ABSTRACT Rates of child poverty remain high in Australia, despite the ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) thirty-five years ago. This paper explores the gap between the transformative potential of the UNCRC and the lived realities of children who are growing up in poverty. It analyses the ongoing contestation around children’s human rights in Australia and the failure to institutionalise the UNCRC. It argues that children’s human rights to an adequate standard of living, including sufficient food and shelter, to development and to healthcare have been consistently violated. Moreover, successive governments since the 1990s have adopted policies that have not only failed to reduce child poverty but have worsened the experiences of children who are growing up in contexts of poverty. Listening to children’s experiences of how poverty shapes and constrains their lives illuminates both the extent to which poverty is a violation of their human rights and the failure of successive governments to adopt rights-respecting anti-poverty policies.

ABSTRACT Robert Cover in his ‘Nomos and Narrative’ famously enunciated the idea of the nomos – the normative world that comprehends yet extends beyond legalities and which is contextualised and located with reference to narrative. This article applies the idea of the nomos as a paradigm to explore and understand all normative aspects of human life. The article demonstrates the importance of society’s attending to and nurturing of its nomos, which can only be achieved through continuous engagement with the nomos through normative discourse. What insights can be obtained from applying such a paradigm and how could normative discourse be used to engage with, maintain and vitalise the nomos? The article explores these questions with references to Papua New Guinea, a nation whose normative world is particularly rich, dynamic and complex and which offers an interesting case of an attempt at nation-building.

ABSTRACT Muslim women in Australia experience layered forms of financial exclusion shaped by the intersection of gender, religion, migration, race, and socio-economic position. These intersecting dynamics are reinforced by Australia's secular, market-oriented financial system, which offers limited regulatory recognition of Islamic financial principles. This article undertakes a doctrinal and regulatory analysis of Islamic finance in Australia, focusing on qard hasan (benevolent loans) and waqf (charitable endowments), to assess both their potential and structural constraints as mechanisms of financial inclusion. Drawing on an integrated frame work combining intersectionality, Critical Discourse Studies, and framing theory, the article analyses how legal and regulatory discourses construct Muslim women as financial subjects in a Muslim-minority context. It shows that financial exclusion is not only about access to products, but is embedded in regulatory design and assumptions about the ‘neutral’ financial actor. A comparative reference to the United Kingdom illustrates how different regulatory approaches shape the accommodation of faith-based finance. The analysis finds that, without institutional recognition, Islamic financial instruments remain marginal in Australia, shifting the burden of reconciling religious obligations onto individuals. Meaningful financial inclusion therefore requires institutional and discursive reform.

ABSTRACT This paper evaluates the laws applicable to the use of chemical and biological weapons against agriculture. In doing so, it focuses on livestock and crops, rather than on other components of agricultural production such as irrigation and machinery, as these are the living targets which anti-agricultural weapons commonly seek to damage or destroy. This paper begins with a brief overview of historical uses of chemical and biological agents against agriculture. It then examines the international law prohibitions on the use of chemical and biological weapons, and the international humanitarian law protections for agriculture. This paper argues that while agriculture may be an attractive strategic target with the potential to cause an adversary significant economic and supply chain impacts, the deliberate use of chemical or biological weapons against livestock or crops at any time would be a violation of existing laws.

ABSTRACT This article analyses the emergence of feminist lawmaking through the lens of the socio-legal concept of ‘legal consciousness’. It argues that shifts in feminist legal consciousness have produced a more expansive understanding and practice of feminist lawmaking, which in turn impacts on the continuing constitution of feminist legal consciousness. In making this argument the article offers an alternative history of feminist legal theory and praxis which hinges on its changing relationship with law and legality, rather than simply on its relationship with the wider landscape of (Anglo-American) feminist social and political theory. The article finally identifies the potential extension of this trajectory into the development of feminist legality, whose relationship with state-centric legal hegemony may be reinforcing, counter-hegemonic, pluralistic, or possibly all three.

ABSTRACT In healthcare, respecting patient autonomy is widely regarded as a fundamental ethical principle, with health communication studies emphasising the importance of patient-centred care based on the principle of respecting patient autonomy. Two critical functions of patient-centred care include engaging patients in decision-making and providing them with the necessary resources for self-management. However, in Vietnam, gender inequality and familial pressure present significant obstacles to women’s reproductive healthcare autonomy. Under the pervasive influence of patriarchal ideology, decisions concerning a woman’s body, including childbirth and abortion, are often not based on her individual will. This article analyzes inequality in healthcare to provide insights into the identity and oppression experienced by women in reproductive healthcare decision-making in Vietnam. It raises critical questions about the current state of women’s autonomy in the contemporary biomedical context, particularly how patient-centred care models are reinforced from a legal perspective. Drawing on feminist legal theory, this article examines perspectives on autonomy and choice in healthcare decision-making. It proposes recommendations for reforming regulations from a feminist legal standpoint, aiming to build a more women-centred reproductive healthcare system that avoids discrimination based on ideological reasons.

ABSTRACT Based on an analysis of the Vietnamese judicial practice of employing ‘sympathetic consideration’ in marital property division, this study interrogates whether this remedial approach-intended to protect wives disadvantaged by traditional norms-truly aligns with the justice conceptualised by feminist legal theory. This research argues that while ostensibly benevolent, this judicial practice functions as a form of paternalism that paradoxically reinforces stereotypes of female dependency, thereby subverting the goal of substantive gender justice. Building on this critique, the study moves from analysis to prescription, drawing upon a comparative review of advanced equitable frameworks to propose a normative framework for equitable distribution of marital assets upon divorce. This framework advocates for a multi-pronged system that includes codifying the equal weight of non-financial contributions, introducing specific methodologies for valuing unpaid labour, and establishing a layered system of compensatory remedies to ensure post-divorce economic stability. In doing so, this research offers a critical intervention by providing a principled roadmap for reforming family law, aiming to bridge the gap between discretionary judicial practice and feminist legal theory and to embed substantive equality into the legal fabric.

ABSTRACT This article examines the emergence of the term, protective punishment, a concept that has received limited attention in legal and criminological scholarship. The term has gained traction in Australian courts amid growing global and political emphasis on community protection and strict border control measures. In response to the rise of crimmigration matters in Australia, legislation and instruments reflect the prioritisation of community safety. Using Australia’s removal regime as a case study, this article provides a doctrinal analysis of legislation and case law to illustrate how protective punishment may be heavily influencing legal decisions in Australia (particularly within the migration framework). Through critical analysis, this article hopes to offer a clearer definition of protective punishment whilst also identifying instances where the Australian Government may be overreaching its constitutional powers. We argue that this shift is evident in the prioritisation of protective measures within the application of removal laws and provide case analysis to support this notion. Accordingly, this article considers whether the framing of migration matters through a ‘protective-punishment lens’ may encourage the characterisation of removals as punitive and therefore move beyond executive power. Or alternatively, is the High Court satisfied that protective punishment practices are within the power of the executive?

ABSTRACT The article interrogates the coronial findings of a South Australian inquest into the deaths of six Indigenous people, showing how the coronial process operationalises racialised logics that simultaneously erase race and reinforce racism. Using critical discourse analysis informed by critical race theory, the article examines the narrative structure of the Coroner's findings, through the framework of a set-up, confrontation, and resolution, to show how blame is attributed to Indigenous people while institutional accountability is avoided following preventable Indigenous deaths in the health system. Through intertextual readings of coronial findings, the article challenges the purported neutrality of coronial law and calls for a deeper engagement with racism in understanding preventable Indigenous deaths.

ABSTRACT In 2023, influencer Caryn Marjorie made an AI clone but quickly backtracked after sexually explicit, threatening chats became the norm. In 2025, Grok 4 upgraded to include a ‘virtual friends’ feature, with Ani, an anime-esque character. Ani came designed to encourage users to build affection towards unlocking a ‘NSFW’ mode which could function as a personalised pornography model. These character AI bots are purposely built for relationships – but in an era where domestic violence advocates tell us that gendered violence is at an epidemic scale, what effect will this have on gender relations and society? As lawmakers grapple with AI, we look to science fiction to note the way robots have been gendered through time, and how AI continues to function as a tool to proliferate gendered violence. From Ancient Greece to popular science fiction, we argue that when robots are gendered, they are often positioned as either super computers (male) or as assistants (female). The reinforcement of a gender hierarchy reveals one of the fears with the advancement of AI technology – that it will lead to a culture of gendered disrespect. This invites questions about what the law can do to mitigate this technologically facilitated violence.