You Accidentally Broke a Law which You didn’t Know was a Law. What happens?
[ by Justin Schwartz ] It actually normally doesn’t much matter whether you know the law to whether you broke it or not. The usual maxim is “ignorance of the law is no excuse.” That is generally if not universally true. To break a law, what you have to do is to satisfy the elements…
Domestic and Transnational Organised Crime in the Pacific in the Wake of COVID-19
[ by Jose Sousa-Santos ] The COVID-19 pandemic has created a vulnerable landscape in the Pacific islands which transnational criminal organisations and local crime actors have been quick to capitalise on. As economies falter, criminal actors are seeking to take advantage of the vacuum with significant implications for human security. The closure of borders and…
COVID-19: Looking Beyond Security Rhetoric to Protect Communities
[ by Sally Tyler ] In separate corners of the globe, and at the same time, protests in the United States sparked by the killing of George Floyd by police turned violent, and the Tiananmen Square vigil in Hong Kong was banned for the first time in 30 years. It is no coincidence that these events come as the…
Surveillance to Limit Spread of COVID-19 Raises Concerns for Privacy of the Australians
[ by Fan Yang ] In February 2020, to recover its economy from the coronavirus outbreak, China’s State Council in collaboration with two tech giants, Tencent and Alibaba, launched the ‘health code’ mini-programme on WeChat, a social media platform, and Alipay, a financial platform. The health code is an automatic built-in function on both platforms, leaving…
German Court Attacks the Primacy of EU Law. Sets a Wrong Precedent.
[ by John Bruton ] The Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) of Germany this week attacked one of the fundaments of the European Union, the primacy of Union law. It is long settled practice that, in its field of operation, EU law has superiority over national law. The FCC of Germany has also rejected the primacy…
A Bill that would Leave Australia in Violation of International Law
[ by Dr Sangeetha Pillai ] Currently, there is a Bill before federal Parliament which seeks to make it easier for the Minister for Home Affairs to strip Australians of their citizenship on national security grounds. The Bill has come under fire from the Human Rights Commission, the Law Council, and a number of experts on grounds that it would render…
Oped Column Law 