The Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII) is an institution operated jointly by the Faculties of Law of the University of Technology Sydney and the University of New South Wales. Its public policy purpose is to improve access to justice through access to legal information.
AustLII was established in 1995. [1] [2] Founded as a joint program of the University of Technology Sydney and the University of New South Wales law schools, its initial funding was provided by the Australian Research Council. [3]
Its public policy purpose is to improve access to justice through access to legal information. [4]
AustLII content is publicly available legal information. Its primary source information includes legislation, treaties and decisions of courts and tribunals. It also hosts secondary legal materials, including law reform and royal commission reports, as well as legal journals. [5] The AustLII databases include the complete text of all of the decisions of the High Court, [6] decisions of the Federal Court from 1977 onwards (the decisions between 1977 and 1996 were selected by the Federal Court), [7] and decisions of the Family Court from 1988 onwards (as selected by the Family Court), [8] as well as a number of other federal and state courts and tribunals.
Law is the set of rules and principles (laws) by which a society is governed, through enforcement by governmental authorities. Law is also the field that concerns the creation and administration of laws, and includes any and all legal systems.
Although Australia is considered to have, in general, both freedom of speech and a free and independent media, certain subject-matter is subject to various forms of government censorship. These include matters of national security, judicial non-publication or suppression orders, defamation law, the federal Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth), film and literature classification, and advertising restrictions.
The Legal Information Institute (LII) is a non-profit public service of Cornell Law School that provides no-cost access to current American and international legal research sources online. Founded in 1992 by Peter Martin and Tom Bruce, LII was the first law site developed on the internet. LII electronically publishes on the Web the U.S. Code, U.S. Supreme Court opinions, Uniform Commercial Code, the US Code of Federal Regulations, several Federal Rules, and a variety of other American primary law materials. LII also provides access to other national and international sources, such as treaties and United Nations materials. According to its website, the LII serves over 40 million unique visitors per year.
Abdul Nacer Benbrika, also known as Abu Bakr, is a convicted criminal, currently serving an Australian custodial sentence of fifteen years, with a non-parole period of twelve years for intentionally being the leader and a member of a terrorist organisation. Benbrika was one of 17 men arrested in the Australian cities of Sydney and Melbourne in November 2005, charged with being members of a terrorist organisation and of planning terrorist attacks on targets within Australia. Benbrika is alleged to be the spiritual leader of the group. All 17 men pleaded not guilty. On 15 September 2008 Benbrika was found guilty as charged and subsequently sentenced.
Australian administrative law defines the extent of the powers and responsibilities held by administrative agencies of Australian governments. It is basically a common law system, with an increasing statutory overlay that has shifted its focus toward codified judicial review and to tribunals with extensive jurisdiction.
Milirrpum v Nabalco Pty Ltd, also known as the Gove land rights case because its subject was land known as the Gove Peninsula in the Northern Territory, was the first litigation on native title in Australia, and the first significant legal case for Aboriginal land rights in Australia, decided on 27 April 1971.
The Faculty of Law and Justice of the University of New South Wales is a law school situated in Sydney, Australia. It is widely regarded as one of Australia's top law schools. The 2021 QS World University Rankings rank the UNSW Law Faculty 13th in the world, first for undergraduate law in Australia, 2nd overall in Australia and 3rd in the Asia-Pacific region, and the 2021 Times Higher Education subject rankings also rank it second in Australia, making it the top ranked law school in New South Wales according to both tables, as well as being the top undergraduate Law school in the country.
The British and Irish Legal Information Institute provides legal information, and especially reports of cases decided by courts, in the United Kingdom generally. Decisions from England and Wales, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, the European Union, and from the European Court of Human Rights are put online. It is a partial online database of British and Irish legislation, case law, law reform reports, treaties and some legal scholarship.
The Federal Circuit Court of Australia, formerly known as the Federal Magistrates Court of Australia or the Federal Magistrates Service, was an Australian court with jurisdiction over matters broadly relating to family law and child support, administrative law, admiralty law, bankruptcy, copyright, human rights, industrial law, migration, privacy and trade practices.
Garry Keith Downes is a former judge of the Federal Court of Australia and former President of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.
George Newhouse is an Australian human rights lawyer and a former local councillor. He is the principal solicitor of the National Justice Project, a human rights and social justice legal service, and currently an Adjunct Professor of Law at Macquarie University. and at the University of Technology Sydney.
Computer-assisted legal research (CALR) or computer-based legal research is a mode of legal research that uses databases of court opinions, statutes, court documents, and secondary material. Electronic databases make large bodies of case law easily available. Databases also have additional benefits, such as Boolean searches, evaluating case authority, organizing cases by topic, and providing links to cited material. Databases are available through paid subscription or for free.
The Freedom of Information Act 1982(Cth) is an Act of the Parliament of Australia which guarantees freedom of information (FOI) and the rights of access to official documents of the Commonwealth Government and of its agencies to members of the public.
The Pacific Islands Legal Information Institute (PacLII) collects and publishes legal materials from 20 Pacific Islands Countries on its website www.paclii.org. These countries are American Samoa, Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji Islands, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Papua New Guinea, Pitcairn Island, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu.A mirror of the PacLII website is hosted by the Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII), and is the version accessed by most users outside the Pacific Islands.
Legal technology, also known as Legal Tech, refers to the use of technology and software to provide legal services and support the legal industry. Legal Tech companies are often startups founded with the purpose of disrupting the traditionally conservative legal market.
Cyberjustice is the incorporation of technology into the justice system, either through offering court services electronically or through the use of electronics within courtrooms or for other dispute resolution purposes. One of the most crucial goals of cyberjustice is increasing access to justice through both reducing the costs associated with administering justice as well as reducing the burden on the judges and the court system as a whole.
Kathleen Farrell is an Australian judge. She has been a judge of the Federal Court of Australia since 2012 and among the very few solicitors to have been appointed directly to the court.
Hunter Valley Developments Pty Ltd v Cohen is a 1984 decision of the Federal Court of Australia about the discretion to allow applications for review an administrative decision under section 11 of the Administrative Decisions Act 1977 that were made later that the statutory limits allowed.
Alan Robertson is a former judge of the Federal Court of Australia. He served as a deputy president of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, and retired from the Court in May 2020 having reached the mandatory retirement age for federal judicial appointments.
The next Australian federal election will be held some time during or before 2025 to elect members of the 48th Parliament of Australia. All 150 seats in the House of Representatives and likely 40 of the 76 seats in the Senate will be contested. It is expected that at this election, the Labor government of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will be seeking re-election to a second term in office, opposed by the Liberal/National Coalition under Leader of the Opposition Peter Dutton.