In undertaking its responsibility to interpret and construct federalism, the High Court of Australia has frequently considered the Supreme Court of the United States’ treatment of the same subject. The US influence has been particularly pronounced in the area of State immunity. This article considers whether an American constitutional innovation of the 1990s, the anti-commandeering doctrine articulated in the case of Printz v United States, can and should be transplanted to Australia.

'Printz v United States embodies the [Supreme] Court's most emphatic acclamation of state sovereignty since the New Deal'; it is a ‘watershed in the jurisprudence of federalism.' In the lead judgment, written by Scalia J, the Supreme Court expounded a new bright-line rule:

It has rarely been doubted that the courts, especially the High Court, have jurisdiction over disputes as to the scope of Commonwealth powers. Although the Constitution does not state specifically that these disputes give rise to legal issues or that the courts have jurisdiction over these questions, s 74 of the Constitution, which prevents appeals to the Privy Council from the High Court on inter se questions, which include questions about the scope of Commonwealth powers, without the consent of the High Court, indicates that the High Court at least has jurisdiction over these disputes. However, the Constitution does not set out the basis on which the courts’ jurisdiction over these questions rests, nor does it state who has the standing to raise them. In this paper I wish to consider the theoretical basis of the courts’ jurisdiction over these questions and consider the impact which different justi:fications for that jurisdiction have on standing.

The inquiry by the Senate Standing Committee on Constitutional and Legal Affairs into “the law and administration of divorce, custody and family matters, with particular regard to oppressive costs, delays, indigates and other injustices” is to be welcomed. This article will discuss as prospects for reforming the law affecting the grounds for divorce, with particular reference to the guidance that might be gained from the Divorce Reform Act 1969 (Eng.). This Act provides support for a member of proposals to amend the Matrimonial Causes Act 1959-1966 (th) which could be implemented imrnediately. The proposed amendents raise none of the controversial issues of principle which dominated the debates on the 1959 Act in Australia and the 1969 Act in England, and their enactment would not prejudice the outcome of the Committes deliberations on the ultimate shape of Australian divorce law. Their beneficial effect on divorce practice, however, would be subnual and would help to pave the way for more fundamental reforms.

Brian Galligan says that I have misread or misunderstood the whole thrust of his argument. I suggest that the shoe is on the other foot. Readers will have to decide who has misunderstood whom.

Patents are growing in importance. Patenting rates worldwide have increased significantly in recent years: between 1992 and 2002, the number of patent applications in Europe, Japan and the US increased by more than 40 per cent. Patent coverage has also been extended to include new kinds of inventions, like genetic technologies, software, and business methods. A wider range of participants are also using patents, with universities being encouraged to increase their patenting activity. And there has been a dramatic increase in patent litigation, at least in the US. These facts have given rise to international debate on the costs and benefits of the patent system and how its effectiveness in encouraging innovation might be improved.

To inform these debates, policymakers have called for more hard data on how the system is actually working in practice. Enforcement forms an important part of how the patent system ‘works’. Patents are designed to encourage innovation by providing innovators with legal protection against expropriation of their innovative products and processes by third parties.

The Committee appointed to review the bankruptcy law of the Commonwealth has made many proposals for its amendment. The Report containing these proposals has been presented to the Attorney-General of the Commonwealth. In this article some of the more important of these proposals will be examined.

We consider generalised Dirac-Schrödinger operators, consisting of a self-adjoint elliptic first-order differential operator $\mathcal {D}$ with a skew-adjoint ‘potential’ given by a (suitable) family of unbounded operators. The index of such an operator represents the pairing (Kasparov product) of the K-theory class of the potential with the K-homology class of $\mathcal {D}$. Our main result in this paper is a generalisation of the Callias Theorem: the index of the Dirac-Schrödinger operator can be computed on a suitable compact hypersurface. Our theorem simultaneously generalises (and is inspired by) the well-known result that the spectral flow of a path of relatively compact perturbations depends only on the endpoints.

Nearly half a century has gone by since Sir Cecil Hurst invited readers of the British Year Book of International Law to consider with him the question—“Whose is the Bed of the Sea? ”

Almost twenty-five years ago, President Truman initiated State action to assert authority over the natural resources of the sea-bed and sub-soil of the continental shelf beyond the limits of the territorial sea.

In 1953, Australia contributed significantly to the body of State practice. On 11 September 1953, the Governor-General issued a proclamation declaring the existence under international law of Australia's sovereign rights over the sea-bed and subsoil of the continental shelf contiguous to the coasts of Australia and its Territories for the purpose of exploring and exploiting the natural resources of that sea-bed and subsoil. At about the same time, the Commonwealth Parliament enacted the Pearl Fisheries Act (No.2) 1953 (Cth) amending the Pearl Fisheries Act 1952-1953 (Cth), which made subject to Australian control foreign nationals and foreign vessels engaging in pearling on the continental shelf. In section 5 of the Principal Act, “pearling” was defined to include—

In 1888 the social wing of the Salvation Army in Britain had begun an ambitious program for social reform and spiritual revival focusing on the disciplining and retraining of the unemployed. City workshops in London gave unemployed workmen board and lodgings in return for eight hours work a day. Efficiency, deportment and cleanliness were rewarded by increases in food rations and eventually men were given a cash allowance. Attached to the workshops was a labour bureau which would put men in touch with potential employers. In 1905 the Liberal Magazine suggested that the Army be given a government contract to deal with the unemployed and, four years later, the Minority Report of the Poor Law Commission recommended that public authorities work in conjunction with religious organisations in training and reforming the recalcitrant unemployed.

This article explores the concept of “fundamental law” as it relates to the Australian legal system. Concentrating in particular on constitutional law and the special place in that body of law of the doctrines relating to amendment of the Federal and State constitutions, Dr Lumb examines the source of the power to amend the constitution, the limitations on that power and the aspects of our legal system which may be beyond the power to amend. It attempts to discover those elements of our constitutional systems which are so fundamental that they may not be materially altered by any form or process of constitutional alteration.

This study examines settlement evidence from south-eastern Norway during the Late Neolithic and Bronze Age, revealing unique aspects of regional architectural and social organization. Notably, smaller and uniform house sizes suggest a divergence from the monumental power displays seen in southernmost Scandinavia. The uniformity in house sizes and significant spatial distances between contemporary houses imply a social structure akin to segmentary societies with symmetrical power relations, reliant on mobility and mixed subsistence practices. Changes in settlement patterns and house sizes during the Late Bronze Age could have been the result of increased social stratification or responses to population growth. Overall, the settlement patterns and house sizes in south-eastern Norway reflect a society that, while connected to the broader Nordic Bronze Age world, developed distinct social and economic strategies. These findings highlight the importance of considering regional variations and responses to environmental and social challenges in prehistoric societies.

Twenty years on from Mabo v Queensland (No 2) (1992) 175 CLR 1, there is change afoot in the tax treatment of native title. On 25 June 2013, the federal Parliament passed reforms which render certain payments to, or for the benefit of, Indigenous persons exempt from income tax. To qualify, the payments must be made under native title agreements for acts affecting native title, or by way of compensation under the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth). While drafted in simple language, the reforms apply against a complex factual backdrop of native title agreements, trust structures and social policy issues.

This paper argues that the reforms are likely to cause significant implementation difficulties for energy and resources proponents and Indigenous groups. They also raise potential hurdles for the government's objectives of reducing uncertainty in the tax treatment of native title rights and of improving economic and social outcomes for native title groups. The significance of these problems is highlighted by the scale of benefits under native title agreements over land access. The paper therefore questions whether an earlier option raised by the government, an Indigenous Community Fund model, deserves further consideration. It would more directly link tax exemption to outcomes, would improve the certainty of tax treatment and would also better support the intermediary Indigenous benefits management institutions which will play a critical role in achieving those outcomes.