A partial view: the limits and value of the legal archive for historicising domestic violence

Abstract

In a wider history of domestic violence in Australia from 1850 to the present, divorce and family law have emerged as key sites for tracing what options were available for women and children fleeing violence, and what obstacles and repercussions they faced in doing so. In this article, we consider what constitutes the ‘legal archive’ in relation to the legibility of domestic violence across three different time periods – the colonial period, with its patchwork of divorce legislation, with a specific focus on Western Australia; the use of the ground of constructive desertion in the twentieth century until the Matrimonial Causes Act 1959 (Cth); and family law as operative from the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth) to the present.