Australia’s Constitution, section 92, remains partially uncharted territory, both as to its practical operation and its doctrinal underpinnings. Section 92 is presently understood as a non-discrimination norm. While interpretation has cleaved the norm into two distinct strands, this article addresses only one of those, that concerning protectionist discrimination against interstate trade or commerce. Although there are many outstanding issues regarding this norm’s operation in particular settings – for instance its operation upon the Commonwealth and its ramifications for export controls – I will not be exploring those frontiers here. Rather, my interest is in the established core of the protectionist discrimination principle and the soundness of its doctrinal underpinnings. I will focus in this article upon a crucial missing piece in our contemporary picture of section 92’s make up, specifically, the relationship between legislative purpose and practical effect in the identification of protectionist discrimination.

Patents are growing in importance. Patenting rates worldwide have increased significantly in recent years: between 1992 and 2002, the number of patent applications in Europe, Japan and the US increased by more than 40 per cent. Patent coverage has also been extended to include new kinds of inventions, like genetic technologies, software, and business methods. A wider range of participants are also using patents, with universities being encouraged to increase their patenting activity. And there has been a dramatic increase in patent litigation, at least in the US. These facts have given rise to international debate on the costs and benefits of the patent system and how its effectiveness in encouraging innovation might be improved.

To inform these debates, policymakers have called for more hard data on how the system is actually working in practice. Enforcement forms an important part of how the patent system ‘works’. Patents are designed to encourage innovation by providing innovators with legal protection against expropriation of their innovative products and processes by third parties.

Much is made of Australia’s isolation as the only nation in the common law world without a comprehensive statutory or constitutional scheme for human rights protection. Yet, for all their paucity in Australian legislation, human rights seem, at times, to be everywhere in contemporary Australian legal and political discourse. According to two commentators writing in 1999, ‘the [Australian] judiciary [has become] more conscious of rights, and more willing to give effect to them where possible.’ The same commentators went on to urge ‘reconsideration’ of ’the training and patterns of thought of [Australian] lawyers … so that they may be better equipped to think, reason and argue in terms of rights.’ In April 2004, Australia’s Human Rights Commissioner, Dr Sev Ozdowski, sounded a familiar note in contending: ‘if Australian courts were able to interpret a domestically developed code of civil rights, in time this Australian jurisprudence would contribute to better international understanding of our way of life’.

The central purpose of this article is to test the assumption that constitutional cases generally produce a heightened level of disagreement amongst the members of the High Court. In addition to extra-judicial statements indicating that is so, there are a number of theoretical and pragmatic reasons why we would expect greater individuality in the delivery of constitutional judgments than might be observed in other areas. However, there has not been an empirical study of the Court’s behaviour in these cases which is of sufficient longitudinal scope so as to verify this suspicion, no matter how compelling the arguments or anecdotal impressions.

This study attempts to overcome that deficiency. In order to do so, it adopts the following structure. In Part II, the hypothesis under examination will be stated with consideration of the reasons currently given for its acceptance. In Part III, the methodology employed to test the hypothesis will be set out. In Part IV, results of the study will be presented with accompanying analysis. In the concluding Part, the findings of the study will be summed up and possible directions for future research will be suggested.

This article examines the conduct of empirical legal research and its relationship to law reform. Through a detailed analysis of the largest survey of State and federal judges conducted in Australia it explores some of the limits to empirical investigation, particularly the tendency to rely primarily on judicial perspectives as the basis for law reform. Focusing upon empirical legal research on the subject of expert evidence the article initially examines research methodologies, then extends the analysis to consider the correspondence between the collection, interpretation and presentation of empirical data and recommendations for legal change. This involves an assessment of a broad range of methodological and theoretical issues with implications extending well beyond the particular survey. Last, the empirical research on expert evidence will be evaluated using the principal reform proposal suggested by the investigators. This exercise will provide an indication of methodological problems which beset the survey and demonstrate practical limitations with the particular approach to expertise.

This article provides an overview of the developments in 2004 regarding the constitutional freedom of political communication. This will be done through a discussion of the cases of Coleman v Power and Mulholland v Australian Electoral Commission. These two cases have confirmed the validity of the general propositions in Lange v Australian Broadcasting Corporation, regarding the existence of a freedom of political communication implied from the Australian Constitution, and provide the basis for some observations with respect to that implication. In this article an overview is given of the basic principles in Lange, followed by a detailed discussion of relevant parts of the judgments in Coleman and Mulholland. This article ends with analysis of some of the issues raised by the cases.

The Administrative Decisions (Judicial Review) Act 1977 (Cth) (‘ADJR Act’) provides for judicial review based on decisions ‘to which this Act applies’. Persons aggrieved by ‘a decision to which this Act applies’, conduct engaged in for the purpose of making a decision to which this Act applies, or a failure to make a decision to which this Act applies are able to apply to the Federal Court for an order for review. ‘[D]ecision to which this Act applies’ is defined as a ‘decision of an administrative character, made … under an enactment’. Other similar statutory schemes providing for judicial review also rely on showing that there was or will be a decision made ‘under an enactment’. The High Court decision in Griffith University v Tang is the most recent to consider the meaning of this phrase.

The last two decades have witnessed a colossal struggle between the government and the courts over judicial supervision of executive decisions with respect to migration. The struggle culminated in February 2003 with the High Court decision in Plaintiff S157/2002 v Commonwealth concerning the privative clause in the Migration Act 1958 (Cth) (‘the Act’). While upholding its constitutional validity, the Court rendered the privative clause effectively redundant by ruling it incapable of protecting decisions involving jurisdictional error.

In most cases, the employment relationship is capable of withstanding some friction and doubts … It may be difficult or embarrassing for an employer to be required to re-employ a person the employer believed guilty of a wrongdoing. The requirement may cause inconvenience to the employer. … The problems will be of the employer’s own making. If the employer is of even average fair-mindedness, they are likely to prove short-lived.

Laws imposing taxation shall deal only with the imposition of taxation, and any provision therein dealing with any other matter shall be of no effect.