Law Commissions and Access to Justice: What Justice Should We Be Talking About?

In addition to their explicit mandates, law reform commissions have a generic mandate to make recommendations that are designed to increase access to justice. Moreover, contemporary commissions ought to interpret the concept of access to justice broadly. Even though they undertake topics of \u27lawyers\u27 law,\u27 or at times limit their focus to the narrower legal system, commissions should also consider how law can be employed to realize economic or social justice. In order to make pragmatic recommendations to increase access to justice, commissions must study the non-legal realm and incorporate into their work the insights of other disciplines and the experiences of diverse communities. Furthermore, commissions must distinguish themselves from other law reform bodies by addressing the larger, more profound tasks that have the potential to redefine the meaning of access to justice

The Quest for a User-Friendly Copyright Regime in Hong Kong

The quest for a user-friendly copyright regime began a decade ago when the Hong Kong government launched a public consultation on Copyright Protection in the Digital Environment in December 2006. Although this consultation initially sought to address Internet-related challenges, such as those caused by peer-to-peer file-sharing technology, the reform effort quickly evolved into a more comprehensive digital upgrade of the Hong Kong copyright regime.A decade later, however, Hong Kong still has not yet amended its Copyright Ordinance. Thus far, three consultation exercises have been launched in December 2006, April 2008 and July 2013. Two bills have also been introduced in June 2011 and June 2014. Because the latest bill lapsed at the end of the fifth term of the Legislative Council, which expired in July 2016, the Hong Kong government will have to submit a new bill to the legislature after the September 2016 elections to restart the upgrading effort.In the run-up to this third (and hopefully successful) bill, it will be timely to retrospectively examine the developments surrounding the Copyright (Amendment) Bill 2014, including some of the committee stage amendments moved by legislators. Written for a symposium on International and Comparative User Rights in the Digital Economy, this article recounts the origin and evolution of the Bill.The article also examines three proposals that the author either developed or was heavily involved in defending, in my capacity as a pro bono advisor to Internet user groups — and, by extension, some pan-Democrat legislators. The first proposal concerned an exception for predominantly noncommercial user-generated content. The second proposal involved the addition of an open-ended, catch-all fair use provision to the new and existing fair dealing provisions. The final proposal called for the creation of a moratorium on lawsuits against individual Internet users based on noncommercial copyright infringement

Professionalism in the Information and Communication Technology Industry

Professionalism is arguably more important in some occupations than in others. It is vital in some because of the life and death decisions that must be made, for example in medicine. In others the rapidly changing nature of the occupation makes efficient regulation difficult and so the professional behaviour of the practitioners is central to the good functioning of that occupation. The core idea behind this book is that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is changing so quickly that professional behaviour of its practitioners is vital because regulation will always lag behind

The effect of September 11, 2001 and subsequent terrorist events upon Australian public libraries' policies, and collections and services to Muslim clients

This research addresses the responses by the Australian library profession to the series of national and international terrorism events that commenced with the attacks on the United States on September 11th 2001. It specifically investigates the response of the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) in the light of changes to Commonwealth Government policies and legislation, and the subsequent impacts on the policy environment in which Australian public libraries operated, and their delivery of collections and services to Muslim clients

Transcending Human Rights Instrumentalism

Whether human rights treaties produce an impact on the ground is a highly contested question in international law. I engage in this debate in the present thesis offering a qualitative study of the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in Australia and Mongolia. The scholarship commonly understands human rights treaties in legalistic terms. Treaty outcomes are measured on the basis of the direct effects of their norms. State ratification and incorporation of treaty norms in domestic legal orders are perceived as the principal ways whereby human rights treaties penetrate into and transform domestic contexts. A common prescription for better treaty implementation is to increase their coercive enforcement. I call this view human rights instrumentalism and, in this thesis, argue that it offers a limited understanding of the role that the treaties play in national arenas. The thesis illustrates that, in the years following the adoption of the Disabilities Convention in 2006, vibrant legal and policy developments have taken place in the two countries studied. Those laws and policies have typically embraced the international law. Yet, when tracing their lineage, the Convention’s effects are seen to be largely indirect to those domestic legal reforms. At the same time, the research identifies a significant non-legal impact of the Convention, which, regardless of the particular norms of the treaty or domestic incorporation thereof, profoundly affects the social fabric of Australia and Mongolia. The thesis argues that such an outcome emanates essentially from the symbolic or political power of the treaty, and describes the subtle ways in which the Disabilities Convention functions as a social symbol in the two domestic contexts

Legal professional privilege in the 21st Century: identifying failures to develop this evidential rule to meet the challenges of modernity and presenting solutions aligned to its rationale.

Legal professional privilege has a significant and far reaching impact on society and is of fundamental importance to all lawyers. Individuals, businesses, professions, regulatory bodies and Government are all affected by the operation of legal professional privilege, the vagaries of its application in certain contexts and situations where it is effectively undermined. They are also significantly affected where this evidential rule fails to stay true to its rationale through stagnation or circumscription rather than benefitting from inventive, modern, judicial interpretation or legislative change. The publications which form the basis of this submission span six years and form a significant, coherent and original contribution to knowledge and understanding of legal professional privilege. Using a combination of doctrinal, comparative and socio-legal methodological approaches as appropriate, these important and timely articles advance the field of study by identifying uncertainties and anomalies in the parameters of legal professional privilege in a range of contexts, both domestic and international and in relation to both its limbs: legal advice privilege and litigation privilege. The uncertainties and anomalies identified coalesce around the theme of a failure to develop this evidential rule to address effectively developments in both modern legal and regulatory practice, in alignment with its rationale. Each publication makes an original contribution and taken together as a whole provides a unique lens into the operation of legal professional privilege in the 21st Century, offering valuable insight into the challenges posed by its operational parameters and proposing suitable solutions

To recognise or not to recognise, that is NOT the question : family law and the Muslim community in Australia

The majority of young people experiment with alcohol use, smoking, drug use, and delinquency. In order to understand why adolescents are engaged in potential risk behaviors, it is important to look at the functions of these behaviors for adolescents' social and personal functioning. In this study, we examined whether substance use, transgressive behavior, and delinquency are related to the quality of peer relations. Univariate analyses of data of a study on five hundred eight 12–18-year-olds showed that substance use and transgressive behavior are positively related to both the quantity (chumship, size of network, and time spent with peers) and the quality (attachment, support, acceptance, and competence) of peer relations. The association with peer relations were less straightforward for adolescent delinquency. Hierarchical regression analyses, however, showed that when the associations of quantitative aspects of peer relations are controlled for, no additional effects of substance use and transgressive behavior emerged. This suggests that social functions of risk behaviors may be understood as providing the opportunity to intensify contacts with peers or initiate new relations that, in turn, may be related to peer relations in a positive sense