Indigenous Peoples and the Law subjects
Law and Indigenous Peoples (LAWS90008)
The settler legal system in Australia has been built upon dispossession and erasure of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, as well as their land, laws and knowledges. Law continues to closely (over)regulate the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, while failing to properly protect Indigenous interests. This course will investigate the variety of ways in which settler law has operated to afford (and deny) rights and interests to Indigenous people, both as individuals and as polities.
In Law and Indigenous Peoples we will engage together with questions of Indigeneity, voice, recognition of Indigenous legal systems, settler-colonialism, sovereignty and self-determination as they relate to Australian legal systems and institutions. On this basis, the course will build upon and also reconsider the hegemonic knowledges introduced across a range of compulsory units in the Juris Doctor – including Principles of Public Law, Constitutional Law, Property, Criminal Law and Administrative Law.
Course coordinator: Dr Eddie Cubillo
Programme: Juris Doctor (Semester 1, 2024)
Access to Justice on Country (LAWS90257)
This subject is an experiential and ‘On-Country’ learning experience, delivered on site on a chosen First Nations Country, as well as in classes taught on Wurundjeri Country at MLS. Through on Country experience and engagement with a range of organisations and practitioners, students will consider key and emerging issues of access-to-justice that lawyers must critically engage with in their work, with particular attention to First Nations justice. Students will consider community understandings and aspirations of justice in the settler-colony, key barriers and debates in relation to enhancing public access-to-justice, emerging justice models and the ethical duties and interpersonal conduct of lawyers responding to these dynamics. As a group, we will seek to understand how to navigate barriers to access to justice together, including by questioning what justice really means and who gets to define it.
Course coordinator: Dr Eddie Cubillo and Jaynaya Dwyer
Programme: Juris Doctor (Semester 1, 2024)
Indigenous Law in Aotearoa and Australia (LAWS90214)
This subject will be taught intensively in Aotearoa (New Zealand) in collaboration with our host, the University of Auckland. The subject aims to equip students with expert knowledge on current Indigenous legal issues in Aotearoa and Australia, including contemporary treaty Issues and the influence of Indigenous law in settler legal systems. Comparative perspectives on the ways in which Indigenous law is recognised, taught and practised will be emphasised. Students will be encouraged to think critically about the ways that settler law does and does not recognise Indigenous law and Indigenous law-making authority in these legally pluralistic countries. We will learn from Indigenous scholars and community leaders about strategies for asserting Indigenous law as part of self-governance, and the place of concepts of legal theory, legal traditions, sovereignty and territory in these debates.
Course coordinator: Dr Eddie Cubillo
Programme: Juris Doctor (Semester 2, 2024)
Indigenous Legal Advocacy Clinic (LAWS90209)
The Indigenous Legal Advocacy Clinic will engage with current law and policy issues impacting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. Students will work in small groups in partnership with an Aboriginal legal service or related body on an issue of law or justice identified by the partner organisation. Clinical projects may include legislative submissions, amicus briefs and law and policy analysis. Students will undertake 12 days of clinical work at Melbourne Law School under the supervision of the clinic supervisor and subject coordinator. Students will be taught lawyering skills in persuasive writing, organisational collaboration, and advocacy. The clinical work will be complemented by seminars (held across the semester during the clinic day) on substantive legal topics relevant to the projects, as well as on the historical, cultural and political context of indigenous legal rights. At the end of semester, students will present their completed work to their partner organisation. Guest speakers and site visits (where possible) will be organised to enhance students’ understanding of contemporary legal policy issues impacting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and communities.
Subject Coordinator: Dr Eddie Cubillo
Programme: Juris Doctor
Treaty: Indigenous-settler Agreements (LAWS90191)
Over the last 10 years, the ways in which the Aboriginal Peoples and people of Victoria have been working with the state of Victoria has been directed towards establishing institutions of treaty and agreement making. This research elective is being set up in order to address how JD students might contribute to the 'treaty' and 'truth and justice' processes through undertaking directed research projects.
The topics of engagement are
- The Yoorrook Justice Commission
- The First Peoples Assembly
- The Treaty Authority
- The First Peoples - State Relations (FPSR) Group, DPC, Vic Gov.
The objective of this research elective is to think carefully about how research for Indigenous institutions is conducted; to develop skills in researching to a 'brief'; and to reflect on the particular forms of knowledge production appropriate to Indigenous-centred university research.
The immediate co-ordinator of this research stream will be Shaun McVeigh, in close association from the Indigenous law and justice hub and collaborators.
For JD projects, students will be invited to address concerns within one of the chosen institutions and, with assistance, work to a research brief. As with other research topics, the format is research-based. There will be four taught classes, individual consultations, and a presentation. The research essay is 8,000 words and managed according to the general rubric of the subject.
Subject coordinator: Professor Shaun McVeigh
Programme: Juris Doctor
Encounters: Meeting of Laws in Australia (LAWS50070)
Not available in 2024
Encounter scholarship - the study of contact and contest between Indigenous people and settler colonisers - is an important method and practice in humanities, used to interrogate the limits and possibilities of cross cultural engagements. This subject undertakes this task within the boundaries of law. Using a case study method, the subject centralises the histories and present expression of encounters between Indigenous and Anglo-Australian practices of jurisprudence: the care and conduct of law. We will frame different encounters by examining and analyzing how Australian settler colonial law has dispossessed Indigenous peoples from their land and law over time, in the process constructing for them raced identities, with ongoing, lived consequences. At the same time, we will consider how Indigenous peoples have interpreted and mobilised law – their own, as well as a demand for responsiveness from Anglo Australian domestic law, and international law – to contest those consequences and impacts.
Programme: Juris Doctor