In December 2006, the Civil Partnerships Bill 2006 (ACT) was introduced in the ACT Legislative Assembly that would extend to same-sex (and heterosexual) couples who have declared their commitment to each other by entering a ‘civil partnership’ the legal consequences that ACT laws attach to ‘domestic partnerships’ (what other Australian jurisdictions call ‘de facto relationships’). The Bill was introduced in response to the Howard Government's disallowance, in June 2006, of the Civil Unions Act 2006 (ACT) ('Civil Unions Act’), passed by the ACT Legislative Assembly almost exactly one month before. The Civil Unions Act had created an institution paralleling heterosexual marriage but open to both same-sex and different-sex couples. A civil union was similar to marriage both to the extent that a ceremony was required for it to be brought into existence and because a validly contracted civil union was to be treated like marriage for the purposes of all ACT laws.

With close to five million women in paid employment and constituting over 45 per cent of the total workforce and 57 per cent of the Australian public service, holding 28 per cent of the seats in Senate and 25 per cent of the seats in the House of Representatives, one could be forgiven for entertaining the thought that as a nation, we are beginning to acknowledge the importance of gender equality. However we are quickly reminded that this is far from the truth when it comes to corporate boards which are important sites of decision making that affect us all. In Australia, although women hold 27 per cent of senior positions in private companies, they only hold 10.9 per cent of the board positions in the top 200 listed companies on the Australian stock exchange. Addressing this issue has taken on utmost importance with many governments threatening to introduce legislation to make it happen. Perhaps unlike some of the enormous challenges of climate change and the Global Financial Crisis, this area is one where nation states see that they can make a difference.

Human-induced climate change is an issue of unparalleled scale and gravity. There are calls for rapid, dramatic action on this issue, including declaration of a ‘climate emergency’. While this term has been used as a political call to action, the phrase has an obvious legal tenor. It invokes a particular category of state conduct – the ‘state of emergency’. What this article is concerned to do is to explore how a ‘climate emergency’ might assume a legal character and whether ‘climate emergency’ laws could sustain constitutional legitimacy in the Australian context. At present ‘mainstream’ political opinion in Australia, as represented by either the Labor or Coalition Parties, clearly does not favour such a course of action. Yet legal analysis of the concept is not intended as entirely speculative. If a ‘climate emergency’ – or policies intended to pursue comparably rapid social and economic change – is to be posed seriously, the term needs to be subject to critical analysis. This article hopes to contribute to that task.

Let G be an almost simple group with socle $G_0$. In this paper we prove that whenever $G/G_0$ is abelian, then there exists an abelian subgroup A of G such that $G=AG_0$. We propose a few applications of this structural property of almost simple groups.

During 1999 and 2000 considerable attention was focused on an inquiry conducted by the broadcasting regulator, the Australian Broadcasting Authority (‘ABA’), into the commercial arrangements of a number of commercial radio presenters associated with talkback radio. In May 1999, an Australian Broadcasting Corporation (‘ABC’) program, Media Watch, alleged that, John Laws, a presenter with Sydney Radio Station 2UE, had financial arrangements in place with an organisation representing the major Australian banks, the Australian Bankers' Association. It was alleged that the effect of these arrangements was that Laws would broadcast positive comments about the banks. These comments were independent of any paid advertising run by the station for the banks or the Bankers' Association. Following the Media Watch revelations, the ABA announced that it would conduct an inquiry into the allegations in order to determine whether there had been any breach of the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 (Cth) (‘BSA’) or the licence conditions or codes of practice to which Radio 2UE was subject.

The climate emergency is unfolding. Efforts to reduced greenhouse gas emissions globally, including the efforts of the European Union and the Member States, are severely insufficient to hold global warming below the 1.5°C temperature limit. In light of this public institutional failure, civil society actors increasingly resort to strategic climate litigation. However, the EU has very restrictive standing requirements for direct actions against general acts. Therefore, most strategic climate litigation is brought to national courts. In 2023 and 2024, national judges have in several cases allowed defendant states to use EU law as a shield against the litigants’ demands to declare national climate targets and policies insufficient. This Article argues that in light of the fact that EU climate policy is inadequate and nearly impossible to challenge, it is highly problematic when national judges accept EU law to be an obstacle to (full) judicial review. First, EU law itself is not an obstacle to judicial review of national climate policy. Second, the European Convention on Human Rights, read in light of KlimaSeniorinnen, imposes higher requirements on Member States than EU law. Third, the European Court of Human Rights would not accept the “EU law as a shield” argument.

New Zealand’s political landscape experienced a seismic shift in 1993, when the country replaced the First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) voting system it had inherited from its British colonial past with a new Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) voting system. The move had immediate and deep ramifications for a whole range of issues: the range of interests represented in Parliament; the way that governments are formed and function; how the country’s public sector agencies operate; the manner in which its electoral participants conduct their campaigns; and so on. Indeed, it is not too much of an exaggeration to say that every area of New Zealand’s public and political life was touched in some fashion by the general ‘systems change’ produced by the country’s decision to embrace MMP.5 These changes have effected shifts in what may be termed the ‘political culture’ of New Zealand; re-alignments in the relationships between various public and political institutions and bodies; as well as alterations to the formal legal rules that govern these institutions and bodies.

When the legal systems of two or more States apply to the same fact situation, they may prescribe, with respect to those facts, inconsistent sets of rights and liabilities. In this Article Mr O'Brien examines the role of full faith and credit in resolving the conflict. He concludes that while it is theoretically possible for full faith and credit to resolve the conflict, either on a substantive law basis or on a jurisdictional basis, the Courts have not been prepared to attribute to full faith and credit an operation which would enable it to perform either function. On the other hand, full faith and credit does perform a preparatory function in resolving this type of conflict by bringing such conflicts into federal jurisdiction wherein a resolution can ultimately be achieved.

This paper poses an important challenge to the growing trend of strategic environmental litigation in the EU: when making strategic choices about bringing, framing, and litigating claims, what becomes more important—being heard through strategically critical procedural choices or being true through ensuring that rights holders and the environment remain at the forefront of decision-making? There are many legal hurdles to bringing environmental claims and it is possible that the voice of the environment and those most adversely affected by its degradation is lost in the strategic legal decision-making. This study uses a small number unstructured scoping interviews with practitioners active in bringing litigation to the CJEU to inductively analyse voice and representation in strategic environmental litigation. This initial research indicates that there are areas which should be further explored. First, all of the practitioners brought up the issue of access to resources. This raises concerns about potential elitism. Second, practitioners highlighted that there are numerous strategic choices made during case selection and framing which could affect how voices are heard. Finally, practitioners felt strongly that admissibility rules have a negative impact on claimants’ voices. Challenges in legal standing and establishing individual harm or direct concern have an enormous impact on what claims are heard and how they are heard.

The imprecise contours of the… principles [of implication of due process] prevent their easy application. To apply them too sweepingly requires the dilution of due process requirements to accommodate the protection afforded the property interest holder to the inescapable and practical needs of government. To apply them too narrowly requires the sacrifice without due process of many highly valued expectations to accommodate their holders to the only marginally significant needs of government.

Few cases of recent times, beyond the decisions of Mabo and Wik, could rival Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs v Teoh, for the dramatic response it provoked in political, legal and academic circles. In the aftermath of the High Court's decision in Teoh came three Commonwealth Bills, one state Act, several ‘executive statements’ at both the Federal and state level, and numerous academic commentaries. Yet, despite the many attempts to override the decision by successive federal governments, the Teoh principle continues to apply to the administrative decisions made at the federal level. The third of the Commonwealth Bills aimed at over-riding the Teoh principle of legitimate expectation progressed only as far as its predecessors, with its debate in the Senate having been adjourned on 5 April, 2001.

It is unlikely that enactment of the proposed Bill would have laid the Teoh principle finally to rest, and developments since the last Senate Inquiry conducted in 1997 raise further issues pertaining to the original High Court decision. In particular, subsequent case law has provided clear judicial statements regarding the effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) of earlier executive statements issued by successive federal governments, as well as outlining what constitutes a legally enforceable ‘executive indication to the contrary'. In addition to recent developments on the domestic front, the proposed Bill had also been criticised by one international body for being inconsistent with Australia's international legal obligations, with the recommendation that it be withdrawn. Given the very minor differences between the third Bill and its two predecessors, this charge could also have been laid in respect of each of the earlier Bills.

The founding emperor of the Han envisioned the noble rank (lie hou) as a system rewarding “merit” (gong) that mainly referred to military achievements. However, the criteria for granting the noble rank changed considerably throughout the Han. This is reflected by the various categories of nobles in the Han shu tables: meritorious ministers (gongchen hou), the kings’ sons (wangzi hou), and the imperial affines and favorites (waiqi enze hou), as well as the new category of eunuch nobles (huanzhe hou) in the Eastern Han. This article argues that the Han shu tables should be read as one of the multiple narratives about the noble rank and merit during the Han rather than an objective statistical summary. Whereas the Han shu tables emphasize Gaozu’s original definition of merit, the imperial edicts granting the noble rank kept reinterpreting merit to serve the court’s contemporary needs. Recently excavated Han manuscripts provide a third way of viewing merit based on the length of service.

A decade ago, members of the High Court recognised an implied guarantee of procedural due process in the exercise of federal judicial power. Polyukhovich v Commonwealth, Leeth v Commonwealth and Chu Kheng Lim v Minister for Immigration were the leading cases. Thus in Lim’s Case, Brennan, Deane and Dawson JJ said that the Commonwealth Parliament cannot require or authorise a Chapter III court ‘to exercise judicial power in a manner which is inconsistent with the essential character of a court or with the nature of judicial power.’ Opinions about the content of this due process principle varied. Most judges accepted that federal judicial power must be exercised consistently with the rules of natural justice. Deane and Gaudron JJ went further, however. They argued that the due process principle guaranteed the fair trial of a federal offence, a requirement that, among other things, would prevent abolition of the inherent power of a court to stay an unfair criminal trial.

Opening the Federal Government’s National Conference on Legislative and Award Restrictions to Women’s Employment in October 1986, the Prime Minister, Mr Hawke, reaffirmed the government’s commitment to equal employment opportunity, based on the belief that merit should be the major principle in determining employment and promotion. Yet he recognised that at present there are many obstacles to the achievement of that goal. One particular obstacle which limits women’s opportunities to participate fully in the workforce is the existence of a range of Federal and State legislative, regulatory and award provisions, which exclude women from certain occupations or industrial processes, prevent their advancement and contribute to a concentration of women at the bottom end of the labour market.

Occupational health and safety legislation in particular, is littered with discriminatory provisions. They relate to such matters as the handling of heavy weights, shiftwork, the provision of special amenities and facilities, lead processing, industrial processes, underground mining, and apprenticeship.

This essay addresses two related questions: is participation by citizens in administrative decision-making constitutionally regulated? And if so, to what extent and in what circumstances? Obviously, answers to these questions may vary from one constitutional system to another. The limited aim of the essay is briefly to survey some of those answers and suggest how they might be explained. I will not attempt to state comprehensively the relevant law of any jurisdiction, but I will draw illustrations and examples from several. Nor (for reasons of space) will I tackle any of the underlying theoretical, empirical and practical questions about the functions, effects, costs and benefits of participation and its constitutional regulation. Nevertheless, the essay’s modest objective is worth pursuing in order to provide a clear analytical framework for consideration of such questions. Much of the very large literature on participation does not expressly advert to its constitutional regulation.