When draconian new laws are developed in haste by frightened governments reacting to international criminals, society depends on the thin red line of its judges for the delivery of real justice. One of the great jurists, who helped advance human rights w…
How much is the internet altering the relationship between society and justice? The Chief Justices of Australia are grappling with this major dilemma as they strive to formulate a national basis for the reporting, recording and archiving of court decisio…
=The first shot in the next round of achieving a bill of rights for Australia is heard in Canberra just as a new parliament settles in. Prof George Williams outlines where he sees the debate going next in the 2010 Alice Tay lecture at ANU. Read article »…
Every police patrol in the NT will carry at least one stun gun by Christmas, with 100 new weapons taking the NT Police total to 230. In 2009, Kwementyaye Rubuntja, 39, died from heart failure after being stunned twice in Alice Springs. The NT coroner fou…
As the Actor represents Everyman, so Paul Hogan represents us all over the bureaucratic inequities of oppressive legality and secrecy laws in Australia. He is now locked in the debtor’s prison the nation is becoming, reverting to its penal role two centu…
In a recent series of articles, The Economist queries the sanity of the USA locking away more and more people in jails, some for almost unbelievable ‘crimes’, at increasingly greater cost year by year. There are lessons here for Australia.Crime and p…
The processes of an almost ‘secret’ Senate Select Committee on Reform of the Australian Federation (SCRAF) should re-start completely, CLA says. SCRAF’s inquiry was totally swamped by the August 2010 federal election: the questions asked of the committee…
CLA asked 10 questions of parties (and some independents) standing for the 2010 federal election. Here are the replies of those who took the trouble to respond.Cartoon: thanks to Inkcinct, John Ditchburn – click to enlarge.Read more »…
Despite adequate resources and general goodwill, ‘significant improvement’ continues to elude Indigenous Australians, even in the national capital, Aboriginal Justice leader Brendan Church writes. He provides a 10-point list of ways improvement is possib…
Victoria adopts automatic enrolmentThe Victorian Legislative Council has passed the Electoral Amendment (Electoral Participation) Bill 2010, which introduces automatic electoral enrolment for all school students on their eighteenth birthdays, and allows election-day enrolment for everyone…