Coordinator:  Associate Professor Pip Nicholson    Telephone:  83446208    Office:   Room 0704    Email:   Click here to email Pip Nicholson

 

Prerequisites and/or Corequisites

Corequisites: Torts and the Process of Law I, Torts and the Process of Law II

Description

This subject poses three core questions:

What is the nature of the Australian legal system today and what is its history? How does law retain or acquire legitimacy in the contemporary world? What other types of 'law' exist and what place do they have in the Australian legal system?

In developing and debating these questions, this subject commences with a discussion of Australian legal institutions and their history. Students are introduced to the sources of law in Australia and the debates about how law is made and how law making is legitimated. Subsequently, the subject engages with questions of morality and law. Other legal systems are introduced to enable a comparative investigation of the role of the law and how it is approached by different communities who place different values on the connection between law and morality. The subject asks what is the role and place of international law and indigenous law in Australia. It culminates in a discussion of the High Court's decision in Mabo (No.2)

These broad questions raise a number of issues including the nature of the rule of law, the role of the judge in law-making, the role of natural law and human rights in the construction of 'our' notions of justice and the extent to which those notions are universally accepted.

Points: 12.5

Contact hours: Four hours per week

Estimated Total Time Commitment: 144 Hours