Problem-solving courts, therapeutic jurisprudence and the constitution : if two is company, is three a crowd?

Court costs, resource-intensive trials, booming prison populations and the obduracy of recidivism rates all present as ugly excesses of the criminal law adversarial paradigm. To combat these excesses, problem-solving courts have evolved with an edict to address the underlying issues that have caused an individual to commit a crime. When a judge seeks to help a problem-solving court participant deal with issues like addiction, mental health or poverty, they are performing a very different role to that of a judicial officer in the traditional court hierarchy. They are no longer the removed, independent arbiter — a problem-solving court judge steps into the ‘arena’ with the participant and makes active use of their judicial authority to assist in rehabilitation and positive behavioural change. Problem-solving court judges employing the principles of therapeutic jurisprudence appreciate that their interaction with participants can have therapeutic and anti-therapeutic consequences. This article will consider how the deployment of therapeutic measures (albeit with good intention) can lead to the behavioural manifestation of partiality and bias on the part of problem-solving court judges. Chapter III of the Commonwealth Constitution will then be analysed to highlight why the operation and functioning of problem solving courts may be deemed unconstitutional. Part IV of this article will explain how a problem-solving court judge who is not acting impartially or independently will potentially contravene the requirements of the Constitution. It will finally be suggested that judges who possess a high level of emotional intelligence will be the most successful in administering an independent and impartial problem solving court.

Campbell, Alan Johnston (1895–1982)

Born in 1895, Alan Johnston Campbell was a grazier and political party organiser. In December 1914 he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force and saw action with the 2nd Light Horse Regiment at Gallipoli and, as a lance corporal, in the Sinai and Palestine. After the war Campbell became active in the Roma branch of the Maranoa Graziers’ Association. In 1935, at Roma, he formed one of the first branches of the Queensland Country Party. In 1943, Campbell was elected president of the QCP. Impressed by the Australian Labor Party’s organisation, Campbell centralised power and rebuked parliamentarians whom he believed were neglecting their constituents. By 1951 the highly disciplined structure had attracted 35,000 members. Campbell died in 1982.

Archimedes, aid/watch, constitutional levers and where we now stand

Significant reform of the laws regulating charities is under way in Australia. The reforms cover almost every facet of the relationship between charities and government and the process has brought to the surface different assumptions about the role of charities in society, their entitlement to fiscal and other privileges and the scope and nature of regulation that can or should be imposed on the charities. This paper explores these broader issues in the context of the Aid/Watch case, involving an organisation used by citizens to challenge the State. Such organisations occupy contested space as to what does and does not constitute a charity. Accordingly the case provides a useful perspective from which to consider the broader issues in the relationship between government and charity. This paper seeks to build on the contribution made by other academics, by exploring the constitutional significance of political purposes and drawing from philosophy to provide context and meaning to potentially significant aspects of the judgment that might be missed when it is analysed only in terms of legal precedent through the narrow lens of the existing four heads of charity. Revenue implications for taxation of charities and political parties are also considered and it is suggested that in practice, if not in theory, the fence between them has come down.

Prosecutorial guidelines for voluntary euthanasia and assisted suicide : autonomy, public confidence and high quality decision-making

This article proposes offence-specific guidelines for how prosecutorial discretion should be exercised in cases of voluntary euthanasia and assisted suicide. Similar guidelines have been produced in England and Wales but we consider them to be deficient in a number of respects, including that they lack a set of coherent guiding principles. In light of these concerns, we outline an approach to constructing alternative guidelines that begins with identifying three guiding principles that we argue are appropriate for this purpose: respect for autonomy, the need for high quality prosecutorial decision-making and the importance of public confidence in that decision-making.

Misleading conduct arising from public statements : establishing the knowledge base of the target audience

Despite the very substantial body of primary sources and secondary literature on Australia’s much-litigated statutory provisions proscribing misleading or deceptive conduct, the courts have provided little in the way of assistance about how to establish the knowledge base of the target audience at whom the public statement was directed. The purpose of this case note is to compare and contrast two recent decisions of the High Court of Australia that highlight the difficulties faced by applicants in attempting to establish a contravention of the relevant legislation where conduct is directed at a segment of the public or the public as a whole.

La estrategia de asianización en la política exterior australiana del siglo XXI

Comprender el comportamiento que tienen los distintos actores del concierto internacional en la medida que reflejen directamente sus cambios y problemas internos a nivel externo. Necesidad de un estudio de la comprensión del Asia Pacífico y Oceanía

The timing of Neotropical speciation dynamics: A reconstruction of Myiopagis flycatcher diversification using phylogenetic and paleogeographic data

Neotropical forests have brought forth a large proportion of the world`s terrestrial biodiversity, but the underlying evolutionary mechanisms and their timing require further elucidation. Despite insights gained from phylogenetic studies, uncertainties about molecular clock rates have hindered efforts to determine the timing of diversification processes. Moreover, most molecular research has been detached from the extensive body of data on Neotropical geology and paleogeography. We here examine phylogenetic relationships and the timing of speciation events in a Neotropical flycatcher genus (Myiopagis) by using calibrations from modern geologic data in conjunction with a number of recently developed DNA sequence dating algorithms and by comparing these estimates with those based on a range of previously proposed molecular clock rates. We present a well-supported hypothesis of systematic relationships within the genus. Our age estimates of Myiopagis speciation events based on paleogeographic data are in close agreement with nodal ages derived from a ""traditional"" avian mitochondrial 2%/My clock, while contradicting other clock rates. Our comparative approach corroborates the consistency of the traditional avian mitochondrial clock rate of 2%/My for tyrant-flycatchers. Nevertheless, our results argue against the indiscriminate use of molecular clock rates in evolutionary research and advocate the verification of the appropriateness of the traditional clock rate by means of independent calibrations in individual studies. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Structural changes in the epithelium of the small intestine and immune cell infiltration of enteric ganglia following acute mucosal damage and local inflammation

An acute enteritis is commonly followed by intestinal neuromuscular dysfunction, including prolonged hyperexcitability of enteric neurons. Such motility disorders are associated with maintained increases in immune cells adjacent to enteric ganglia and in the mucosa. However, whether the commonly used animal model, trinitrobenzene sulphonate (TNBS)-induced enteritis, causes histological and immune cell changes similar to human enteric neuropathies is not clear. We have made a detailed study of the mucosal damage and repair and immune cell invasion following intralumenal administration of TNBS. Intestines from untreated, sham-operated and TNBS-treated animals were examined at 3 h to 56 days. At 3 h, the mucosal surface was completely ablated, by 6 h an epithelial covering was substantially restored and by 1 day there was full re-epithelialisation. The lumenal epithelium developed from a squamous cell covering to a fully differentiated columnar epithelium with mature villi at about 7 days. Prominent phagocytic activity of enterocytes occurred at 1-7 days. A surge of eosinophils and T lymphocytes associated with the enteric nerve ganglia occurred at 3 h to 3 days. However, elevated immune cell numbers occurred in the lamina propria of the mucosa until 56 days, when eosinophils were still three times normal. We conclude that the disruption of the mucosal surface that causes TNBS-induced ileitis is brief, a little more than 6 h, and causes a transient immune cell surge adjacent to enteric ganglia. This is much briefer than the enteric neuropathy that ensues. Ongoing mucosal inflammatory reaction may contribute to the persistence of enteric neuropathy.

Blue army : paramilitary policing in Australia

Examination of how Victoria's Special Operations Group and their tactics have contributed to the extraordinary number of police shootings in Victoria. Looks at how these tactics have been passed on to the ordinary police. Based on author's research into the paramilitarisation of the police. Exposes the risks of allowing Australia's police forces to move away from their original charter of keeping the peace with the use of minimum force. Author lectures in Police Studies at Deakin University. She has represented the families of several men shot and killed by police in the late 1980s in her work as a community lawyer.

Reading race, aboriginality in Australian children`s literature

This text looks at the ways in which Australia's indigenous peoples have been, and continue to be, represented in books for children. These varying representations have helped to colour the attitudes, beliefs and assumptions of different generations of Australians.