Australia: a land of plenty (of legislative regimes)

Title
Australia: a land of plenty (of legislative regimes)
Publication Date
2015
Author(s)
Burns, Kylie
Loughnan, Arlie
Lunney, Mark
( author )
OrcID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1462-5960
Email: mlunney@une.edu.au
UNE Id une-id:mlunney
Willis, Sonya
Editor
Editor(s): Matthew Dyson
Type of document
Book Chapter
Language
en
Entity Type
Publication
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Place of publication
Cambridge, United Kingdom
Edition
1
DOI
10.1017/CBO9781139946285.011
UNE publication id
une:20718
Abstract
Australia is a common law-based federation of states and territories that derived its legal system from England. Australia has no national Bill of Rights but its federal constitution grants specific powers to the federal government with the remaining powers exercised by each state. Two states have created human rights statutes.1 The federal powers to govern crime and tort are limited to crimes or torts falling within one of a number of narrow federal constitutional heads of power.2 Therefore, most criminal law and tort law is state based and, hence, varies across Australia. On the one hand, each state legislature has ultimate constitutional power to alter the common law through legislation.3 The federal constitution also enables the enforcement throughout Australia of tortious and criminal decisions by state courts.4 On the other hand, the High Court of Australia is the ultimate arbiter of the common law of Australia as applicable in each state. The common law system of precedent applicable in Australia thus enables the High Court to bring significant uniformity to tort and crime law in Australia albeit constricted by potentially conflicting state legislation. During the past few decades, statute-based law has proliferated in Australia in many areas including both the criminal and tort spheres.
Link
Citation
Comparing Tort and Crime : Learning from across and within Legal Systems, p. 367-415
ISBN
9781107080485
Start page
367
End page
415

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