Law, War and Crime
War Crimes Trials and the Reinvention of International Law/ Gerry Simpson
Cambridge : Polity, 2007.

War crimes.
War crime trials.

From events at Nuremberg and Tokyo after World War II, to the recent trials of Slobodan Milošević and Saddam Hussein, war crimes trials are an increasingly pervasive feature of the aftermath of conflict. In his new book, Law, War and Crime, Gerry Simpson explores the meaning and effect of such trials, and places them in their broader political and cultural contexts. The book traces the development of the war crimes field from its origins in the outlawing of piracy to its contemporary manifestation in the establishment of the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Simpson argues that the field of war crimes is constituted by a number of tensions between, for example, politics and law, local justice and cosmopolitan reckoning, collective guilt and individual responsibility, and between the instinct that war, at worst, is an error and the conviction that war is a crime.

Rights and redemption : history, law and indigenous people / Ann Curthoys, Ann Genovese, Alexander Reilly.
Sydney, N.S.W. : University of New South Wales Press Ltd, 2008

Law and anthropology.
Anthropology — Australia — History.
Aboriginal Australians — Land tenure — History.

This book examines the role of history in key Indigenous rights cases which occurred during the era of the Howard government, when Indigenous rights and the place of Aboriginal people in the national story were repudiated in a variety of government laws and policies. The book investigates how the courts have made use of historians as expert witnesses, and how the colonial past has been framed and understood by the courts. This is an important historical record of a unique period of litigation in Indigenous affairs in Australia

Decision making in the U.S. Courts of Appeals / Frank B. Cross.
Stanford University Press, c2007.

United States. Supreme Court.
Judicial process — United States.
Appellate courts — United States.

This groundbreaking book analyzes the decisions made by the United States circuit courts over the past half century. These courts have a profound impact on the law—they issue many more decisions in many more areas of law than the Supreme Court. Cross demonstrates that while the courts’ judges are influenced by ideology and by the appointing president, legal requirements exercise a much stronger influence on their decisions. He also shows that these courts are independent of the other branches of government and free from undue influence of various parties. The book further introduces new research on the precedent-setting power of decisions.

There have been several recent additions to the Law Library collection which focus on developing particular legal skills

The Art of Argument: a guide to mooting by Christopher Kee guides readers through the process of developing, defending and presenting a compelling argument and is aimed at students about to participate in a mooting competition.

Legal Writing by Lisa Webley guides students through the legal writing process, from questions to final essays and problem answers.

A Practical Guide to Lawyering Skills by Boyle et al covers a number of different skills including written communication, mediation, negotiation and legal research

Co-authored by T.C. Beirne’s very own Heather Douglas, Law on the Internet is an established guide to law-related websites. Each chapter deals with a different aspect of the law and provides a comprehensive list of relevant website addresses.
Law on the Internet will be updated periodically on the Federation Press website.

Click here for details on where to find this book in the Library.

A new addition to the collection of interest is
Dowling’s Select cases, 1828 to 1844 : decisions of the Supreme Court of New South Wales / edited by T.D. Castle, Bruce Kercher ; with a foreword by J.J. Spigelman.
IMPRINT Sydney : Francis Forbes Society for Australian Legal History, 2005.
KZC1910.N48 D69 2005 (Reports/Statutes level 4)

Compiled by Sir James Dowling himself this volume is an invaluable source of original material , and is a unique record of colonial life. The cases are arranged by subject, with interesting headings such as Convicts, Debtors & Execution and Liquor. In the words of the editors “the conflict between English law, and the circumstances of life in the colony, undoubtedly provided the rationale for Dowling to prepare the Select Cases , as a means of recording the development of a distinct body of Australian common law by the early work of the Supreme Court”