Alternative Law Journal

Law & Culture - 2014 - Vol 39(3)

In our Law & Culture column, you will find original works of fiction, reviews of a wide range of publications — not just conventional legal texts — as well as broader cultural forms such as films, TV shows, CDs, DVDs, art exhibitions and so on. The column links in with the Alternative Law Journal’s focus on law for the disadvantaged, human rights law and law reform.

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The Black War: Fear, Sex and Resistance in Tasmania

Stephen Gray

The-Black-War Nicholas Clements; University of Queensland Press, 2014; 288 pages; $34.95 (paperback)

In his foreword to Nicholas Clements’ ‘The Black War’, Australia’s pre-eminent historian of frontier conflict, Henry Reynolds, contends that Clements has transcended the ‘angry contention’ of the Australia’s ‘history wars’ and ‘has, consequently, brought them to an end’ (p x). A high recommendation, indeed. Clements himself claims to have illuminated the war in Tasmania from ‘important and neglected angles’, and that his ‘unique approach has contributed a fresh layer to our understanding’ of the Black War’s importance in Australian and world history (p 204).

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(2014) 39(3) AltLJ 202

Category: Law & Culture - 2014 - Vol 39(3)

Law As Engineering: Thinking About What Lawyers Do

Kate Galloway

law-as-engineering David Howarth; Edward Elgar, 2014; 256 pages; UK£20 (paperback).

What is a lawyer? What do we expect from legal education? What is the connection between the two? Education in the law has been caught for centuries in cycles that alternately prioritise academic theory and focus on practical skills. (In Australia we are now tipping towards the latter.) For all this however, perhaps we remain unclear on just what it means to be a lawyer and what is the purpose of legal education. David Howarth seeks to answer these questions using the analogy of engineering. In doing so, he provides an interesting and useful account of the lawyer and their profession.

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(2011) 39(3) AltLJ 203

Category: Law & Culture - 2014 - Vol 39(3)

The Baby Farmers: A Chilling Tale Of Missing Babies, Shameful Secrets And Murder In 19th Century Aus

Beth Wilson

the-baby-farmers-annie-cossins Annie Cossins; Allen & Unwin, 2013; 304pp; $29.99 (paperback)

The chilling title of Annie Cossin’s book The Baby Farmers is unfortunately all too apt. It describes the poverty and deprivation suffered by poor unmarried women who sought out ‘a kind mother’ to care for their babies for a fee in the late 1800s in New South Wales. Some of these mothers may have dreamed of being reunited with their babies at some time in the future, but choosing the Makins to care for their offspring was never going to allow that to happen. Thirteen babies’ bodies were found in shallow graves in the yards of houses where the Makins and their children lived. John Makin was eventually hanged, and Sarah jailed, for murder.

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(2014) 39(3) AltLJ 203

Category: Law & Culture - 2014 - Vol 39(3)

Charlie’s Country

Samuel Blashki

charliescountry Director: Rolf de Heer; starring David Gulpilil; eOne film distributor, 2013; 108 minutes.

Available on DVD November 2014.

Charlie’s Country tells the story of Charlie, an indigenous man living in a remote community whose traditional way of life becomes increasingly difficult to maintain. Charlie is exasperated by frequent visits from the police, interfering with his life and trying to enforce laws that his community doesn’t understand. Charlie, played by David Gulpilil, desperately clings to traditional ways as he attempts to find his place in a country that has drastically changed.

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(2014) 39(3) AltLJ 203

Category: Law & Culture - 2014 - Vol 39(3)

Gender Issues And Human Rights

Kate Galloway

gender-issues-and-human-rights Dianne Otto (Ed); Edward Elgar, 2013; 2604 pages; UK£775 (3-volume hardcover set).

Dianne Otto’s magnificent three-volume edited collection is the fourth in the Elgar Research Collection’s Human Rights Law series, edited by Sarah Joseph. Otto has brought together a diverse range of previously published works that together provide a comprehensive chronicle of the genesis and development of scholarship about women and gender within an international human rights framework.

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(2014) 39(3) AltLJ 205

Category: Law & Culture - 2014 - Vol 39(3)

The Death Of The Sun

Luke Rowe

The lament of Charles Dickens, and the NSW Criminal Courts

WL Morison said that Lord Denning could recite the opening paragraphs of Charles Dickens’ Bleak House by heart.¹ I suppose Lord Denning hoped nothing of the sort could be said about any court that he presided over. Bleak House opens as follows:

LONDON. Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snow-flakes — gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. … And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln’s Inn Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery.²

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(2014) 39(3) AltLJ 206

Category: Law & Culture - 2014 - Vol 39(3)