On 7/8/14, I <beatthebasta...@inbox.com> wrote: > It appears that it is specifically unwise to rubbish the court while subject > to it.
I think this is a valid point in any jurisdiction, and also speaks to the difficulty in having a lower court sanction itself - thus superior courts. > As for freedom of speech Australia has none legislated and does have severe > laws against sedition. > What other developed country can match that for discouraging speech? Yes, pretty sad. Although our High Court (equiv. to US Supreme Court) has ruled that we have a "freedom of communication on political and related matters" 'implied within our constitution' (although it is not explicit). So some communication (political matters) has been ruled as an implied freedom. This is the freedom that a lot of our political protest (if not all) falls under. See for example the case of Levy: http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/sinodisp/au/cases/cth/HCA/1997/31.html?query=title(Levy) Levy is long sorry - the gist is a duck-hunting protester who trespassed as part of his protest - it was upheld by our High Court that he was exercising his implied right to freedom of communciation on political matters. See also: http://www.piac.asn.au/legal-help/public-interest-cases/public-interest-cases-2008/free-speech-cases/free-speech-cases The reasoning of our superior court that we have this implied freedom, is that our constitution embodies/ proscribes a system of democratic government, and that this necessarily implies a right of the people to discuss political and related matters. Sounds pretty straightforward. So we are also assuming that our superior court would be likely to similarly rule on the existence of an "implied freedom of communication on legal and related matters" - the courts are established by our constitution, the process of legal service, we have the right to present for ourselves in court, etc, etc, so this "legal system proscribed by our constitution necessarily implies an implied freedom to communicate on legal and related matters". This is a question we are bringing to our High Court. Interestingly, earlier this year, we brought (for the first time) before the Magistrate's Court, our lowest court, the following question: "Is there within our (federal) constitution an implied right to freedom of communication on legal and related matters?" We said this was a question which must be brought before our superior court for determination, and incredibly, the Magistrate not only ruled that she was "not persuaded that" there was any constitutional question raised, but she also ruled on the constitutional question itself, ruling "there is no freedom of communication on legal matters within our constitution, either implied or explicit". Some of us were gobsmacked. Anyway, we have the right to lift the matter to our superior courts, and lift it we shall. Stay tuned :) Zenaan -- tor-talk mailing list - tor-talk@lists.torproject.org To unsubscribe or change other settings go to https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk
