Australian Critical Decisions

Ann Genovese is a professor and an historian of modern Australian jurisprudence. Her projects aim to bring to life stories of how Australians have practiced and experienced their law since 1950. She works at Melbourne Law School. Recent publications include Sovereignty: Frontiers of Possibility (2013) and Rights and Redemption: History, Law, Indigenous People (2008).

Introduction 1. Koowarta: AWarrior for Justice A Brief History of Queensland’s Racially Discriminatory Legislation and the Aboriginal Litigants Who Fought It 2. Internal and external affairs: the Koowarta case in context 3. Justice in whose eyes? Why lawyers should read black Australian literature 4. Recovering the foundations of Koowarta: the struggle of the Aboriginal Land Fund Commission to purchase land in Queensland 5. Koowarta: constitutional landmark, transition point or missed opportunity? 6. Practising law and politics in 1980s’ Australia: the liberating effect of Koowarta v Bjelke-Petersen 7. Koowarta and the rival Indigenous international: our place as Indigenous peoples in the international 8. Koowarta: a vital turning point for Aboriginal rights and Australia Summing up the symposium 9. Reflections on legal issues in the Tasmanian Dams Case 10. The Tasmanian Dam Case: an advocate’s memoir 11. Limitlessness in Australian Constitutional Legal Narrative: The memory of Black’s Address in the Tasmanian Dam Case 12. Experiences of coming to law: An Interview with Bob Brown on the Tasmanian wilderness society as client in the Tasmanian Dam Case 13. Nineteen eighty three: A jurisographic report on Commonwealth v Tasmania 14. Tasmanian Dams and Australia’s Relationship with International Law 15. Making sense of indigeneity, aboriginality and identity: race as a Constitutional conundrum since 1983 16. Law and the practices of ‘damming’: Tasmanian Dams Case as a turning point