Legal contemporary cases

Bring on the CLM. If you read some of the sample answers of top students apart from using solid legal terminology and having a well structured answer the key is integration of recent cases, legislation and media reports.
For example a story has come out in the last couple of days regarding Australia's most famous murder trial - The Azaria Chamberlain case from 1980 well it has resurfaced in the news and in many ways it brings the jury system under question as it sounds as if some of the jury were attempting to find reasons to convict her rather than find a reasonable doubt that she was innocent. Enough of that. The back story is long and complicated so unless you are super keen I would recommend you stay with cases you have already heard about at this stage.

I do however want to raise your attention to two connected issues.

The first is the issue of self regulation and the case study re the legal industry. There was recently an article from the 6th of August that stated ' while the reform process may cut regulatory costs for lawyers and increase protection for consumers, it has led to a pitched battle over who will control ... and set standards for lawyers'.
This is important as what it means is that the only reason why reform has been delayed is internal politics within the profession and consumers are not receiving the best protection for this reason!

The second publication is a report on the Bail Act from 2002 by the Judicial Commission of NSW.
"the NSW Bail Act is currently in gross violation of international law, breaching certain sections of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Australia is a signatory. Basically, it violates the presumption of innocence and breaches the principle that refusal of bail should be the exception. It is argued that categorically denying people bail equates with substantial pre-trial punishment. It is an injustice that affronts human dignity, offends fundamental principles of law and is all too often fatal in its consequences."

Since this report the Bail Act has actually become even more restrictive as the NSW State government aims to be seen as tough on crime- again for poltical reasons.

Good luck with your exams.

Where is the leadership?

As Australia slides into a rather boring election campaign (thus far) it is worthwhile to note that there is a difference between the two main parties. One outcome that seems certain is the increased importance of the Greens and the animated version of Bob Brown which is worth witnessing after many years of droll, monotone.
I know you want to keep it connected to the main game or the game that you are concerned with at present so here are some articles to read.
The first is the thoughts of business- which interestingly are favouring the ALP at present due to the fact they will lower company tax and be introducing a super broadband. see Fate of business.
Another interesting read is the thoughts of Jospeh Stiglitz who had the following to say on the 730 report. You can watch the intereview with this Nobel economist on the global economy and Australia's performance.

KERRY O'BRIEN: There's been a lot of criticism of waste in the way some of Australia's stimulus money was spent. Is it inevitable if you're going to spend a great deal of government money quickly that there will be some waste and can you ever justify wasting taxpayers' money?

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: If you hadn't spent the money, there would have been waste. The waste would have been the fact that the economy would have been weak, there would have been a gap between what the economy could have produced and what it actually produced - that's waste. You would have had high unemployment, you would have had capital assets not fully utilised - that's waste.