Australian law has no concept of absolute ownership of land. Instead, it recognizes a limited number of interests, public and private, in land. Many of these interests, or titles, are statutory in origin. During the colonial era, state legislatures won control of public land from the British...

There is little literature on the legal aspects of Australia-New Zealand (trans-Tasman) sport or on how the sport laws of one country influence those of the other. This appears curious given the countries' close sporting and legal ties. A possible explanation is that there has been little...

This paper argues that the driving motivation for federalism reform in Australia should be to enhance Australian federal democracy. Federal democracy is a rich, compound, concept that supports responsive and accountable government, participation in public life, policy innovation and collective...

This chapter, written for a comparative examining precedent and case-based reasoning in apex courts, examines the Australian High Court’s approach to the decisions of international courts and the decisions of other supreme courts through the prism of one significant area of Australian...

Article 12(1) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights requires governments to recognise “the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health”. However, the traditional focus of mental health laws on the...

In an earlier study we analysed how the United States Patent and Trade Mark Office, the European Patent Office and the Japan Patent Office (jointly referred to as the 'Trilateral Offices' or TOs) assessed reach-through patent claims in biotechnology, under the requirements of 'utility', 'written...

This article briefly describes the legal position in Australia prior to the Ice decision. It then explains the nature of the changes to that position as a consequence of the Ice decision. After dealing with the Ice decision, the recent first-instance decision in Phone Directories will be considered

This article is about the interpretation of legal texts. Its immediate aim is to defend, against a certain sort of originalist objection, the well-known cases that hold that the Australian Constitution, by implication, guarantees certain political freedoms and entitlements. That is not to say...

This paper questions the common legal assumption that Internet protocol television (IPTV) in its typical form is necessarily a service delivered using or over the Internet. It uses two aspects of Australian law – one in broadcasting and the other in copyright – to examine whether the...