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Keywords: High Court Judges

  • AUSTRALIA

    The High Court’s surrender to the Morrison-Dutton immigration detention regime

    • Frank Brennan
    • 24 June 2021
    11 Comments

    Who’d have thought that during Refugee Week, Australia’s highest court would endorse the Parliament’s view that our non-refoulement obligations under the Refugee Convention and the Convention Against Torture were now an irrelevance.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Rule of lucre

    • Martin Pike
    • 01 June 2021
    13 Comments

    The fact is that money still buys a better service from the legal system, and to claim otherwise is to throw out the most basic principles of an economy. After all, if there were no benefit to be gained from backing up a truck full of money and tipping 30 or 40 grand a day into a team of silks, junior barristers and top tier solicitors, why would those with the means do it? To argue the contrary beggars belief. And if the observation is accepted, what does that tell us about the rule of law?

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Lawsuits over climate crisis risk

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 30 July 2020
    2 Comments

    On July 22, Katta O'Donnell filed an action in the Federal Court in Victoria hoping to make good her promise to put the government on trial for ‘misconduct’. The action notes that, ‘At all material times there has existed a significant likelihood that the climate is changing, and will continue to change, as the result of anthropogenic influences.’ Australia was ‘materially exposed and susceptible’ to the risks posed by climate change.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    High Court decision on palace letters

    • Daniel Sleiman
    • 02 June 2020
    19 Comments

    Will former Governor General John Kerr's correspondence with the Queen shed light on what really happened in 1975? It may very well, and historians like Jenny Hocking were willing to challenge the National Archives of Australia's refusal to access such records in High Court.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Significant Federal Court win for Biloela Tamil family

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 24 April 2020
    7 Comments

    On 17 April 2020, the Federal Court ordered that Immigration had failed to comply with procedural fairness for the family. The case is known by the pseudonym XAD. The XAD case relied on significant legal principles going back to the M61 High Court decision of 2011.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The unfinished business of colonisation

    • Kate Galloway
    • 17 February 2020
    2 Comments

    Despite claims to the contrary, the decision in Love and Thoms affirms the standing of the common law, including the unassailable power of the Australian State to make and enforce law. It upholds the centuries-long common law principle of accommodation of Indigenous laws in a colonial context.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Indigenous is not alien, High Court decides

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 17 February 2020
    8 Comments

    At its heart, the question was whether an Indigenous Australian who was eligible for citizenship but had never formalised it could be regarded as an alien and therefore subject to removal. In a landmark judgment, a 4:3 majority of the Court found that Indigenous Australians were not aliens, even if they were not citizens.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Indonesian democracy is at a crossroads

    • Nicholas Bugeja
    • 02 July 2019
    7 Comments

    Indonesian democracy has proven resilient to challenge and made inroads into combatting problems that have beset the country for decades. But a crossroads approaches. A failure to manage religious radicalism and intolerance, corruption, and other social tensions may imperil or destabilise this democratic epoch.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Challenges to respect in the Kavanaugh case

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 17 October 2018
    4 Comments

    The charge brought against Kavanaugh invites reflection on what past actions and allegations should disqualify a person from holding public office. And in a society where increasingly traces of our past actions will be indelibly recorded, what scope should there be for remission and wiping the slate clean of past offences?

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  • ECONOMICS

    Trump's thuggery is changing world finance

    • David James
    • 05 October 2018
    5 Comments

    That Trump is a narcissistic braggart was never in doubt. The more intriguing question was always how a businessman would behave once he became president. His administration sees business-style standover tactics as a thoroughly good option. The system-wide shifts that are resulting may have a lasting impact.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Walking together for a better future

    • Frank Brennan
    • 01 October 2018
    3 Comments

    Frank Brennan's keynote address to the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Catholic Council Assembly entitled: 'Strong Faith. Strong Youth. Strong Future — Walking Together in a movement of the Australian people for a better future'. 1 October 2018, Technology Park — Bentley, Perth

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  • RELIGION

    Seeking a true new start for all job seekers and workers

    • Frank Brennan
    • 08 November 2017

    'We need to recommit to work for all those who are able and willing. We need to recommit to social assistance for all those who are not able. We need to ensure that a life of frugal dignity is within the grasp of all citizens.' 2017 Rerum Novarum Oration by Fr Frank Brennan SJ

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