Australian Legal Case: The Mabo Case The Mabo case commenced in the late 70's about an Aborigine Eddie Mabo who fought for his land on Murray Island, part of the Torres Strait. The issue that started the court case was when Mr Mabo appealed for a permit from the Queensland Government to visit the island. His proposal was declineed so he was unable to return home to visit his homeland. In 1981, in James Cook University where Eddie Mabo was working at the time, the students called a discussion on land rights in Australia. It was decided at the conference that the issue of a land claim by the Murray Islanders to traditional title would be taken to the High Court. With major local party support, including legal experts with significant experience in land rights legislation they set off to claim that Mabo had the right to visit his homeland.. The aim of the case was to make the law decide that the Islanders owned the land not the Euopeans [IMAGE] The case was motioned to the High Court at first, however they had to take it to their State Court the Supreme Court of Queensland first. The Queensland Government acted in response and they passed an unexpected piece of legislation through the House without any debate - the Torres Strait Islands Coastal Islands Bill. The Act quoted: 'Any rights that Torres Strait Islanders had to land after the claim of sovereignty in 1879 is hereby extinguished without compensation'. This was how the Mabo case started with an honourable aim. The main aim of the case was to prove that the Queensland Government breached the Bill breached the Racial Discrimination Act of 1975. It was also a case to make the Commonwealth government aware that Native Australians had the right to the so called "terra nullius", the name given to Australia when the Europeans first arrived meaning empty land. The case went back to the Supreme Court of Queensland where Justice Moynihan gave a presentation of the facts of the case.
At the conference he explained the traditional land ownership and inheritance system that his community followed on Mer Island. Afterwards, a lawyer in the audience noted the significance of his speech and suggested there should be a test case to claim land rights through the court system. In 1982, Eddie Koiki Mabo and four Mer islanders took their case of ownership of their lands on Mer Island to the Queensland Supreme Court. With Eddie Mabo as the leader the case became widely known as the ‘Mabo case’. After the court ruled against them, the islanders took the case to the High Court. On 3 June 1992 (ten years later), the court decided in favour of the Islanders and ruled that ‘the Meriam people of the Torres Strait did have native title over their traditional
1. Why was the case brought? Give a detailed summary of the factors that led to the case (250 words). Faragher v. City of Boca Raton (1998) was a 1990 lawsuit that went before the Supreme Court in 1998 after wending its way through the lower courts with various and opposing findings and appeals. Initially, Beth Ann Faragher filed a lawsuit because for sexual harassment that occurred while she was a life guard for the city of Boca Raton from 1985 to 1990.
How can we not own it?’ as a clarification for Mabo when he was deal with the case. After he died the government finally said Merry island is belong to aboriginal people. This is a powerful clue show racialism was a momentous aspect for Mabo fighting for aboriginal people’s rights let everyone turn be
The term ‘Mabo’’, as described in media reports refers to all the issues concerning the Australian High Court Judgment in the Mabo against Queensland Case. The Mabo decision was named after Eddie Mabo, a Torres Strait islander who regarded the Australian Law on land ownership wrong and challenged the Australian legal system. Eddie Mabo was born on the 29th of June 1936 on Murray Island. Murray Island is between mainland Australia and Papua New Guinea. In his early days of childhood, at the age of 16, Mabo was banished from Murray Island for breaking a customary law and moved to Queensland, where he worked various jobs such as a deck hand and cane cutter. At the age of 23 he married Bonita Nehow and settled in Townsville and had ten children. In Townsville he was a spokesperson for the Torres Strait Islander community and was involved in the Torres Strait islander advancement league. While working as a groundskeeper on James Cook University in 1974, he discovered that his people’s traditional land was actually owned by the government.
The merits of both the adversarial and inquisitorial system will be explored throughout this paper. The Australian rule of law best describes as all law should be applied equally and fairly. The five vital operations of the rule of law includes fairness, rationality, predictability, consistency, and impartially. The adversarial system adopts these operations by having a jury decide on the verdict and the judge being an impartial decision maker. In contrast, the inquisitorial system relies heavily on the judge. This can result in abusive power and bias of the judge when hearing evidence and delivering verdicts. The operations of the rule of law determine why the rule of law is best served by the adversarial system in Australia.
Land rights now referred to the continual legal exertion to reclaim ownership of the land and waters that was called home prior to British colonisation (Creative Spirits, 2011). Australian Museum (2015) and Creative Spirits (2011) acknowledge the struggle to gain legal recognition and ownership of Indigenous land is difficult and expensive. Furthermore, the history behind the struggle in earlier years often resulted in violence as Indigenous Australians were dispossessed of their land (Australian Museum, 2015). Subsequently, the struggle for land rights continued through the legal and political systems; as demonstrated in 1982 when Eddie (Koiki) Mabo and four other Meriam people decided to pursue declaration of their customary land rights in the High Court of Australia (Hill, 1995). Based on the findings of Creative Spirits (2011) Indigenous Australian land rights appeared promising in 1983 when the Hawke Government promised legislation to ensure that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s land rights are protected throughout Australia. The legislation was said to permit Indigenous Australians to exercise the right of control over mining on Indigenous Australian land to ensure sacred sites are protected (Creative Spirits, 2011). However, in 1984 the mining companies fought back to repossess control over land. Mining and pastoral industries were considered too powerful and
In the Matal v. Tam court case, the court settled certain aspects of the First Amendment law while it opened up new issues in trademark law. It is a challenge for the uninitiated to follow a coherent path through the court’s First Amendment. Tam and his band, The Slants, sought to register the band’s name with the U.S. Trademark Office. The Office denied the application because it found that the name would likely be disparaging towards “persons of Asian descent.” The office cited the Disparagement Clause of the Lanham Act of 1946, which prohibits trademarks that “[consist] of or [comprise] immoral, deceptive, or scandalous matter; or matter which may disparage or falsely suggest a connection with persons, living or dead, institutions, beliefs,
Phillips, Michael. "A Start-up, the Supreme Court, and the Future of TV." newyorker.com. The New Yorker, January 15, 2014. Web. January 15, 2014.
The Queensland Drug Court system (CDP) aims at diverting offenders accused of minor drug offences from the criminal justice system (Department of Justice and Attorney-General, 2012). The program aims to rehabilitate drug offenders from abusing substances and conducting in related criminal activity by providing court enforced rehabilitation services (Australian Indigenous HealthInfoNet, 2015). The Queensland Drug Court system offers offenders the chance to earn themselves bail if they agree to get help, or face jail time and serious fines if they refuse (Emma Sykes 2013). Considering this aim it is unfortunate to observe that minor drug offences have continued to rise annually since 2009 (Queensland Police Services, 2015). In theory a court
Our client Ms. Melody Larson (“Ms. Larson”) has contacted our office to seek advice on whether she has any legal recourse. She wants to have Ferdinand Sahayko (“Mr. Sahayko”) to stop his operation of the industrial plant he owns or making him handle the operation in a way that will allow her to be able to return to do business as before. This determination will be based on whether the operation Mr. Sahayko’s plant constitute a nuisance under the laws of Florida.
Ernesto Miranda was a Mexican immigrant living in Phoenix, Arizona. Miranda was picked out of a police lineup by a woman who accused him of kidnapping and raping her. Police questioned Miranda for two hours until he confessed to the crimes. Police never told Miranda about his Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights during the interrogation. The case went to court and Miranda's confession was used against him. Miranda was convicted and sentenced to twenty to thirty years in prison. Miranda's attorney appealed to the Arizona Supreme Court, they affirmed. He then appealed to the United States Supreme Court and they decided to hear the case.
Key events in Aboriginal Australian history stem from the time Australia was first discovered in 1788. For instance, when Federation came into existence in 1901, there was a prevailing belief held by non Aboriginal Australians that the Aborigines were a dying race (Nichol, 2005:259) which resulted in the Indigenous people being excluded from the constitution except for two mentions – Section 127 excluded Aborigines from the census and Section 51, part 26, which gave power over Aborigines to the States rather than to the Federal Government. Aboriginal people were officially excluded from the vote, public service, the Armed Forces and pensions. The White Australia mentality/policy Australia as “White” and unfortunately this policy was not abolished until 1972. REFERENCE
In your grievance filed at Lumley Unit, you are requesting an out of state transfer to Texas to be closer to your family. You further claim you are being tortured and harassed by ADC staff.
Suppose a special prosecutor tired you on purpose to put you in jail, and you didn’t plead guilty to show that you are truly innocent. Is it fair to you when the prosecutor tried knowingly and willfully while you are innocent? What do you do if you are harshly punished because you do not want to plead guilty to show that you’re innocent for real? This thing has been happening in our court system in criminal cases for many decades. In criminal cases, punishing defendants who didn’t plead guilty harshly creates severe problems to its citizens. To avoid those problems, judges and juries should not lessen the punishments, whether defendants plead guilty, or they should not harden the punishment for people who did not plead
part of the Doctrine Hedley Byrne and Co. Ltd V Heller and. Partners Ltd (1964), Rondel V Worsley (1969).