Theories of moral responsibility have often assumed that praise does not require justification in the way that blame might. Recent accounts of oppressive praise have challenged this and demonstrated that oppressive praise will track and enforce oppressive norms. Existing solutions to the problem of oppressive praise have sought either to redistribute praise or to reorient praise to serve emancipatory goals. These solutions fail to acknowledge how emancipatory norms evolve over time, and the relationship between developing norms and developing practices of praise. This paper offers a practice-dependent account of progressive praise as a solution to oppressive praise, that (i) respects agent’s socially self-governed agency and (ii) does not reinforce oppressive norms, but (iii) can contribute to improvements to the social moral ecology.

In recent years, the High Court has given increased attention to the nature and extent of constitutional limitations on Commonwealth legislative powers, both those limitations contained in express provisions and those implied from the text or structure of the Constitution. The issue inevitably arises as to the extent to which these limitations restrict the Commonwealth Parliament in the exercise of its power to make laws for the government of its territories under s 122 of the Constitution. Section 122 of the Constitution provides as follows:

• The Parliament may make laws for the government of any territory surrendered by any State to and accepted by the Commonwealth, or of any territory placed by the Queen under the authority of and accepted by the Commonwealth, or otherwise acquired by the Commonwealth, and may allow the representation of such territory in either House of the Parliament to the extent and on the terms which it thinks fit.

In an illuminating analysis of the concept of justiciability, Geoffrey Marshall distinguishes two senses of the term. In the first, descriptive sense, justiciable issues are issues which have, in fact, been committed by parliaments to a judicial forum. Any question which has been made subject to adjudication is, in the descriptive sense of the word, a justiciable question. In the second, prescriptive sense, justiciable issues are issues which are suitable to be resolved judicially. In the United Kingdom, there is no obstacle to Parliament requiring courts to resolve questions which are not suitable to be resolved judicially. By contrast, in terms of the Australian Constitution, the Chapter III courts are limited to answering questions which are justiciable in the prescriptive sense of the term.

Pursuant to s 5(1) of the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (Cth) (“the Act“), an alleged discriminator will have discriminated against a person with a disability if they treat the disabled person less favourably, because of their disability, than they treat or would have treated someone without the disability, ‘in circumstances that are the same or are not materially different'.

A matter crucial to the assessment of whether there has been illegal discrimination for the purposes of the Act, therefore, is what constitutes the circumstances of the aggrieved person's case. In order for there to be a contravention of the Act not only must the alleged discriminator have treated the disabled person less favourably than they would have treated someone without a disability, but the alleged discriminator must have treated the disabled person less favourably than they would have treated someone without a disability who was in the same circumstances as the person with the disability.

In the past decade problems of expense and delay in the administration of criminal justice have been the subject of numerous expressions of concern. In several Australian jurisdictions, legislative measures designed to improve the administrative efficiency of the criminal justice system so that cases can be disposed of more quickly and cheaply have been introduced. In many cases such legislation has had the effect of diminishing the protections available to accused persons.

The laws which govern the conduct of criminal proceedings in our society reflect the policy that it is preferable for a guilty person to go unpunished than for an innocent person to be convicted. On this basis, as a matter of legal principle, an accused person must be presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt. It follows that an accused person should not be obliged to help the prosecution establish its case and that no penalty should be imposed in relation to a crime until after a defendant has been convicted.

The campaign being waged by the Government of the Northern Territory to have the Territory granted statehood, if successful, should result in the first use of s 121 of the Australian Constitution. The section reads:

Constitutional law—Applicability of Imperial law in Australia—Whether Merchant Shipping Act 1894-1900 (U.K.) extends to South Australia—Whether U.K. Act applies to the Crown of its own force or by virtue of Judiciary Act 1903 (Cth) — Merchant Shipping Act 1894 (U.K.) Merchant Shipping (Liability of Shipowners and Others) Act 1900 (U.K.) — Judiciary Act 1903 (Cth)

This is the fourth in the series which the Faculty of Law of the Australian National University has organised around the theme “Australian Lawyers and Social Change”. At the outset, I should congratulate the Faculty and especially Professor Pearce for the persistence with the series. Anything done to confront lawyers in Australia with the consequences and implications of a time of rapid social change is to be applauded. I speak for all participants in thanking the lead speakers and commentators. Theirs have been valuable and timely contributions. Especially, I would wish to thank Professor Glen Robinson (University of Virginia, United States) and Mr Stephen Skelly QC (Department of Justice, Ottawa, Canada) for enlivening the proceedings with insights from the two great English-speaking Federations, with whose legal systems we have so much in common.

We report a comprehensive study of the wake of a porous disc, the design of which has been modified to incorporate a swirling motion at an inexpensive cost. The swirl intensity is passively controlled by varying the internal disc geometry, i.e. the pitch angle of the blades. A swirl number is introduced to characterise the competition between the linear (drag) and the azimuthal (swirl) momenta on the wake recovery. Assuming that swirl dominates the near wake and non-equilibrium turbulence theory applies, new scaling laws of the mean wake properties are derived. To assess these theoretical predictions, an in-depth analysis of the aerodynamics of these original porous discs has been conducted experimentally. It is found that, at the early stage of wake recovery, the swirling motion induces a low-pressure core, which controls the mean velocity deficit properties and the onset of self-similarity. The measurements collected in the swirling wake of the porous discs support the new scaling laws proposed in this work. Finally, it is shown that, as far as swirl is injected in the wake, the characteristics of the mean velocity deficit profiles match very well those of both laboratory-scale and real-scale wind-turbine data extracted from the literature. Overall, our results emphasise that, by setting the initial conditions of the wake recovery, swirl is a key ingredient to be taken into account in order to faithfully replicate the mean wake of wind turbines.

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.