Notwithstanding the inclusion of “Admiralty and maritime jurisdiction” within the constitutional grant of federal judicial power, current Admiralty jurisdiction in Australia is based solely on a nineteenth century Imperial statute, the Colonial Courts of Admiralty Act 1890. That this has remained the case for so long is regrettable, and reflects in part a traditional deference to Imperial control over international shipping (although lately there have been indications of greater legislative assertiveness over maritime matters generally), and in part a reluctance to interfere with the present allocation of jurisdiction among State courts.

A concerted effort is now under way to lay the foundation for the creation of a modern indigenous Admiralty jurisdiction, and with this in mind, the author sets out to examine the nature and extent of the current colonial jurisdiction, its interrelationship with the federal jurisdiction under section 76(iii) of the Constitution, and the desirability of abandoning the rigid nineteenth century base of the former to realise the full twentieth century promise of the latter.

Most commentators agree that, if Australia is to adopt a charter of rights, such a charter should so far as possible involve a ‘minimalist’ form of constitutional change. It should both be enacted by ordinary statute and seek to preserve broad scope for the Commonwealth Parliament, in appropriate cases, to override the interpretation of non-Constitutional rights by the High Court. When it comes to questions of form and enforceability, the thinking is that it should be modelled on either the Human Rights Act 1998 (UK) c 42 ('UK HRA’), and the largely equivalent state statutory charters in the ACT and Victoria, or on the Canadian Bill of Rights, SC 1960, c 44 ('CBOR’).

Not only would a statutory charter of this kind be easier to adopt than a more entrenched model of charter, such as a charter modelled on the US Bill of Rights, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms 1982 (the second and later of Canada's two operative human rights charters) ('Canadian Charter’), or Constitution of the Republic of South Africa 1996.

In this article I will discuss two questions concerning “originalism” in Australian constitutional law. The questions are, first, the extent to which the contemporary meanings of constitutional provisions, express or implied, are the same as their original meanings in 1900, when the Constitution was created; and secondly, the extent to which those original meanings are determined by the intentions of the people responsible for creating it (whom I will call “the founders”). These two questions are distinct. Almost all literary critics would agree that the language in Shakespeare's plays should be understood in its original sixteenth century sense, but many would deny that any other evidence of Shakespeare's intentions is relevant in interpreting it. Similarly, a literalist, who believes that the meaning of the Constitution is exhausted by the meanings of its words, could hold that their original literal meanings are critical, but reject the relevance of any other evidence of the founders' intentions.

That such a power now exists is indisputable. Its ambit alone must yet be resolved. Its restrictions, that is, activities denied to an exercise of the power, must be those that apply generally to legislative powers. A noncoercive power is no power – an absurd proposition – and no reason exists to confine the power to one extending only to permit Commonwealth funds to be drawn from its Treasury. The true rule is stated by Mason J.

Every implied power arises from constitutional language, history or political reality. Thus, in the United States, powers over aliens, the Indian tribes, foreign relations and the compulsory requisition of private property derive from implication based on history and political reality. This is explained in the Curtiss-Wright case. Australia differs from the United States in three relevant respects: it is not a union of states; Commonwealth powers were not granted to it by the States; and there is, and there never was, dual Commonwealth-State citizenship.

The rule of law is fundamental to our society. Certainty about what the law is, is important to the rule of law.

Those whose activities may be affected both by Commonwealth laws and by State laws need certainty about whether the Commonwealth law overrides, or is subject to, State law. Those who administer Commonwealth law or State law need certainty about the relationship between the two. To participate in law-making on an informed basis, law-makers need certainty about what will be the legal effect of legislation which they enact.

For strategic litigation, the existence of independent judicial institutions is a prerequisite. In this Article, based on the case of Poland, I analyze what happens when some domestic judicial institutions are weakened and how this affects the ability of different stakeholders to engage in strategic litigation. I argue that strategic litigation was an important tool used by civil society and crucial for countering democratic backsliding in Poland in 2015–2023. In addition to traditional actors involved in strategic litigation in Poland, new ones have joined—such as the Human Rights Commissioner (the “Ombudsman”) or increased their involvement—such as corporate actors. Also, the prosecution office, controlled by the populist government, became active in litigation conducted by right-wing NGOs. Paradoxically, the rule of law crisis also resulted in the popularization of strategic litigation before the Court of Justice of the European Union and some domestic courts, which began to apply the Constitution directly.

This article defends grounded normative theory (GNT) as a more appropriate methodology to tackle questions of territorial justice in settler states over the dominant approach in territorial rights theory. I contrast the central aims and methodological commitments of territory theories and GNT: the former are engaged in an ideal, conceptual project primarily directed at other liberals, while the latter is oriented towards addressing injustices through deep engagement with the narratives and power relations that normalize them. I then outline three limitations of the territorial rehabilitation project undertaken by territory theorists that result from their failure to engage the robust critical and empirical literatures on settler colonialism. Finally, I sketch how GNT can reorient the territorial rehabilitation project towards decolonization.

In the past few decades, substantial work has been directed towards the design of aircraft structures that maximise fuel efficiency, improve performance and curtail emissions. Aeroelastic optimisation offers an effective way to devise lightweight and fuel efficient structures, with structural stability constraints often driving the design. To date, the aeroelastic optimisation community has relied mostly on linear buckling predictions for the evaluation of structural stability constraints, mainly because of their conservativeness, computational efficiency and simplicity of implementation. This approach typically leads to overly conservative buckling margins, and this over-conservativeness places a glass ceiling over the load carrying capacity of wing structures, consequently restricting the exploration of regions within the design space where considerable weight savings could be achieved.

By contrast to previous works that predominantly rely on linear buckling constraints, the present paper introduces a method to incorporate nonlinear structural stability analysis into aeroelastic optimisations of wingbox-like structures. The method relies on the evaluation of the positive-definiteness of the tangent stiffness matrix, which is an indicator of structural stability. The sign of the stiffness eigenvalues is monitored while tracing the load-displacement equilibrium paths by means of the arc-length method, thus pinpointing the onset of instability. The proposed constraint is tested in a proof of concept structural optimisation of an idealised version of the CRM wingbox. This optimisation shows a $10.9{\rm{\% }} $ reduction in mass with respect to a baseline design that is optimal with a linear buckling approach, promising great potential for application to more realistic aeroelastic optimisations.

The enactment of uniform companies legislation in 1961-2 was a significant achievement for a country in which, a century earlier, multiple incorporations of the one body was the norm and a court of one colony questioned the existence of corporate personality created by the law of another. After Federation, business interests increasingly sought uniform State laws. They opposed centralised regulation which, in any event, was beset by constitutional difficulties. Commonwealth legislation eventually became the preferred model as shortcomings of uniform and co-operative mechanisms were progressively exposed. Yet fully harmonised corporations legislation still does not exist. In this paper presented to the 2011 Hartnell Colloquium at the Centre for Commercial Law, Australian National University to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Uniform Companies Acts, the author sketches the development of Australian companies legislation over the last 150 years.

A key objective of Australia's recent national water reforms is to keep water licence and entitlement holders accountable for the amounts of water they extract, trade and use. Water metering and the recording and reporting of water extraction and trading data are processes designed to ensure this accountability, and are central to Australia's water accounting regimes. Yet much of the data necessary to ensure compliance with water licences and access entitlements is not publicly available in Australia. This absence of publicly accessible information is due to a lack of rigour and transparency in statutory water accounting regimes. There are also restrictions imposed by water legislation and the laws of privacy and confidentiality that prevent public access to water accounting data, except in aggregated form. Consequently, commercial and industrial water consumers in Australia are not kept accountable for their consumptive water use and water market objectives are unfulfilled, contrary to the express provisions of the Intergovernmental Agreement on a National Water Initiative (‘NWI’). This article argues that statutory and policy frameworks for water accounting in most Australian jurisdictions fail to meet the NWI objectives for national water accounting. In response, it advocates legislative reforms that would facilitate the achievement of these objectives.

Dr Galligan examines the origin of judicial review under the Australian Constitution through an catalysis of the Conventions and Conferences preceding its drafting. A political scientist, he disputes the claim that there is no basis for judicial review in the Australian federal system and argues that the intention of the founders, influenced by Inglis Clark, was to create a powerful American-style court primarily to interpret the Constitution in the resolution of federal disputes. As a case study of the founders' intentions he considers the debates and “solution” of the question of control of Australia's inland river system.

The Commonwealth of Australia is 75 years old. Professor Zines, in this Article, looks at the record of judicial review of the Constitution over the past quarter century. He examines those areas (a) that have, during that time, illustrated, or provided the basis for, the development of general principles; (b) that seem to have particular political or social significance; or (c) that help in understanding the role and technique of the High Court.