University of Western Australia Law Review

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Latest documents

• Disaster Risk Reduction, Vulnerability and the Law: A Case for Including Animals

  The 2009 Black Saturday Bushfires revealed animals' profound vulnerability to natural hazards. Since then, multiple Australian states have introduced planning instruments to improve outcomes for animals in disasters. While a welcome trend, these instruments primarily focus on the acute phases of emergency preparedness and response. However, the disaster management cycle is broader than this, commencing with prevention and mitigation. Recognising that action early in the cycle is crucial, international instruments emphasise pre-emptive disaster risk reduction measures. This article contends that animals' vulnerability to disasters, as affirmed in the 2019-2020 Australian Bushfires, necessitates measures targeted at reducing their disaster risk

• Rights of nature as a response to the Anthropocene
• Rights, reasons, and international norms

  This article focuses on access to environmental justice. In particular, the article focuses on the right to remedy and redress articulated in Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration 1992 and the effective transposition of the principle in domestic law by interrogating three recent decisions from the senior courts in England and Wales, Ireland, and New Zealand concerning the reasons given for environmental decisions. These decisions provide substantive justification for reasoned decision-making so that interested persons are given the human dignity of knowing what was decided and why, for viewing this question from the perspective of a person who did not participate in the proceedings, for avoiding judicial deference on appeal by requiring that original decisions should be objectively reasonable and based on sound evidence, and (as a matter of natural justice) focusing remedial discretion on quashing defective decisions

• Addressing carbon and climate change through environmental impact assessment: A case study of Western Australian LNG and the 'Burrup Hub' project

  Where specific climate change policy and legal frameworks are lacking, environmental impact assessment (EIA) processes are being relied upon to understand and address climate impacts of major projects. This paper examines the adequacy and outcomes of State and Commonwealth EIA processes as applied to the rapidly expanding liquified natural gas (LNG) industry and the "Burrup Hub" development. It offers practical and legal perspectives on how EIA can (and must) better address carbon and climate change

• The legal geographies of the troposphere

  Legal geographies of space, time and the material world have occupied significant attention from scholars engaged in legal geography endeavours. Australia and the Asia-Pacific region's legal geography scholarship has shown a predisposition towards engagement with environmental issues and the concomitant materialities. Increasingly, there is recognition that these materialities are not always visible to the human eye, and one such materiality that has to date been overlooked is that of the troposphere. As a previously invisibilised space most recently made visible due to the impacts of a climate-changed world - namely, bushfire-induced smoke haze - it is argued that the troposphere is the next frontier for human and more-than human activity and one that warrants explicit theoretical and empirical scholarly engagement. In addition, explicit engagement at the law-geography nexus is essential for forward-looking environmentally concerned scholarship, for which the relationship between environmental issues and materiality is now of fundamental importance to law and to societies, exacerbated by our local, national and global experiences of a world affected by climate change. Exploring this the troposphere through the lens of legal geography enables a grounded understanding of the theoretical challenges and opportunities within this increasingly visibilised space of human activity and environmental impact. In light of the role of property rights in the troposphere, this paper examines tropospheric incursions in the context of volumetric urbanism to illustrate the utility of legal geography theory, and to illustrate the legal and social importance of an empirically under-explored space

• Environmental, Planning and Climate Law in Queensland
• Law, Interdisciplinarity and 'Wicked' Problems

  This article argues that law, as a discipline, and regulation can contribute to the resolution of 'wicked' problems, such as agricultural diffuse source pollution, but that it necessitates an integration of other disciplines. While interdisciplinarity is not foreign to law, it, largely, fails to engage with theoretical frameworks and methodology to facilitate and ensure the integrity of such research

• Germany's Climate Change Agenda: A Critical Overview

  Germany's economy is the fourth-largest economy behind the US, China, and Japan, with a strong industrial base and many energy-intensive industries. Germany has been and continues to be a significant emitter of greenhouse gases (GHG). Germany has also taken on a leadership role in supporting emission reductions internationally, e.g., within the UNFCCC framework and the European Union (EU), which plays a significant role both internationally and domestically. Germany's political intentions and ambitious political goals rested on a somewhat fragmented and relatively thin legal foundation. This changed towards the end of 2019 with the passage of the Federal Climate Change Act (FCCA), which entered into force in December 2019. This framework act spells out the long-term goal of GHG-neutrality by 2050 and a 55% GHG reduction target by 2030. The FCAA must be read in conjunction with the Climate Action Plan 2050 and the Climate Protection Program 2030, which can be regarded as planning tools. Additional challenges arise from the fact that Germany has decided to phase out coal as a fuel for energy generation over the coming two decades and to take all existing nuclear power plants offthe gridin the veryshort term. The paper attempts to explain and critically analyze Germany's legal and political framework dealing with climate change with an emphasis on the difficulties of very long-term policy planning in the volatile political and economic environment with often competing interests

• Legal Geography: perspectives and methods
• Introduction by Guest Editors

Featured documents

• Claims for the value of the lost contractual performance

  It is often said that contractual damages awards compensate the promisee for loss caused by breach. Statements like this are indeterminate because they leave unspecified whether such awards aim merely to make good some of the eventual deterioration in the promisee's balance sheet position...

• Drawing the boundaries: The Scope of the Religious Bodies Exemptions in Australian Anti-Discrimination Law and Implications for Reform

  Australia is in the midst of an impassioned debate about how to appropriately balance freedom from discrimination with freedom of religious expression. This debate, which has its recent origins in the push for marriage equality, has been reignited by discussions at the Commonwealth level to...

• Protecting Your Culinary Creation and Eating it Too: An Exploration into How Australian Copyright Law Can and Should Expand its Menu to Embrace Culinary Works

  In a modern gastronomic culture driven by multi-dimensional sensory creativity, chefs who invest significant intellectual effort into creating aesthetically stimulating works should no longer be excluded from formal intellectual property protection. Culinary professionals who produce original...

• The Maker Movement: Copyright Law, Remix Culture And 3D Printing
• Gender Neutrality and the Definition of Rape: Challenging the Law's Response to Sexual Violence and Non-Normative Bodies

  In 2005 the legislature of Aotearoa New Zealand chose for the second time, the first occurring in 1986, to retain the offence of rape as one of the ways in which the crime of sexual violation may be committed. The current definition of rape means that only those with a penis can be guilty of this...

• Legal Duties for Environmental Water Provisions in Western Australia

  Western Australia has not delivered on its promises to make environmental water provisions (EWPs), including to restore environmentally sustainable flows of water to waterways and wetlands. WA has prioritised water supply for consumptive use under pressure from a growing population. Urban areas...

• Can Promissory Estoppel be an Independent Source of Rights?

  This article addresses persistent uncertainty in relation to the question, 'Can promissory estoppel be an independent source of rights under Australian law?' A split has developed between intermediate courts of appeals in some jurisdictions on this question. This article considers the operation of...

• Reigniting the Lamp: The Case for Including People who are Blind or Deaf as Jurors

  This article presents the case for including people who are blind or deaf as jurors. It does so in the context of the High Court’s recent decision in Lyons v Queensland [2016] HCA 38. We also consider the impact of the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (CRPD), to which Australia...

• It's time exemplary damages were part of the judicial armory in contract

  This article challenges the traditional approach that exemplary damages are unavailable for breach of contract. Given the exceptional nature and infrequent use of the remedy, the principles relating to exemplary damages are often misunderstood. A survey of key arguments in support of the...

• Ministerial Advisers and the Australian Constitution

  Ministerial advisers are relatively new institutional actors within the Commonwealth Executive. Ministerial advisers were not envisaged at federation and pose a challenge to constitutional theory, which largely focuses on the position of public servants and Ministers. This article analyses the...