Summary
Australian law is based on the culture of English law. The following characteristics derive from the English background of our law: * A system of representative democracy, using parliaments to make laws. See chapters 7 & 8. * A legal profession divided formally or informally into solicitors and barristers. See chapter 3. * A ‘common law’ system: * The system of law derived from the English legal system. Uses judicially decided cases as the basic form of law. See chapter 10. * The way that the law is made: Judges make law based on decided cases (precedents) and develop sets of legal principles which emerge from the judgments in decided cases.’ See chapter 12, 13, and 14. * The category of laws which grew from the medieval royal courts (‘the courts of common law’) and other areas of law, which came from the medieval Lord Chancellor’s role (‘equity’). See chapter 10. * Decision making in courts after an adversarial trial: derived from historical ‘trial by battle’ introduced by Normans. The battle has since then become a verbal one. See chapter 2. * A court system for dispute resolution: See chapter 11.
However, Australian law has developed distinct characteristics of its own: * A federal system made up of a Commonwealth and States and Territories: separates out the powers of different bodies of government. See chapter 8. * A limited recognition of indigenous customary law: Mabo (No 2) held that native title to land could exist, separate from the common law and based on indigenous customary law. Other forms of recognition are ad hoc, but do exist: * Criminal justice system in NT carried out on a customary basis rather than common law in certain cases. * Customary law marriage is recognised. * Certain aspects of indigenous heritage have been protected. See chapters 5 and 10 for the issues