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.

The Australian National University, the Sir Robert Menzies Memorial Trust and the University of Virginia Law School have established an annual Menzies Lecture Series. The Lectures are held in honour of Sir Robert Menzies and mark his contribution to the law and public life. The Lectures are given in alternate years at the Law Schools of the University of Virginia and the Australian National University. The Lectures will be published in the “Federal Law Review”. The first Menzies Lecturer was The Honourable Sir Anthony Mason of the High Court of Australia who visited the University of Virginia in October 1985. The following article is based on Sir Anthony’s lecture.

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)