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Recovering and Reporting Australia's Early Colonial Case Law: The Macquarie Project

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 October 2011

Bruce Kercher
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Extract

When it was established in 1788, New South Wales became the most remote, and most peculiar, of the British empire's overseas colonies. The founding colony of what would eventually become Australia, it was established as a penal colony, a place to send the unwanted criminals of Britain and Ireland. Britain lost more than the majority of its North American possessions in the late eighteenth century. It also lost its principal repository for unwanted felons. New South Wales filled the gap.

Type
The LHR Electronic Resource Page
Information
Law and History Review , Volume 18 , Issue 3 , Fall 2000 , pp. 659 - 666
Copyright
Copyright © the American Society for Legal History, Inc. 2000

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References

1. Seer R. v. Wedge (1976) 1 New South Wales Law Reports 581 at 584; Wik Peoplesv. State of Queensland (1996) 187 CLR at 181.

2. The manuscript version of the Judgment was recently published in (1998) 3 Australian Indigenous Law Reporter 414.

3. See R.v. v. Lowe, 1827 (published at www.law.mq.edu.au/scnsw); R. v. Ballard, 1829 (published at the same location and in [1998] 3 Australian Indigenous Law Reporter 412; R. v. Bonjon, 1841 [1998] 3 Australian Indigenous Law Reporter 417).

4. Reserved and Equity Judgments of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, Delivered during the Year 1845. See Castles, A. C., Annotated Bibliography of Printed Materials on Australian Law, 1788–1900 (Sydney: Law Book Co., 1994).Google Scholar

5. See SirForbes, Francis, Decisions of the Supreme Court of Judicature in Cases Connected with the Trade and Fisheries of Newfoundland, 1817–1821 (New South Wales: Mitchell Library), A 740Google Scholar; see also Kercher, Bruce, “Law Reports in a Non-Colony and a Penal Colony,” Dalhousie Law Review 19 (1996): 417–24.Google Scholar

6. The material is published at three locations. The Macquarie University site (www.law.mq.edu.au/scnsw) has a very detailed subject index to the cases. The Butterworths site is at online.butterworths.com.au. Both it and the Austlii site (www.austlii.edu.au/au/special/nswsc/pre1900) include a full text search facility.

7. See R. V. Blue, 1824.

8. Hart v. Bowman, 1828.

9. From 1828, this was in statutory form: (1828) 9 Geo. 4 c. 83, s. 24.

10. Miscellaneous Correspondence Relating to Aborigines, State Records of New South Wales, 5/1161 at 239.

11. His story was recently retold in Hirst, W., Great Escapes by Convicts in Colonial Australia (Kangaroo Press, 1999), chapter 2.Google Scholar