Shaun McVeigh

Of the South

In July 2006, the ‘Of the South’ symposium was hosted by the Socio-Legal Research Centre at Griffith University. This issue of the GLR features a number of essays which emerged from that symposium. The central issue of the symposium was simple: how is it possible to actualise and experience lawful relations in the South? The specific focus of attention of the symposium was the lawful relations and the international laws of the South — most importantly, the coming into relation of Indigenous and non- Indigenous laws.

Just So: "The Law which governs Australia is Australian Law"

This essay provides a gloss on the relationship between the common law and the ‘law of the land’. It does so by turning attention to the technologies and identifications that continue to give Australian jurisdiction its place. These relations repeat the long pattern of the common law ordering of colonisation. They also provide the governmental conditions of legal responsibility for settlement.

Nineteen eighty three: A jurisographic report on Commonwealth v Tasmania

The question we ask in this essay is quite direct: did the Tasmanian Dams case change the conduct of jurisprudence in Australia? To reflect on that question, we stand to the side of the review of the events of 1983 as constitutional decision, and present the jurisprudence of Dams and 1983 in terms of the incidents of legal thinking in the conduct of the office of the jurisprudent. Writing as jurisographers, we reflect historically on the conduct of office of the jurist and jurisprudent, and the writing of jurisprudence. Our account here provides a brief chronicle and record of the patchwork of law projects and engagements that pattern the events of Dams into the scholarly work of jurists in Australian universities.

Jurisprudences of jurisdiction: matters of public authority

This essay examines a number of jurisdictional engagements that point to difficulties in joining or separating relations between public authority, jurisprudences of jurisdiction and the writing of jurisprudence.