CURRENT ISSUES IN THE LAW OF EVIDENCE
A. KEITH THOMPSON (Editor)
A Shepherd Street Press Book
Shepherd Street Press is an imprint of Connor Court Publishing and The School of Law, The University of Notre Dame Australia, Broadway.
Contributions from: Anthony Westenberg, John Finnis, A. Keith Thompson and Mark Bonanno
Paperback, 130 pages, $29.95
ISBN: 9781922449702
The law of evidence is the software the legal system uses to work out
who is innocent and who is guilty. This body of law was developed after
the 1550s when Queen Mary of England first established prosecutors to
accuse those she suspected of assassinating her Catholic officers
because England’s Protestant juries would not perform that unpopular
function. Queen Mary’s expedient decision enabled English judges to hear
and control the evidence that English juries considered when making
their convict/acquit decisions for the first time. That control
subsequently diluted the jury’s independence and its democratic
reputation as the bulwark of liberty.
Should jury independence be restored or should the jury be abolished
because judges are better trained and therefore better immunised against
the drumbeat of external public opinion in social media? And ism the
parliamentary removal of self-incrimination and other libertarian
privileges established by judicial and jury interaction after Queen
Mary, destined to dilute even the confidentiality we expect when we talk
to our lawyers? This short four chapter book exposes some of the
assumptions that we unjustifiably make about the virtues of our justice
system.
Chapters Include
1 Client Legal Privilege and the Need for a Rationale -- Anthony Westenberg
2 Where the Pell Judgment Went Fatally Wrong -- John Finnis
3 The jury in its historical perspective -- A. Keith Thompson
4 Should the jury be abolished in light of the High Court decision in the Pell case? -- Mark Bonanno
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