Migration and Refugee Law: Principles and Practice in Australia is a comprehensive overview of the legal principles governing the entry of people into Australia. This fully revised third edition provides an accessible analysis of the theory and practice of this complex and controversial area of the law. It considers the social and political context of migration and refugee law in devising innovative policies aimed at creating an equitable and rational immigration system. Migration and Refu...

‘When put to the test, most people have difficulty identifying what justice is, especially when there is tension between proper process and a desired result. Due process is inherent in our conception of justice. But bad process can yield the right result, just as good process can produce the wrong result. The legal system is designed to produce justice. We call it the justice system — sometimes un-selfconsciously, sometimes with bitter irony. It is designed to produce justice according to ...

Contemporary political and legal theory typically justifies the value of political and legal institutions on the grounds that such institutions bring about desirable outcomes - such as justice, security, and prosperity. In the popular imagination, however, many people seem to value public institutions for their own sake. The idea that political and legal institutions might be intrinsically valuable has received little philosophical attention. Why Law Matters presents the argument ...

The introduction of the Human Rights Act has led to an explosion in books on human rights, yet no sustained examination of their history and philosophy exists in the burgeoning literature. At the same time, while human rights have triumphed on the world stage as the ideology of postmodernity, our age has witnessed more violations of human rights than any previous, less enlightened one. This book fills the historical and theoretical gap and explores the powerful promises and disturbing para...

From the head of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission and noted professor of law and history at the University of Pennsylvania, a groundbreaking book that examines both civil and criminal court cases from the Civil War to the present, to reveal the impact of stereotyping--race, class, gender--on the American legal system.The question Mary Frances Berry asks: Whose story most strongly influences the making of legal decisions in the American justice system? Using previously unexamined ma...

The principle of proportionality, which has become the standard test for adjudicating human and constitutional rights disputes in jurisdictions worldwide has had few critics. Proportionality is generally taken for granted or enthusiastically promoted or accepted with minor qualifications. A Critique of Proportionality and Balancing presents a frontal challenge to this orthodoxy. It provides a comprehensive critique of the proportionality principle, and particularly of its most characterist...

This interdisciplinary collection presents a scholarly treatment of how the constitutional politics of federalism affect governments and citizens, offering an accessible yet comprehensive analysis of the U.S. Supreme Court’s federalism jurisprudence and its effect on the development of national and state policies in key areas of constitutional jurisprudence. The contributors address the impact that Supreme Court federalism precedents have in setting the parameters of national law and polic...

This collection explores and illustrates issues arising from ‘political’ approaches to human rights in contrast to the more traditional ‘moral’ approaches. Moral approaches conceptualize and justify human rights in terms of priority rights which are both universal and moral. In contrast, political approaches focus on those human rights practices involved in the development and operation of human rights institutions, laws and political process, all in relative independence from their allege...

Tom Bingham (1933-2010) was the 'greatest judge of our time' (The Guardian), a towering figure in modern British public life who championed the rule of law and human rights inside and outside the courtroom. Lives of the Law collects Bingham's most important later writings, in which he brings his distinctive, engaging style to tell the story of the diverse lives of the law: its life in government, in business, and in human wrongdoing. Following on from The Business of Judging

When part of a person's body is separated from them, or when a person dies, it is unclear what legal status the item of bodily material is able to obtain. A 'no property rule' which states that there is no property in the human body was first recorded in an English judgment in 1882. Claims based on property rights in the human body and its parts have failed on the basis that the human body is not the subject of property. Despite a recent series of exceptions to the 'no property rule', the ...

Questions of religious liberty have become flashpoints of controversy in virtually every area of life around the world. Despite the protection of religious liberty at both national and supranational levels, there is an increasing number of conflicts concerning the proper way to recognize it – both in modern secular states and in countries with an established religion or theocratic mode of government.This book provides an analysis of the general concept of religious liberty along wi...

Since its inception in 1998 the Human Rights Act (HRA) has come in for a wide variety of criticism on legal, constitutional, political and cultural grounds. More recently, this criticism escalated significantly as politicians have seriously considered proposals for its abolition. This book examines the main arguments against the HRA and the issues which have led to public hostility against the protection of human rights. The first part of the book looks at the legal structures and constitu...