Late last week, the federal government appointed Geoffrey Nettle, a Victorian Court of Appeal judge, to the High Court to replace retiring justice Susan Crennan. Nettle is an excellent lawyer and his appointment…
A young girl born with Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder is not entitled to criminal injuries compensation from her mother drinking excessively while pregnant, the Court of Appeal has decided. It was alleged…
The idea of the grand jury is already familiar to many Australians through American television legal drama. But its profile just skyrocketed with a grand jury deciding not to indict policeman Darren Wilson…
Beyond simply counting steps, fitness tracking technology creates personal black boxes that archive everything we do – even sleeping. So it’s not surprising to see that a Calgary law firm, representing…
Reports about the latest investigation into the sexual assaults carried out by Jimmy Savile’s in a hospital in Leeds were invariably led by accounts from a small group of staff that Savile had engaged…
A campaign is at large to secure statutory anonymity for all young people under 18 who are accused of crime. Lawyers, criminologists, judges, sociologists, academics, and politicians are in on it. It is…
Over the past six months, Victoria’s prison system has been widely acknowledged as overcrowded and at “breaking point”. Police cells are full of those awaiting a court hearing. The County Court is being…
Amanda Knox has faced three verdicts in six years over a case in which it was alleged she was part of a brutal knife attack on Meredeth Kercher in Perugia in 2007 that resulted in her death. Although Knox…
Australian men and women in relatively equal numbers obtain undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in political science, law, medicine, business and economics. There is no shortage of women academics…
In an adversarial criminal justice system like the one we have in England and Wales, access to justice depends on access to lawyers. The court system is complicated and confusing, a heady mix of archaic…
The general movement in medical practice and ethics over the last 40 years has been away from paternalism towards strong respect for the autonomy of individuals. So a recent judgement in the High Court…
In 2010, the European Ombudsman ruled that the European Medicines Agency should open access to clinical trials data when companies applied to get their drugs on the market. The ombudsman decided public…
Most Australians with legal problems are unlikely to be able to access the help they need. Unless you’re wealthy and can pay for a private lawyer, or extremely poor and disadvantaged and able to access…