We compute the class groups of full rank upper cluster algebras in terms of the exchange polynomials. This characterizes the UFDs among these algebras. Our results simultaneously generalize theorems of Garcia Elsener, Lampe, and Smertnig from 2019 and of Cao, Keller, and Qin from 2023. Furthermore, we show that every (upper) cluster algebra is a finite factorization domain.

George Williams poses a very topical question: is a republican tradition for Australia either possible or desirable? Simply by recognising republicanism as a tradition deeply rooted in the history of Western political thought, Williams helps to take us beyond the current officially sponsored nativist campaign to rid us of our “foreign” Queen. Republicanism is a complex phenomenon that first became manifest in the world of classical antiquity. The strength of Williams's article lies in the impulse to break free from the banal parochialism of the republic promoted by the Australian Republican Movement and a compliant media eager to service the perceived legitimation needs of the national government.

In the American constitutional tradition Williams finds a rich store of ideas about the role of an active citizenry in the creation and preservation of a free republican society. The idea of the republic in America did not begin or end with the removal of a “foreign” monarch. Republicanism inspired the transformation of American society after the overthrow of the British monarchy.

British business in the second half of the nineteenth century was characterised by the continued predominance of small private firms at a time when competing nations such as Germany and the United States were more commonly embracing large corporations. Alfred Chandler has contrasted personal capitalism in Britain with competitive managerial capitalism in America and attributes the alleged poor performance of British business and, through it, national rates of economic growth to the uncompetitive small family firm. Applying internalisation and transaction cost analysis he argues that such firms failed to achieve economies of scale and scope or to develop sophisticated administrative hierarchies managed by tiers of professional executives, features increasingly common in America by the end of the nineteenth century. An alternative tradition has used the economics of information and the networks paradigm to argue for the benefits of small-scale cooperative capitalism in both Britain and Japan.

The passing of the 1988-1989 third financial quarter will probably be viewed by the BHP Group with mixed emotions. On the one hand BHP was recently reported to be “on course for [a] record $1 bn profit” for this current financial year, having in the first nine months lifted its profits to $768 million, a 5.8 per cent increase on the $725.8 million for the equivalent period in the 1987–1988 financial year. On the other hand however it was in this third quarter that the High Court, at the expense of BHP, was given its first opportunity to consider s 46 of the Trade Practices Act 1974 (Cth) in Queensland Wire Industries Pty Ltd v Broken Hill Pty Ltd and Australian Wire Industries Pty Ltd. In a decision shedding some much needed light on the section, the Court unanimously held that BHP misused its substantial degree of power in the steel products market by refusing to supply Y-bar to Queensland Wire Industries Pty Ltd (QWI), albeit in continued adherence to its policy of committing that product to manufacturing processes within the BHP group.

The common law relating to the tort of passing off is the traditional means by which conduct threatening business reputation may be halted. During the past five years, the Federal Court of Australia has been called upon on many occasions to apply s 52 Trade Practices Act 1974 (Cth) to prevent such conduct. As yet, there has been no clear judicial statement as to the interrelationship and overlap between the two causes of action.

This Article discusses the scope of the two causes of action in the context of an allegation of actual or threatened erosion of goodwill. The types of cases in which such allegation is usually made is then examined and suggestions given as to which cause of action should be relied on.

Guardianship laws either for intellectually disadvantaged people alone, or for anyone with diminished functional capacity (such as victims of brain trauma), are now popular in Australia (other than in Western Australia and the Australian Capital Territory) and New Zealand. These laws are based on North American experience, particularly that of the Dependent Adults Act 1976 (Alberta). The common thread is that it permits a guardian to be appointed to manage the property or the personal affairs of the disadvantaged person, or to make one or more of the multitude of decisions lying within these two broad areas of human living.

Contemporary legislation is notable for three things. First, partial orders are permitted (in place of only plenary orders). Indeed they are positively encouraged where any intervention at all is called for (the normalisation principle). Secondly, personal guardianships have been revived (having existed all along under cumbersome equity jurisdictions of – or associated with – superior courts).

This article analyses arguments that the prerogative should be readily displaced by statute, where a statute deals with a subject matter similar to a prerogative. It does so by examining the leading cases on displacement of the prerogative in the United Kingdom and the Australian states, and displacement of the Australian Commonwealth's inherent executive power. The cases do not adopt a single rule but the question of whether a statute will be taken to displace a prerogative is highly dependent on the facts and the provisions of the particular statute. This article defends the current approach to displacement, for three reasons. First, the courts do not allow governments to subvert or ignore statutes by using the prerogative. Secondly, the courts have almost always decided in favour of liberty and against the conferral of coercive powers on government. Thirdly, a single rule could not do justice to all the variables involved in displacement cases. Ordinary principles of statutory interpretation are sufficient to deal with questions of displacement.

The early cases on the Australian territories approached them not as constituent parts of the Commonwealth, but as subordinate to it, with the result that the territories power, s 122 of the Constitution, was held to be unaffected by other constitutional provisions. Most strikingly, Ch III of the Constitution was wholly inapplicable to the courts and judicial proceedings of the territories. Even the important doctrine that Ch III is exhaustive of the judicial power of the Commonwealth did not restrict the Parliament’s power to confer appellate jurisdiction on the High Court under s 122.

In more recent cases, majorities of the High Court have adopted a more cohesive approach which considers s 122 in the context of the Commonwealth Constitution as a whole. The view that the territories are disjoined from the Commonwealth is no longer tenable, if it ever was.

This paper considers the guidance issue for attackers against aircraft with active defense in a two-on-two engagement, which includes an attacker, a protector, a defender and a target. A cooperative line-of-sight guidance scheme with prescribed performance and input saturation is proposed utilising the sliding mode control and line-of-sight guidance theories, which guarantees that the attacker is able to capture the target with the assistance of the protector remaining on the line-of-sight between the defender and the attacker in order to intercept the defender. A fixed-time prescribed performance function and first-order anti-saturation auxiliary variable are designed in the game guidance strategy to constrain the overshoot of the guidance variable and satisfy the requirement of an overload manoeuver. The proposed guidance strategy alleviates the influence of external disturbance by implementing a fixed-time observer and the chattering phenomenon caused by the sign function. Finally, nonlinear numerical simulations verify the cooperative guidance strategies.

As the work of feminist legal scholars has convincingly demonstrated, gendered assumptions underpin much of our law, including areas such as tort, property, tax or company law, where women are not so readily apparent. As the field of law that most overtly involves women, and deals extensively with relationships between women and men, family law shares, perhaps only with the law of sexual assault, the high visibility of women as parties or participants. It is therefore particularly susceptible to a gender analysis. However, any such analysis must take place against the background of the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth), legislation written in a gender-neutral fashion, though it operates in the context of a highly gendered world with all its consequences.The purpose of this article is to suggest some of the ways in which gender might operate under the Family Law Act to disadvantage women.

It is at last being recognized that there is need to reform the antiquated and costly apparatus of administrative law that we inherited frum England. Despite murmurs of dissatisfaction extending over many decades all that has been achieved so far by legislation amounts to little more than a tinkering with the machinery of adjudication in marginal areas. The problem is an old one. The public interest demands that administration, including the provision of multifarious services that are crucial to the community, be carried out as efficiently as possible. Equally the public interest demands that individual rights and expectations should not be overridden by an uncaring bureaucracy.

This Article discusses the emerging strategic litigation practice in the European Union through the lens of participatory democracy. After situating such a practice both historically and conceptually within the specificities of the EU legal order, it explores whether and the extent to which strategic litigation, understood as an additional form of participation in the Union’s democratic life, may contribute to EU participatory democracy and under which conditions. It unveils that while strategic litigation carries the potential to enhance democratic participation in the EU, it also risks—due to limited judicial literacy and unequal access to justice—empowering those already powerful. For strategic litigation to unleash its democratic potential at scale, EU courts must—as required by the “Provisions on Democratic Principles” of the Treaty of Lisbon—ensure a participatory enabling environment capable of proactively catalyzing and facilitating the ability of ordinary citizens—as well as diffuse, under-resourced and traditionally overlooked groups—to be better able to contribute to the Union’s democratic life. Ultimately, no legal order worth of its name should rely on the heroism of its citizens and residents to keep its legal system in check.

It is a real pleasure for Mrs Seitz and me to come to Melbourne, one of the truly great cities of the world. I am especially gratified to be speaking in the city where Prime Minister Robert Menzies resided.

I express my gratitude to the University of Virginia for affording me the opportunity and honour of delivering the first Menzies lectures in Australia. By the same token, I thank the Australian National University and the Sir Robert Menzies Memorial Trust for their support of a lecture program designed to further enhance the understanding of our legal systems.

I have read a good deal of material about your country over the past few months. Much of it stressed that we share the English language. That is certainly true but, if Australia is anything like the United States, while we share the same general vocabulary, the younger generation has its own unique language. Fortunately, our legal language is largely interchangeable.

The well known writings and other contributions of Professor Zines on the High Court's interpretation of Australia’s Constitution and public law generally have justly earned him the admiration and deep respect of eminent jurists both within Australia and abroad. His interests extended to courts in other western liberal democracies.

In a book based on a series of lectures delivered at the University of Cambridge under the auspices of the Smuts Memorial Fund, Professor Leslie Zines ventured into a comparative study of, inter alia, the role of the courts in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. He noted that Canada, Australia and New Zealand share the common feature of the perplexing difficulty of pin-pointing an exact date when these countries obtained their independence from Britain. In other countries which were former British colonies, the date of independence could largely be identified by the date when the Union Jack was lowered and a new national flag was unfurled.