Australian Bills of Rights - LAWS8061

Description

LLM Specialisations

Recommended Prior Knowledge

Course Objectives

• Understand fundamental concepts of human rights, different categories of rights, and international obligations in relation to domestic implementation of human rights treaty obligations;
• Understand the various approaches to protection of human rights without a bill of rights;
• Understand the various models of bills of rights in operation in comparable jurisdictions;
• Understand the history of debates about bills of rights in Australia, and the broader theoretical debates about the desirability, in particular their impact on the functioning of democratic institutions;
• Understand the origins, structure, content and impact of the ACT Human Rights Act 2004-and the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities;
• Understand the current debates about and prospects of federal charter of rights and possible similar developments at the State and Territory level.

Main Topics

• Human rights - their origin, meaning and content, and competing models of the protection of human dignity and relationships;
• International obligations relating to the implementation of human rights at the national level and the different categories of rights (civil and political, economic, social and cultural, and third generation rights;
• The implementation and protection of human rights without a bill of rights;
• Models of bills of rights - judicially enforceable and other models, constitutionally entrenched and statutory bills of rights;
• The status of economic, social and cultural rights, the desirability and practicability of including them in constitutional or statutory charters of rights, and means of implementing and enforcing such rights;
• Debates about Bills of Rights in Australia and the development of modern Australian charters of rights;
• The ACT Human Rights Act 2004-and the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities: origins, structure, content and impact;
• The prospects for a federal Charter of Rights and future developments at the State and Territory level.

Assessment

Course Texts

• G Williams, A Charter of Rights for Australia (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2007)
• C Evans and S Evans, Australian Bills of Rights-The Law of the Victorian Charter and the ACT Human Rights Act (Chatswood, LexisNexis Butterworths, 2008)
• H Charlesworth,Writing in Rights (Sydney, UNSW Press 2002)
• A Pound and K Evans, An Annotated Guide to the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities (Sydney, Thomson LawBookCo, 2008)
• A Byrnes, H Charlesworth, & G McKinnon, Bills of Rights in Australia: history, politics and law (UNSW Press, 2009)

Resources