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Establishing a "test" (that is, a measurable standard that can be applied by courts in future decisions), such as the Oakes test (in Canadian law) or the Bolam test (in English law). Sometimes, with regard to a particular provision of a written constitution, only one court decision has been made.
Dietrich v The Queen is a 1992 High Court of Australia constitutional case which established that a person accused of serious criminal charges must be granted an adjournment until appropriate legal representation is provided if they are unrepresented through no fault of their own and proceeding would result in the trial being unfair.
Precedent is a judicial decision that serves as an authority for courts when deciding subsequent identical or similar cases. [1] [2] [3] Fundamental to common law legal systems, precedent operates under the principle of stare decisis ("to stand by things decided"), where past judicial decisions serve as case law to guide future rulings, thus promoting consistency and predictability.
Today academic writers are often cited in legal argument and decisions as persuasive authority; often, they are cited when judges are attempting to implement reasoning that other courts have not yet adopted, or when the judge believes the academic's restatement of the law is more compelling than can be found in case law. Thus common law systems ...
The reception of English law in Western Australia and South Australia was later deemed by statute to have occurred on 1 June 1829 [12] and 28 December 1836 [13] respectively. The earliest civil and criminal courts established from the beginnings of the colony of New South Wales were rudimentary, adaptive and military in character.
The Constitutional history of Australia is the history of Australia's foundational legal principles. Australia's legal origins as a nation state began in the colonial era, with the reception of English law and the lack of any regard to existing Indigenous legal structures.
In its present application, Briginshaw is precedent for the idea that "the strength of evidence necessary to establish facts on the balance of probabilities, may depend on the nature of what is sought to be proven". In particular it holds that cogent or strict proof is necessary to support a judicial finding of serious allegations (such as ...
The judiciary of Australia comprises judges who sit in federal courts and courts of the States and Territories of Australia. The High Court of Australia sits at the apex of the Australian court hierarchy as the ultimate court of appeal on matters of both federal and State law.