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.

Brian Galligan says that I have misread or misunderstood the whole thrust of his argument. I suggest that the shoe is on the other foot. Readers will have to decide who has misunderstood whom.

Patents are growing in importance. Patenting rates worldwide have increased significantly in recent years: between 1992 and 2002, the number of patent applications in Europe, Japan and the US increased by more than 40 per cent. Patent coverage has also been extended to include new kinds of inventions, like genetic technologies, software, and business methods. A wider range of participants are also using patents, with universities being encouraged to increase their patenting activity. And there has been a dramatic increase in patent litigation, at least in the US. These facts have given rise to international debate on the costs and benefits of the patent system and how its effectiveness in encouraging innovation might be improved.

To inform these debates, policymakers have called for more hard data on how the system is actually working in practice. Enforcement forms an important part of how the patent system ‘works’. Patents are designed to encourage innovation by providing innovators with legal protection against expropriation of their innovative products and processes by third parties.

The Committee appointed to review the bankruptcy law of the Commonwealth has made many proposals for its amendment. The Report containing these proposals has been presented to the Attorney-General of the Commonwealth. In this article some of the more important of these proposals will be examined.

We consider generalised Dirac-Schrödinger operators, consisting of a self-adjoint elliptic first-order differential operator $\mathcal {D}$ with a skew-adjoint ‘potential’ given by a (suitable) family of unbounded operators. The index of such an operator represents the pairing (Kasparov product) of the K-theory class of the potential with the K-homology class of $\mathcal {D}$. Our main result in this paper is a generalisation of the Callias Theorem: the index of the Dirac-Schrödinger operator can be computed on a suitable compact hypersurface. Our theorem simultaneously generalises (and is inspired by) the well-known result that the spectral flow of a path of relatively compact perturbations depends only on the endpoints.

Nearly half a century has gone by since Sir Cecil Hurst invited readers of the British Year Book of International Law to consider with him the question—“Whose is the Bed of the Sea? ”

Almost twenty-five years ago, President Truman initiated State action to assert authority over the natural resources of the sea-bed and sub-soil of the continental shelf beyond the limits of the territorial sea.

In 1953, Australia contributed significantly to the body of State practice. On 11 September 1953, the Governor-General issued a proclamation declaring the existence under international law of Australia's sovereign rights over the sea-bed and subsoil of the continental shelf contiguous to the coasts of Australia and its Territories for the purpose of exploring and exploiting the natural resources of that sea-bed and subsoil. At about the same time, the Commonwealth Parliament enacted the Pearl Fisheries Act (No.2) 1953 (Cth) amending the Pearl Fisheries Act 1952-1953 (Cth), which made subject to Australian control foreign nationals and foreign vessels engaging in pearling on the continental shelf. In section 5 of the Principal Act, “pearling” was defined to include—

In 1888 the social wing of the Salvation Army in Britain had begun an ambitious program for social reform and spiritual revival focusing on the disciplining and retraining of the unemployed. City workshops in London gave unemployed workmen board and lodgings in return for eight hours work a day. Efficiency, deportment and cleanliness were rewarded by increases in food rations and eventually men were given a cash allowance. Attached to the workshops was a labour bureau which would put men in touch with potential employers. In 1905 the Liberal Magazine suggested that the Army be given a government contract to deal with the unemployed and, four years later, the Minority Report of the Poor Law Commission recommended that public authorities work in conjunction with religious organisations in training and reforming the recalcitrant unemployed.