The TC Beirne School of Law has a long tradition of engagement within the field of historical legal scholarship, and is in possession of a growing reputation for legal historical research in a wide range of subjects within the field. The main areas of research include an investigation of the interaction between formal and informal legal processes in the eighteenth century criminal justice system, the evolution of leading constitutional doctrines and practices in Australia and beyond, the experience of the indigenous people’s of Australia in their engagement with the criminal law, the impact of colonial regimes upon legal development in Southeast Asia, and the idiosyncratic nineteenth century development of use of the law of copyright to protect architecture rather than the more appropriate design protection. The School is also playing a leading role in the development of the field of Legal History within the Australasian Law Teachers Association.
The following are examples of some current research projects:
- An examination of the operation and impact of the informal resolution of criminal complaints upon a system of private prosecution in the eighteenth century
- An historiographical analysis of research methodology in relation to the history of the criminal justice system with specific reference to the reformist school of legal history and the positivistic social scientific approach to the revisionist history of crime.
- An analysis of the justifications for the use of the law of copyright rather than the use of design protection to safeguard architectural design, and the interface between the demands of the architectural profession and the legal solution reached in the period 1870–1912.
- The impact of colonial regimes upon legal development in Southeast Asia with specific reference to the impact upon dispute resolution in Brunei
- A historical review of Indigenous people’s engagement with the criminal law
- An intellectual history of the evolution of fundamental principles of constitutional law such as constitutionalism, the rule of law, and federalism spanning the period from the late medieval period, through the early modern age, until the late nineteenth century.
- The evolution of electoral law and the suppression of electoral bribery in nineteenth century Australia.
- The evolution of electoral law and the history of challenging parliamentary elections via judicial review in Australia.
- The Hebraic Law of Succession in the Hellenistic to Roman periods.
Nicholas Aroney
Ann Black
Alan Davidson
Heather Douglas
Daril Gawith
Graeme Orr
Kimberlee Weatherall