In some occupations, employers impose gendered appearance requirements on their employees. In this paper we present the findings of a small sample of Australian service industry workers subject to such requirements. We analyse these empirical findings to evaluate competing proposals in the...

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...

In the middle third of the 19th century Upper Canada (now Ontario) followed by South Australia passed statutes for the legal recognition of religious bodies. The latter statute has already been the subject of a brief history. This article considers the background to the enactment of Upper...

There has recently been a minor research and publishing boom in the field of refusals of royal assent to Bills in Australia. When in the throes of finalising my own contribution to this outburst of scholarship, I discovered that the figurehead German Federal President had just refused his assent...

This article examines to what extent there is legacy of the Commission’s labour standards in the new legislated standards in the National Employment Standards and dismissal protection in the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth). The Commission’s ‘community standards’, mainly from ‘test cases’...

This article considers the role of the concept of freedom of communication within the law of copyright in Australia. It concludes that the judicially articulated implied Constitutional guarantee of freedom of political communication is too narrow to act as a control upon the contours or nature...

An analysis of 32 cases reported between July 2010 and September 2014 by professional disciplinary tribunals in New South Wales and Victoria against medical practitioners found guilty of inappropriately prescribing Sch 8 medications (mainly opioids) and Sch 4 drugs (mainly benzodiazepines)...

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...