Bringing Rights Home

This article has been adapted from the 7th Michael Kirby Justice Oration, delivered at the College of Law & Justice, Victoria University, Melbourne, on 27 September 2017.

This article has been adapted from the 8th Michael Kirby Justice Oration, delivered at the College of Law & Justice, Victoria University, Melbourne, on 26 September 2018.

This article has been adapted from the 3rd Michael Kirby Justice Oration, delivered at the College of Law & Justice, Victoria University, Melbourne on 7 March 2013.
 
 Ireland has been overwhelmed in the past two decades by what the Catholic Church itself has called ‘a tsunami’ of revelations of clerical child abuse – physical as well as sexual – of the meticulous concealment of abuse and abusers and of a long-established, and almost universal policy of protecting the assets and reputation of the Church, in preference to exposing the abusers. Between 2006 and 2009 Judge Yvonne Murphy chaired a Commission of Inquiry into the child sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin.

This article has been adapted from the 4th Michael Kirby Justice Oration, delivered at the College of Law & Justice, Victoria University, Melbourne, on 7 October 2014.

Interview with the Chief Judge of the County Court of Victoria conducted on 19 August 2014 at the College of Law & Justice, Victoria University in Melbourne.

This article has been adapted from the 9th Michael Kirby Justice Oration, delivered at the College of Law & Justice, Victoria University, Melbourne, on 27 August 2019.

Foreword to Volume 3, Issue 1.

Sir David Lloyd Jones was the 2017 Victoria University Law Dean's Fellow. The following is a revised version of the lecture given at Victoria University of Wellington on 23 August 2017 on the likely impact of Brexit on English law. It is based on the information available at that date.

This report by Dr Barton was the result of a survey of the legal resource needs of small Commonwealth states in the Pacific commissioned by the Commonwealth Secretariat in 1979. Dr Barton spent a month and a half visiting the 8 nation states between May and October of 1979. The terms of reference focussed on obtaining a factually based profile of the legal-constitutional needs of each state and are reflected in the various sections of the report. In particular, the terms of referencedirected Dr Barton to "examine ways in which the special legal requirements of these jurisdictions may most effectively and efficiently be met bearing in mind the limited resources available and seeking to make maximum use of assistance which it might be possible to arrange from other institutions ifor example, from university law faculties) and in close collaboration with existing regional institutions in the Pacific". In response to this Dr Barton suggests, among other things, aregional legal unit to serve the area, a suggestion which still has relevance today. Although Dr Barton's ideas for a regional advice unit were never implemented it is significant that a Pacific Law Unit for training purposes was established in Vanuatu with Commonwealth Secretariat and New Zealand Government support and latterly a regional law school has been established in Vanuatu by the University of South Pacific. In particular his comment that "in newly independent territories the need for legislative texts that are both up-to-date and readily available is particularly urgent" found a response in Victoria University Law Faculty based legislation master lists (Samoa, Solomon Islands) and in consolidated collections for Cook Islands, Niue, Norfolk Island and Tokelau.

The vision laid down in the 1967 Royal Commission Report was radical in scope and quickly became controversial. Led by its Chairman, Sir Owen Woodhouse, the Commission presented a series of connected principles to support that vision, drawing from earlier critiques of the common law system in New Zealand and abroad. This paper explores the legal background in New Zealand prior to the Woodhouse Report and reviews prior movement toward reform, including submissions made by members of the Victoria University Law Faculty. It also describes opposition to the Report from members of the bar and other interest groups, but suggests reasons why the Woodhouse framework was nonetheless able to prevail.