Is it fair to tobacco retailers for the ACT Government to pay 15-year-old ‘spies’ to encourage cigarette sales to minors? What effect will a cross-examination grilling in court have on the young double-agents? CLA Director Anthony Williamson studied the…
CLA’s submission on the Australian Law Reform Commission’s legal privilege discussion paper supports a number of the draft proposals, and stresses how important the status of the privilege is as a fundamental human right. Given that, there would be few c…
Virginia Hausseger’s summary of what happens in a rape trial was accurate except when she says that the victim will be questioned about her sexual history and number of partners and that the jurors will therefore draw from that a view about her morality.…
Shame on football club management and sponsors of the AFL who frequently ignore totally the presumption of innocence. A most popular athlete was charged and, before he even went to court, he was sacked.
How come Ben Cousins is sacked before a court of l…
Belgian sociologist Jean-Claude Paye believes David Hicks’ treatment by America and Australia has ramifications far beyond a simple nine months jail term. Hicks’ rendition from Afghanistan and detention in Guantanamo – as well as his subsequent local jai…
The Speaker of the Tasmanian House of Assembly, Mr Polley, is trying to ban someone from Parliament and its precincts for six months…but it appears he doesn’t have the power to do so and, if he did have, he’s chosen the wrong premiss.
Speaker Mic…
Australia needs an independent selection process for judges, former High Court Chief Justice Sir Gerard Brennan said during a Senate lecture series address in August 2007. The move would avoid the appointment of ‘judicial clones’ who would do the govern…
Attorney-General Ruddock is criticising lawyers and civil libertarians who are championing the rule of law in Australia, and supporting an Immigration Minister who is denying the presumption of innocence and a police force leaking against all the rules o…
A Minister with a track record of not respecting democratically-enacted law has spat in the face of the judiciary by locking up, by his own bureaucratic decision, a man freed on bail earlier the same day by a magistrate. Zimbabwe? A Middle Eastern dictat…
Australia should not give police or security information to Indonesia without a guarantee that it will not lead to people being shot to death under Indonesia’s capital punishment laws, CLA’s submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties says.…
