Just so: “The law which governs Australia is Australian law”

Law and Critique

Volumn 13, Issue 3, 2002, Pages 289-309

  Dorsett, Shaunnagh ^a   McVeigh, Shaun ^a  

^a GRIFFITH UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

Author keywords

Chorography; Jurisidiction; Legal responsibility; Native title; Schmitt; Sovereignty; Territory

Indexed keywords

EID: 0344414763     PISSN: 09578536     EISSN: 15728617     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1021200520452     Document Type: Review

References (82)

1. See P. Rush, “Deathbound Doctrine: Scenes of Murder and Its Inheritance", Studies in Law, Politics and Society 16 (1997), 71-100. The present work draws on, and provides a counterpoint to, this important essay.
2. C. Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Essays on the Concept of Sovereignty (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985), 5.
3. G. Agamben, Homo Sacer (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), 21.
4. J. Derrida, The Politics of Friendship (London: Verso, 1997), Ch. 5.
5. C. Schmitt, “Appropriation/Distribution/Production: Toward a Proper Formulation of Basic Questions of any Social and Economic Order", Telos 95 (1993), 52-64, at 56.
6. C. Schmitt, “Appropriation/Distribution/Production: Toward a Proper Formulation of Basic Questions of any Social and Economic Order", Telos (1993), Ibid., at 53.
7. This forms the basis of Schmitt’s Friend/Enemy coupling. C. Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 1976.
8. For a republican counter-polemic on the relation between sovereignty, land and territory see Ely J, “The Polis and ‘The Political’: Civic and Territorial Views of Association", Thesis Eleven (August 1996), 46.
9. C. Schmitt, “The Land Appropriation of a New World" (translation of Chapter II, “Die Landnahme einer neuen Welt", in Der Nomos der Erde im Völkerr echt der Jus Publicum Europeaeum, 1950, second edition, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, 1974)
10. Telos 109 (1996) 29, at 61-65.
11. Mabo v. State of Queensland (No. 2) (1992) 175 C.L.R. 1, at 31.
12. See J. Bodin, Six Bookes of a Commonweale (1576) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1992).
13. Walker v. New South Wales (1994) 69 A.L.J.R. 111.
14. Coe v. Commonwealth (1993) 68 A.L.J.R. 110, at 115.
15. Mabo (No. 2), supra n. 10, at 37.
16. Ibid., at 36.
17. Attorney-General v. Brown (1847) 1 Legge 312, at 318.
18. See also, for example, Randwick Corporation v. Rutledge (1959) 102 C.L.R. 54.
19. See also Rush, supra n. 1, at 87-93.
20. R. Ford, “Law’s Territory (A History of Jurisdiction)", Michigan L.R, 97 (1999), 843, at 843.
21. Ibid., at 881.
22. See H. Grotius, The Freedom of the Seas or the Right which belongs to the Dutch to take part in the East Indian Trade, translation by R. van Damen Magoffin of Mare Liberum sive de jure quod Batavis competit ad Indicana commercia dissertatio, 1609, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1916)
23. and J. Vattel, Law of Nations (1758), (New York: AMS Press, 1982).
24. See also Mabo (No. 2), supra n. 10, at 32.
25. See H. Smith (ed.), Great Britain and the Law of Nations: A Selection of documents illustrating the views of the government in the United Kingdom upon matters of International Law (London: King, 1932-1935), Vol. II, at 1.
26. See Charter of Justice, 2 April 1787 (UK).
27. R. v. Ballard, unreported decision of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, 13 June 1829, per Forbes CJ and Dowling J. A transcript of the notebook of Dowling J has been provided by Kercher in A.I.L.R. 3 (1998), 412.
28. The notebook is to be found at Proceedings of the Supreme Court, Vol. 22, Archives Office of New South Wales, 2/3205, 98. Page references are to the A.I.L.R.
29. Ibid., at 412.
30. Ibid., at 413-414.
31. R. v. Bonjon (1841), published in A.I.L.R. 3 (1998), 417.
32. B. Kercher, “Recognition of Indigenous Legal Autonomy in Nineteenth Century New South Wales" (1998) A.I.L.B. 4(13), (1998), 7, at 7.
33. Randwick Corporation v. Rutledge (1959) 102 C.L.R. 54, at 71.
34. Case of Tanistry, (1608) Davis 28; 80 ER 516.
35. For the English translation, see Sir John Davies, A Report of the Cases and Matters in Law, Resolved and Adjudged in the King’s Courts in Ireland, Printed for Sarah Cotter, under Dick’s Coffee House, in Skinner Row (1762), 78.
36. Tanistry was the name given by contemporary English observers to the practice under which Irish succession devolved through the male line or agnatic descendants of a common grandfather to the most worthy male member of the extended kin group (the tanist).
37. Case of Tanistry, supra n. 29, at Davies 30, ER 518, English Translation 84.
38. Ibid.
39. H. Pawlis ch, Sir John Davies and the Conquest of Ireland: A Study in Legal Imperialism, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 45.
40. Case of Tanistry, supra n. 29, at Davies 30, ER 518, English Translation 84.
41. See Sir Edward Coke, The Compleat Copyholder: Being a Learned Discourse of the Antiquity and nature of Manors and Copyholds, with all Things thereunto incident. Included within The First Part of the Institutes of the Laws of England: or a Commentary upon Littleton, (originally published 1630, 1719 ed).
42. Ptolemy, Ptolemy’s Geography: An Annotated Translation of the Theoretical Chapters, trans., J.L Berggren and L. Jones (Ann Arbor: Princeton University Press, 2000), 57-84.
43. Schmitt, supra n. 5, at 30.
44. Ibid., at 33-34.
45. C. Tomlins, “The Legal Cartography of Colonization, the Legal Polyphony of Settlement: English Intrusions on the American Mainland in the Seventeenth Century", Law and Soc. Inq., 26 (2001), 315, at 316.
46. Ibid., at 316.
47. M. Edney, Mapping an Empire: The Geographic Construction of British India, 1765-1843 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 300.
48. Tomlins, supra n. 39, at 337.
49. S. Ryan, The Cartographic Eye: How Explorers Saw Australia (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 101.
50. J. Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994), 1.
51. See H. Darby, “The Agrarian Contribution to Surveying in England", Geographical Journal 82 (1933), 529.
52. Ford, supra n. 18, at 881.
53. Darby, supra n. 45, at 530.
54. R. Kain and E. Baigent, The Cadastral Map in the Service of the State: A History of Property Mapping (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), xvii.
55. T. Mitchell, Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia with Descriptions of the Recently Explored Region of Australia Felix and of the Present Colony of New South Wales, 2nd ed., 2 Vols, (London: T. & W. Boone, 1839), Vol. II, at 333
56. quoted in Ryan, supra n. 43, at 125.
57. See P. Carter, The Lie of the Land (London: Faber and Faber, 1996), 203-290, for a counter-reading of this process.
58. E. Wakefield, A Letter from Sydney and Other Writings (London: Dent, 1929), 47.
59. J. Locke, The Second Treatise of Government, T. Peardon, ed. (New York: Prometheus Books, 1986), at para. 38.
60. Determination Pursuant to Reference of 27 February, 1986 by the High Court of Australia to the Supreme Court of Queensland to hear and determine all issues of facts raised by the pleadings, particulars and further particulars in High Court action B12 of 1982, unpublished findings of fact by Moynihan J, Volume 1, at 155. This contrasts with the earlier case of Milirrpum v. Nabalco, in which the trial judge had found that the relationship of the plaintiffs to their land was primarily spiritual in nature, and therefore not proprietary in nature: Milirrpum v. Nabalco (1970-1971) 17 F.L.R. 141, at 270.
61. Ibid., at 173-174.
62. Over time, the model form of Australian land holding and use became associated with pastoral leases: see Wik Peoples v. State of Queensland (1996) 187 CLR 1.
63. It can be noted that in being represented as nomads, aboriginal people become a problem of internal order and so become subject in the common law imagination to the laws relating to indigents.
64. In a Lockean idiom, these images remain for ready for enclosure and appropriation. In a more Rousseauist vein, they might have served as a restorative fantasy: see H. Patapan Judging Democracy: the New Politics of the High Court of Australia (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press), Ch. 5.
65. Bulun Bulun v. R & T Textiles Pty Ltd (1998) 157 A.L.R. 193.
66. Ibid., at 198.
67. In a similar vein see the refusal of Olney J, at first instance, in Yarmirr v. Northern Territory (the ‘Croker Island Case’) (1998) 156 A.L.R. 370 to accept that the rights and duties under to traditional law and custom to safeguard cultural knowledge could be classified as native title, unless the exercise of the right and duty involves the physical presence of the relevant persons on the site in question (at 427).
68. Similarly, the finding by Olney J, at first instance, in Yorta Yorta that recreational fishing is not recognisable as a native title right in circumstances where ancestors of the plaintiff group undertook fishing for subsistence purposes further limits the authentic and thus jurisdictional reach of the court to a subsistence relationship with the land: Yorta Yorta, unreported decision of Olney J [1998] 1606 FCA, at para 123.
69. New South Wales v. Commonwealth (1975) 135 C.L.R. 337, at 368 per Barwick CJ.
70. Commonwealth v. Yarmirr (the ‘Croker Island Case’) (2001) 184 A.L.R. 113.
71. See also the earlier case of Mason v. Tritton (1994) 32 N.S.W.L.R. 572.
72. Commonwealth v. Yarmirr, supra n. 63, at 123.
73. Ibid., at 139.
74. On the recognition of native title as a recognition of epistemological sameness, see S. Motha, “Mabo: Encountering the Epistemic Limit of the Recognition Of ‘Difference’", G.L.R. 7 (1998), 79-97.
75. See C. Schmitt, “The Plight of European Jurisprudence", (1943/44) Telos 83 (Spring, 1990), 35.
76. G. Marramao, “The Exile of the Nomos: for a Critical Profile of Carl Schmitt", Cardozo Law Review 21/5 (2000), 1567-1587, at 1580.
77. Schmitt, supra n. 2, at 41-42.
78. Grigoris Anandis, “Carl Schmitt and Max Adler: The Irreconcilability of Politics and Democracy", in Chantal Mouffe, ed., The Challenge of Carl Schmitt (London: Verso, 1999), 132.
79. See especially, the judgment of Gummow J in Wik, supra n. 55
80. discussed in P. Rush, “An Altered Jurisdiction: Corporeal Traces of Law", GLR 6 (1997), 144-168, at 146-150.
81. See C. Schmitt, The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1996).
82. See I. Hunter, “Native Title: Acts of State and the Rule of Law", in M. Goot and T. Rowse, eds., Make a Better Offer: The Politics of Mabo (Leichart: Pluto Press, 1994).