Someone in Canberra is selling an ex-High Court chaise longue on Gumtree. I must admit that I am sorely tempted – surely the bloggers on this blog can only be inspired if we compose our posts on a court chaise longue? – although I suspect it’s “pickup only”! If you click on the link you’ll see it has a High Court stamp on the leg.
In two months, Melbourne Law School’s own Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies will hold its fourth annual conference, this time focussing on:
Non-Statutory Executive Power;
Proportionality after McCloy;
Restrospectivity and the Rule of Law
The first of these topics in particular is associated with the work of the French court, while the second captures a key issue in the transition to the successor Kiefel court. More importantly:
The final session of the Conference provides a retrospective on the High Court under Chief Justice Robert French, with a special focus on Chapter III and the separation of powers.
Unsurprisingly, the day will encompass a host of High Court cases:
The cases to be discussed include: Re Culleton [No 2] (2017); Cunningham v Commonwealth (2016);… Murphy v AEC (2016); Plaintiff M68 (2015); P T Bayan Resources v BCBC Singapore (2016); Rizeq v Western Australia (2016); McCloy v New South Wales (2015); Assistant Commissioner Condon v Pompano Pty Ltd (2013); Wainohu v New South Wales (2011); Momcilovic v The Queen (2011); Kirk v DPP (2010); South Australia v Totani (2010) and International Finance Trust Co Ltd v New South Wales Crime Commission (2009).
Looking further ahead, 2018 will be the first time that the biennial Public Law Conference series (previously held in Cambridge) will be held in Australia, inevitably including a consideration of the French Court’s work. Former High Court judge Ken Hayne is a speaker at both conferences.
The website for the CCCS conference is here, while the one for the Public Law conference is here.
After rejecting all written applications this session, the High Court granted seven applications in Friday’s twin oral hearings in Canberra. The grants include a direct sequel to a 2015 decision by the Court concerning an industrial dispute in Melbourne. As discussed in this post, the incident was a 2013 blockade of concrete trucks in Footscray at a site connected to the Regional Rail Link, seemingly led by Joe Myles, a CFMEU employee. Two years ago, the High Court ruled that the CFMEU, facing contempt proceedings for allegedly breaching an order barring such action, could be required to divulge telephone details that could link it to Myles. The contempt matter has since been settled and the CFMEU and Myles have admitted breaching the Fair Work Act in a parallel proceeding in the Federal Court. The new issue before the High Court concerns an unusual civil penalty that the Federal Court imposed on Joe Myles for his role in the Footscray incident.
The seven matters where leave has been granted this session are: Continue reading
In a decision this week, Aubrey v The Queen [2017] HCA 18, a 4-1 majority of the High Court overruled an 1888 decision of the Court of Crown Cases Reserved (a predecessor to England’s Court of Appeals), which had held that a man who gave his wife gonorrhoea could not be convicted of ‘inflicting’ harm. Holding that the English decision should not be applied to the case of Michael Aubrey, a NSW man convicted of maliciously inflicting grievous bodily harm by giving his sexual partner HIV in 2004, the majority said:
Granted, until this case, Clarence had not been distinguished or judicially doubted in New South Wales. It was assumed that proof of an offence against s 35 of the Crimes Act necessitated proof of a direct causing of some grievous physical injury with a weapon or blow… It may also be accepted that the Court is ordinarily loath to overturn a long-standing decision about the meaning of a provision unless there is doubt about it, or to depart from the view of judges who, because of proximity in time to the passage of the legislation in question, were more aware of the reasons underlying the legislation. But that is not this case.
The majority listed nine reasons why Clarence should no longer be followed, including contrary pre-1888 authority, the lack of a single majority view in the case, two forceful dissenting judgments, subsequent discoveries about infection, the subsequent abandonment of the presumption of consent to marital sex and the more recent rejection of Clarence in England’s courts.
Few, other than people in a similar position to Aubrey himself, will mourn the death of Clarence. However, the majority’s approach to overruling that decision is an interesting contrast to the Court’s refusal last year to overturn its own little-loved decisions on complicity Continue reading
The High Court has dismissed an appeal against a decision of the New South Wales Court of Criminal Appeal on the meaning of ‘inflict’ in ‘infliction of grievous bodily harm’ and the foresight of risk in establishing recklessness. Aubrey was charged with several offences related to his allegedly infecting his partner with HIV through unprotected sex and in the knowledge that he was HIV positive. The appellant sought to have a more general offence against s 35 of the Crimes Act 1900 (NSW) of maliciously inflicting grievous bodily harm quashed on the basis that, on the Crown’s factual case, the transmission did not constitute an ‘infliction’. The NSWCCA held that ‘inflicts’ should not be given a limited, technical meaning or require any violent act with an immediate result, and that transmitting a disease that manifests itself over time could amount to grievous bodily harm; special leave to appeal to the High Court against that decision was refused. Following these interlocutory appeals and a trial, Aubrey was convicted of maliciously inflicting grievous bodily harm. A differently constituted NSWCCA rejected his argument that this count disclosed no offence known to the law, agreeing with the reasoning in the earlier NSWCCA decision. Following a grant of special leave, the appellant sought to Continue reading
The High Court has decided two related appeals against decisions of the Victorian Court of Appeal and the New South Wales Court of Criminal Appeal on proof requirements for federal drug trafficking offences where the accused deny knowledge of drugs discovered in their luggage. Afford was arrested at Melbourne Airport for importing heroin hidden in oil and a laptop that he had been given as part of an apparent scam. A majority of the Victorian Court of Appeal allowed his appeal against conviction on the basis that Afford clearly did not want or intend to import any drugs. Smith was arrested at Sydney Airport with methamphetamine hidden inside soap and golf sets that he had been given as part of the scam. The NSWCCA unanimously upheld Smith’s conviction because his intent could be inferred from an admission that he had ‘significant misgivings’ about the gifts. The NSWCCA, which handed down its decision after the VSCA decision in Afford, also held that the VSCA erred in distinguishing the matter before it from Kural v The Queen [1987] HCA 16, in which the High Court held that the intention to import drugs can be inferred from a person’s awareness of a risk that the luggage contains drugs.
The High Court allowed the Crown’s appeal in Afford and dismissed Smith’s appeal against his conviction. The joint judges (Kiefel CJ, Bell, Gageler, Keane, Nettle and Gordon JJ) Continue reading
This week, the full bench of the High Court heard a challenge by ex-politician Bob Brown to Tasmanian laws giving police new powers to protect ‘workplaces’, including part of the Lapoinya forest where a logging operation has been occurring. Apart from its immediate political significance, the case is of enormous legal interest because the Court is being asked to revisit both ‘limbs’ of 1997’s Lange test on the operation of the Constitution’s implied freedom of political communication: what counts as a burden on the freedom (Tasmania argues that the new law cannot impose a burden on people who were, it claimed, already trespassers) and the test for when a law that burdens the freedom is invalid (some of the State parties have asked the Court to rethink the three-step proportionality test adopted by a bare majority of the Court in 2015’s decision on political donations.)
But these political and legal issues have long risked being sidelined by factual concerns. Continue reading
The High Court has allowed an appeal against a decision of the Victorian Court of Appeal on the enforcement of Australian judgments overseas in the context of bankruptcy. Section 15(2) of the Foreign Judgments Act 1991 (Cth), which lays out the procedure for an Australian court to issue a certified copy of a judgment for the purposes of enforcement in a foreign court, provides that a judgment creditor cannot make an application until the expiration of any ‘stay of enforcement’. Section 58(3) of the Bankruptcy Act 1966 (Cth) provides that when a debtor has become bankrupt ‘it is not competent for a creditor to enforce any remedy against the person’.
Following a long-running family dispute over properties in then Czechoslovakia that were expropriated by the Communist regime, the VSC held in 2009 that one sibling had reneged on an agreement with the others to Continue reading
The High Court has allowed a demurrer and dismissed proceedings in relation to a challenge to the constitutional validity of ss 189 and 196 of the Migration Act 1958 (Cth). The plaintiffs, Iranian asylum seekers detained on Nauru since 2014, were brough to Australia under s 198B for the ‘temporary purpose’ of medical treatment on mainland Australia. While in Australia, they contended that there was no lawful basis for their detention while temporarily in Australia, arguing that a non-citizen brought to Australia for a temporary purpose cannot be detained under ss 189 and 196, because that detention would constitute an invalid exercise of federal judicial power by the Executive. Continue reading
The High Court has allowed an appeal against a decision of the Queensland Court of Appeal on whether part of a general defence of compulsion is available for the crime of manslaughter under Queensland’s criminal code. During a fight with his best friend, Pickering produced a knife and warned the deceased to stay away from him. The deceased charged at him and during the scuffle Pickering’s knife stabbed and killed the deceased. A jury acquitted him of murder, but convicted him of manslaughter. The QCA rejected Pickering’s arguments that the trial judge should have directed the jury on the general defence of reasonably resisting violent threats (known as ‘compulsion’) in s 31(1)(c) of the Criminal Code 1899 (Qld), and not just the narrower defence of self-defence in s 271. Section 31 provides that a person is not criminally responsible for an act or omission when it is reasonably necessary to resist actual and unlawful violence threatened to that person, though the protection does not extend to actions which would constitute murder Continue reading