This is the remarkable story of Mary Gaudron AC QC, the first female Justice of the High Court of Australia. With wit, astonishing intellect and the tool of the law, Gaudron exposed inequality and discrimination in the workforce and campaigned vigorously for women to be accorded equal pay and equal opportunities.

Publisher Description

A great deal has been written on the relationship between politics and law. Legislation, as a source of law, is often highly political, and is the product of a process or the creation of officials often closely bound into party politics. Legislation is also one of the exclusive powers of the state. As such, legislation is plainly both practical and inevitably political; at the same time most understandings of the relationship between law and politics have been overwhelmingly theoretical. In this light, public law is often seen as part of the political order or as inescapably partisan. We know relatively little about the real impact of law on politicians through their legal advisers and civil servants. How do lawyers in government see their roles and what use do they make of law? How does politics actually affect the drafting of legislation or the making of policy? This volume will begin to answer these and other questions about the practical, day-to-day relationship between law and politics in a number of settings. It includes chapters by former departmental legal advisers, drafters of legislation, law reformers, judges and academics, who focus on what actually happens when law meets politics in government.

Explores the relationship between constitutional law and feminism, offering a spectrum of approaches and analysis set across a wide range of topics.

In recent years, controversy has surrounded the role of top government lawyers in the United States and the United Kingdom. Allegations of bad lawyering and bad ethics in public office over the ’torture memos’ in the United States and the political pressure placed on the Attorney-General in the United Kingdom to approve the legality of the Iraq war, have seen these relatively obscure group of government lawyers thrust into the public debate. Unlike its Anglo-American contemporaries, Australia’s chief legal adviser, the Solicitor-General, has remained largely out of the public eye. This collection provides a rare and overdue insight into a fundamental public institution in all Australian jurisdictions. It provides a historical, theoretical, practical and comparative perspective of this little known, but vitally important, office at a time when the transparency and accountability of government has taken on an increased significance. Of interest to anyone interested in the integrity of government, the book will be particularly useful to government, political parties and the academy. It will also be a valuable reference work to those working towards a redefinition of the role of top government legal advisors.

Behind every government there is an impressive team of hard-working lawyers. In Australia, the Solicitor-General leads that team. A former Attorney-General once said, 'The Solicitor-General is next to the High Court and God.' And yet the role of government lawyers in Australia, and specifically the Solicitor-General as the most senior of government lawyers, is under-theorised and under-studied. The Role of the Solicitor-General: Negotiating Law, Politics and the Public Interest goes behind the scenes of government – drawing from interviews with over 45 government and judicial officials – to uncover the history, theory and practice of the Australian Solicitor-General. The analysis reveals a role that is of fundamental constitutional importance to ensuring both the legality and the integrity of government action, thus contributing to the achievement of rule-of-law ideals. The Solicitor-General also works to defend government action and prosecute government policies in the court, and thus performs an important role as messenger between the political and judicial branches of government. But the Solicitor-General's position, as both an internal integrity check on government and an external warrior for government, gives rise to competing pressures: between the law, politics and the public interest. The office of the Solicitor-General in Australia has evolved many characteristics across the almost two centuries of its history in an attempt to navigate these tensions. These pressures are not unique to the Australian context. The understanding of the Australian position provided by this book is informed by, and will inform, comparative analysis of the role of government lawyers across the world.

This first-of-its-kind volume surveys twenty constitutional judges who 'towered' over their peers, exploring their complexities and flaws.

Gender inequality is profoundly unjust and in clear contradiction to the philosophy of the ‘fair go’. In spite of some action by recent governments, Australia has fallen behind in policy and outcomes, even as the G20 group of nations, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the International Monetary Fund are paying renewed attention to gender inequality. Tax, Social Policy and Gender presents new research on entrenched gender inequality in a comparative framework of human rights and fiscal sustainability. Ground-breaking empirical studies examine unequal returns to education for women and men, decision-making about child care by fathers and mothers, the history and gendered effects of the income tax and family payments, and women in the top 1 per cent. Contributors demonstrate how Australia’s tax, social security, child care, parental leave, education, work and retirement income policies intersect to compound gender inequality. Tax, Social Policy and Gender calls for a rethinking of equality and efficiency in tax and social policy and provides new policy solutions. It offers a pathway to achieve gender mainstreaming for women’s economic security and the wellbeing of all Australians.

The Australian Defence Force, together with military forces from a number of western democracies, have for some years been seeking out and killing Islamic militants in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, detaining asylum seekers for periods at sea or running the judicial systems of failed states. It has also been ready to conduct internal security operations at home. The domestic legal authority cited for this is often the poorly understood concept of executive power, which is power that derives from executive and not parliamentary authority. In an age of legality where parliamentary statutes govern action by public officials in the finest detail, it is striking that these extreme exercises of the use of force often rely upon an elusive legal basis. This book seeks to find the limits to the exercise of this extraordinary power.

Both lionized and vilified, Claire L’Heureux-Dubé has shaped the Canadian legal landscape – and in particular its highest court. The second woman appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada, and the first from Quebec, she was known as “the great dissenter” on the bench, making judgments that were applauded and criticized in turn. L’Heureux-Dubé’s innovative legal approach was anchored in the social, economic, and political context of her cases. Constance Backhouse employs a similar tactic. Rather than focusing exclusively on her high-profile cases and jurisprudential legacy, sheexplores the socio-political and cultural setting in which L’Heureux-Dubé’s career unfolded, while also considering her personal life. This compelling biography covers aspects of legal history that have never been so fully investigated, enhancing our understanding of the judiciary, the creation of law, the distinctive socio-legal environment of Quebec, the experiences of women in the legal profession, and the inner workings of the top court.