Keywords: Mandatory Sentencing
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AUSTRALIA
- Frank Brennan
- 11 April 2014
1 Comment
'Whether or not we have a bill of rights, much of our human rights jurisprudence remains partial, failing to extend rights equally to all. Once we investigate much of the contemporary discussion about human rights, we find that often the intended recipients of rights do not include all human beings but only those with certain capacities or those who share sufficient common attributes with the decision makers. It is always at the edges that there is real work for human rights discourse to do.' Frank Brennan's Blackfriars Lecture
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AUSTRALIA
- Andrew Hamilton
- 06 February 2014
10 Comments
Alcohol has a privileged place in polite society. All mood changing substances rely on a myth of a better life and relationships, but the alcohol myth is distinctive because it is rooted in high as well as in popular culture. Attempts to regulate its consumption and limit the damage it does will therefore always be unlikely to succeed.
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INTERNATIONAL
- Ruby Hamad
- 03 February 2014
7 Comments
In a nation still divided bitterly along race lines, blacks, and to a lesser extent Hispanics, bear the brunt of America's prisons-for-profit program. The perils of mandatory sentencing should serve as a warning to NSW, which has announced mandatory minimum sentences as a response to alcohol-fuelled violence. The question is not which drug is more dangerous, but how society chooses to deal with each one and why.
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EDUCATION
- Frank Brennan
- 30 September 2013
Full text from Frank Brennan's lecture 'Law teachers as gatekeepers of law, public morality and human rights: Equipping our students for moral argument in a pluralistic legal environment' at the Australian Law Teachers Association Annual Conference 2013.
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AUSTRALIA
AFL footballer Liam Jurrah had his prison sentence for an assault conviction reduced to three months. Hopefully he will not be too harmed by his experience, and afterwards may be given the chance to recommence his football career. But the conditions confronting his cousins and brothers will not change. In the NT there is a troubling confluence between harsher penalties and increasing incarceration rates.
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AUSTRALIA
- Michael Mullins
- 06 June 2011
7 Comments
While Victorian Attorney-General Robert Clark pushes for tougher treatment of young offenders, his NSW counterpart Greg Smith is looking to Victoria's current 'enlightened' model, which favours early intervention over punishment.
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AUSTRALIA
- Fran Hogan
- 21 February 2011
3 Comments
I had anguished over a particular sentence which was the subject of days of media comment. One of my fellow judges stuck his head around the door and said, 'Neil Mitchell says you are right.' This I found unsettling. Then he added, 'But don't worry, Derryn Hinch says you are a disgrace.' Phew!
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RELIGION
- Frank Brennan
- 26 May 2008
1 Comment
The text is from Professor Frank Brennan's 2008 Institute of Justice Studies Oration from 22 May 2008.
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AUSTRALIA
- Tony Smith
- 14 November 2007
1 Comment
Occasionally individuals manage to defy the negative stereotypes and demonstrate that being a Member of Parliament need not destroy one’s personal integrity. The late Peter Andren, federal member for Calare from 1996 to 2007, was just such an exceptional representative.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
Terry Lane on The Andren Report.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
Paul Bourke reviews Joe Cinque’s consolation by Helen Garner
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INTERNATIONAL
- Kirsty Ruddock
- 29 April 2006
Is Australia’s intervention in the Solomon Islands healing the wounds of the tension?
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