The Rule of Law in Australia: Living in the Long Shadow of Colonialism

This book investigates core legal-political cultural myths of the Australian nation by canvassing, challenging and recasting some of the well-understood debates around, and invocations of, ‘the rule of law’ in Australia.

It foregrounds one of the most enduring and prominent manifestations of these debates: claims to state sovereignty and rule of law in a system that has an incoherent legal foundation in its intentional ignorance of, and arbitrary violence perpetrated against, First Nations, their people, their sovereignty and their law.

It examines the claims and celebrations of colonial rule of law achievements; constitutional rule of law protections; and the rule of law as tool to delineate and circumscribe the role of judges in the State. It presents a survey of the constitutional and legal principles and institutions and explores the socio-political aspects of rule of law in the country and how rule of law is experienced.

With a focus on the legacy of the treatment of First Nations people, the book looks at how the Australia’s rule of law institutions and machinery continue to exclude and fail vulnerable, marginalised and publicly reviled groups. Exploring these arguments through historical and contemporary case studies, including native title negotiations, anti-terrorism regimes, the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the push for constitutional enshrinement of a First Nations Voice, and the Royal Commission into the government’s ‘Robodebt’ inquiry, this book shows the inescapable messiness of rule of law in Australia as a legal and political concept, instrumentalised and weaponised across its history.