The Australian

Legal System and the

Common Law ‘Downunder’

Yesterday:

• Introduction– Common law vs Civil Law – Common law vs Statute– Common law vs Equity

• Norman Invasion of England• Itinerant justices (of Eyre and of Assize)• Curia Regis: the origin of Westminster courts• Writ System and sclerosis of the common law• Development of Modern Parliamentary

Democracy

Today:• Development of Modern Parliamentary

Democracy and the rise of the statute• Equity• Doctrine of Precedent• Australian Legal System:

– European Discovery– Colonisation and Development– Federation– Independence– An Australian Republic?

• Magna Carta 1215• http://www.magnacarta.senate.gov.au/

• 1265 Simon De Montfort’s Parliament

• 1295 Model Parliament King Edward I

• Henry VIII• James I 1603 -1625 (James VI of Scotland)• Charles I 1625 - 1649• The Commonwealth Period

under Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell• Charles II 29 May 1660 - 1685• James II 61685-88

• Glorious Revolution of 1688

• William and Mary

• Bill of Rights 1689• Act of Settlement 1701

• Rule of Law• Separation of Powers

The role of the Statute

Equity: The jurisdiction of The Court of

ChanceryLord Chancellor: King’s principal legal officer and “the keeper of the King’s conscience.”

English not Latin or Norman French No jury Focus on merits of the claims regardless of the technicality of forms/writs Its earlier decisions were binding upon itself.

“The Office of the Chancellor is to correct Men’s consciences for Frauds, Breach of Trusts, Wrongs and oppressions, of what ever Nature soever they be, and to soften and mollify the Extremity of the Law … [W]hen a judgment is obtained by Oppression, Wrong and a hard Conscience, the Chancellor will frustrate it and set it aside, not for any error or Defect in the Judgment, but for the hard Conscience of the Party.”

The Earl of Oxford’s Case (1615) 21 ER 485

The trust: an important feature of law and commercial life,for example:

• Banking & Finance (securities clearing systems, unit trusts, custodianship of investments, bond issues)

• Commercial (business trusts, nominee shareholders)

• Wills & Estates (testamentary trusts)

• Charities (charitable purpose trusts)

• Family (family trusts, equitable interest of man and woman in family home)

• Tax “minimisation” strategies

• Superannuation & pensions

What is a trust?

A device by which one person (trustee) holds property (trust property) for the benefit of another person (beneficiary) or for certain lawful purposes.

Judicature Acts of 1873 and 1875 (UK)

• Abolished both the Court of Chancery and the common law courts

• Created one court – the High Court of Judicature with five divisions: – Queen’s Bench, Exchequer, Common Pleas,

Chancery & Probate, Divorce & Admiralty

THE

DOCTRINE

OF

PRECEDENT

THE DOCTRINE OF PRECEDENT

stare decisis et non quieta movere (stand by the thing decided and do not disturb the calm)

• CERTAINTY• EQUALITY• EFFICIENCY• APPEARANCE OF JUSTICE

Telstra Corporation v Treloar (2000) 102 FCR 595, 602 (Branson and Finkelstein JJ)

‘Our common law system consists in the applying to new

combinations and circumstances those rules of law which we

derive from legal principles and judicial precedents; and for

the sake of obtaining uniformity, consistency and certainty

we must apply those rules where they are not plainly

unreasonable and inconvenient, to all cases which arise; and

we are not at liberty to reject them, and to abandon all

analogy to them, in those to which they have not been

judicially applied, because we think that the rules are not as

convenient and reasonable as we ourselves could have

devised.’Mirehouse v Rennell

(1833 1 Cl and F 527; 6 ER 1015 at 546 per Parke B)

Authorised Law Reports are central to the doctrine of precedent

Doctrine of Precedent: in summary

• Each court is bound by decisions of courts in its hierarchy• A decision of a court in a different hierarchy or lower in

the same hierarchy may be persuasive, it will not be binding

• Generally a court will not consider itself bound by its own past decisions but will depart from them only reluctantly

• Only the ratio decidendi of a past decision is binding• Obiter dicta are not binding but may be persuasive

• Precedents do not lose their force by lapse of time

JUDICIAL REASONING or HOW COURTS CAN AVOID A PRECEDENT

• Distinguish it on the facts – Eg Thornton v Shoe Lane Parking [1971] 2 QB 163

• Statement of law is too wide– eg Attorney-General for New South Wales v Mundey [1972] 2 NSWLR887

– Ex parte Attorney-General; Re Truth and Sportsman Ltd [1961] SR(NSW) 484

‘any statements or comment dealing with the case and propounding views as to its proper determination are calculated to obstruct, or tend to obstruct, the administration of justice and to make the task of the court entertaining the appeal both difficult and embarrassing.”

• Statement of law is obiter dictum • Changed social conditions

– R v L (1991) 174 CLR 379 http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/HCA/1991/48.html

– R v. R. [1992] 1 AC 599, 612-623 http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKHL/1990/9.html

• Precedent Unsatisfactory• Precedent is wrongly decided• But what about when there is no precedent?

THE AUSTRALIAN

LEGAL SYSTEM: the common law ‘downunder’

1606: Willem Janszon (Dutch)

1622: British East India Company ship The Tryall wrecks on the west coast

1642: Abel Tasman (Dutch) sighted Tasmania on the way to discovering New Zealand, Fiji and visiting New Guinea

1688: William Dampier (English), landed on the west coast

19 April 1770: Captain James Cook in The Endeavour sighted the east coast of Australia and ten days later landed in a bay now located in Sydney's south

22 August 1770: Cook took possession of most of the East coast for the British – with an undefined western boundary.

26 January 1788: First Fleet arrived in Sydney

Other colonies established thereafter

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/Australia_history.gif

• Australian colonies established largely as a place to deposit convicts whose death penalties had been commuted to transportation

• 160,000 convicts were transported to the Australian colonies

• until:• 1852 New South Wales • 1852 Tasmania • 1868 Western Australia

 

‘[Aboriginal Australians] may truly be said to be in

the pure state of nature, and may appear to some to

be the most wretched upon the earth; but in reality

they are far happier than ... we Europeans.’

Captain James Cook

23 August 1770

TERRA NULLIUS:

‘It has been held that if an uninhabited country be discovered

and planted by English subjects all the English laws then in

being, which are the birthright of every English subject, are

immediately there in force.

But this must be understood with very many and very great

restrictions. Such colonists carry with them only so much of the

English law as is applicable to their new situation as the

condition of an infant colony…’

Blackstone

http://data.worldjusticeproject.org/

New South Wales Act 1823 (Imp)   Australian Courts Act 1828 (Imp) (s24)• all common law and statute law of Britain was imported into New South

Wales (and Queensland and Victoria) on 25 July 1828.• South Australia: 28 December 1836 • Western Australia: 1 June 1829  Australian Constitutions Act (No 1) 1842 – introduced a number of reforms that created for the first time three separate branches of government Australian Constitutions Act (No2) 1850- Allowed colonies to form their own constitutions and parliaments

Became a self-governing colony in 1856 A bicameral parliament was elected on 9 March 1857

Constitution provided for:• Adult male suffrage (including indigenous men) (no property requirement); • Secret ballot voting; one man, one vote; • No property qualifications for Members of its House of Assembly and a relatively low

property qualification for Members of its Legislative Council In 1894 women in South Australia :• were given the right to vote; and • and were the first women in the world to be able to stand for parliament.

For example in South Australia:

Federation: 1 January 1901

Independence• World War 1 and Treaty of Versailles

• Consitutional Crisis in Canada and the Balfour Declaration of 1926

• World War 2

• Statute of Westminster (Imp) 1931

• Statute of Westminster Adoption Act (Cth) 1942

Privy Council (http://www.jcpc.uk/index.html)

 

IndependenceThe Australia Acts enacted by both the Australian and in the United Kingdom Parliament in 1986

AnAustralian Republic?

Queen visits Australia in 1963: • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ibGwqMM6uULooking back on the 1999 Republic Referendum:• http://youtu.be/rNM3iyCH4doQueen visits Australia in 2011:• http://youtu.be/cfOZ61I5V4E