Secondary Rules

This week’s ‘big idea’ is ‘SOVEREIGNTY’: Joshua and Ryan discuss Churchill, Guantanamo Bay, and Australian history.
Our reading for this week:

Churchill’s 'Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat' speech

Carl Schmitt in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
“Even two world wars could not stop Australians casting their ballots, whether at home or on the battlefield” (Australian War Memorial)

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This week’s ‘big idea’ is ‘DEMOCRACY’: Joshua and Ryan discuss Ancient Athenian hillsides, marketing scams, Hare Clark with a Robson Rotation, and why Joshua doesn’t trust his neighbours. Our reading for this week:

The Gettysburg Address (1863) | Constitution Center (Lincoln)

How is the UK’s Brexit referendum different from Australian referendums? (Goss)

The Tally Room podcast (Raue)

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This week’s ‘big idea’ is ‘The State’: Joshua and Ryan talk about mutual protection, whether states need territory, who is on the other side of the breathalyser, and what the French have to learn from giant sea monsters.

Our reading for this week:

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia

Leviathan (Wikipedia)

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This week’s ‘big idea’ is ‘The Rule of Law’: Joshua and Ryan thinking about chickens and ducks, the laws of cricket, and the mafia; and Joshua offers a few gratuitous reflections on the French.

Further reading for this week:

• Waldron on the rule of law
• Lisa Burton Crawford on the rule of law
• Lon Fuller on King Rex
• Remembering Prof Gardner (1965-2019)

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Secondary Rules returns for a new season! This week, our ‘big idea’ is ‘The People’: Joshua and Ryan thinking about revolutions in France, the US and beyond; why it’s a bad idea to make big decisions on an empty stomach; and how everything comes back to the Parting of the Red Sea.

For more, check out:

Hannah Arendt (1963) 

Independence National Historic Park, Pennsylvania 

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Here’s the long-awaited trailer for the third season of ANU Law’s Secondary Rules podcast — coming soon!

Make sure you’re following or subscribed so you get the new episodes as soon as they land. Catch up on our back catalogue at https://secondary-rules.simplecast.com

Secondary Rules is hosted by ANU Law's Joshua Neoh and Ryan Goss. Learn more about ANU Law here. Our thanks to the ANU College of Law and the ANU Centre for Learning an...

How a conversation at James Cook University led to the most momentous decision in Australian legal history.

• Read the judgment
• Watch the movie (only accessible via ABC iView in Australia)
• Read an interview with Mabo counsel, Ron Castan

Learn more about the ANU College of Law here. Our thanks to the ANU College of Law Marketing and Communications team. ANU acknowledges and celebrates the First Australians on whose traditional la...

Water under the bridge, and judges kissing babies, in this episode of Secondary Rules. What business do Courts have thinking about socio-economic rights? Can a Constitution transform a society, and can litigation safeguard a democracy? All this and more as we consider the right to water in the Constitutional Court of South Africa.

• Mazibuko  v City of Johannesburg [2009] ZACC 28
• Constitution of the Republic of South Africa(1996)
• Co...

The trial that changed the world. A Jewish rabble-rouser came face-to-face with a provincial Roman governor. He was hanged. But his death was not the end. It was just the beginning. Spikenard not included.

• For a cosmic interpretation, see Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (2004).
• For a comic interpretation, see Monty Python’s Life of Brian(1979).

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‘Directly chosen’ for your enjoyment, this week we look at a case about free speech in a democratic society (and Joshua is a harsh marker of Ryan’s work), all of it ‘unaccompanied by moving images or other vocal sounds’.

• ACTV v Cth(1992)
• “Whither the Implied Freedom of Political Communication?” (2022 paper) Nettle J

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Long live the common law! This week we look at the fascinating Malaysian Federal Court decision in Indira Gandhi v Director of the Islamic Department. 

• Indira Gandhi v Director of the Islamic Department(2018, Federal Court of Malaysia)
• J Neoh, Legitimacy of the Common Law in Post-Colonial Malaysia [2010] LAWASIA 59

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Bonjour et bienvenue: how do you change the way a constitution changes, without being sure how to change the constitution? In each episode of Season 2, we tell the story of a great landmark court decision from around the world. This week we look at the fascinating Supreme Court of Canada decision in the Patriation Reference (1981). 

• Patriation Reference(Re Resolution to amend the Constitution)(SCC, 1981)
• The Constitution Acts(186...

Ginger beer, the 'nauseating sight' of a snail, the Good Samaritan, and the genius of the common law: it’s all here in the House of Lords’ decision in Donoghue v Stevenson [1932] AC 562. 

• Donoghue v Stevenson (1932)
• Justice Keane on the great Queenslander, Lord Atkin (2017)

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In each episode of Season 2, we’ll tell the story of a great landmark court decision from Australia or around the world. This week: terrorism on the streets of Gibraltar and the right to life, in the European Court of Human Rights' decision in McCann and Others v United Kingdom (21 ECHR 97 GC). 

• McCann v UK (1995) 
• European Convention on Human Rights

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This week, Joshua Neoh and Ryan Goss delve deep into one of the most pivotal cases in American legal history: Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). Discover how the case forever changed the landscape of education and civil rights in the United States through its ruling that state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional.

• Brown 1
• Brown 2
• Plessy

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This week, on a special mini episode of Secondary Rules, Joshua Neoh and Ryan Goss talk about the Coronation of Australia’s Head of State, King Charles III, which takes place abroad this weekend. Further reading:

• House of Commons Library Guide to the Coronation (2023)
• Australia and the Coronation (Prime Minister and Cabinet)
• Coronation Quiche
• The Coronation Cases of 1902

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This week on the last Secondary Rules for 2022, Joshua Neoh and Ryan Goss talk Revelation, revolutions, recidivism, and Rishi.

Remember to take our survey!

• Revelation (c AD 95)
• Garlett v WA (2022)
• Joshua’s new book!

If you're a student in Australian Public Law or Legal Theory this semester, more available on the course WATTLE sites.  

Learn more about the ANU College of Law here. Our thanks to Jack O’Brien, Tom Fearon, and the A...

This week on Secondary Rules, Joshua Neoh and Ryan Goss talk dual-citizenship and the stripping of “foreign fighters” citizenship, the decline and fall of Liz Truss, and torture in an age of terror.

Take our survey!

• Alexander [2022] HCA 19
• Bybee Memo (1 Aug 2002)

If you're a student in Australian Public Law or Legal Theory this semester, more available on the course WATTLE sites.  

Learn more about the ANU College of Law here. ...

This week on Secondary Rules, Joshua Neoh and Ryan Goss talk panopticon and the pandemic, how we get our High Court judges, and offer some generalisations about French philosophers and the US Senate.

• Ethics Explainer: The Panopticon
• Port Arthur ‘Separate Prison’ panopticon
• Prof Andrew Lynch on judicial appointments reform (AusPubLaw)
• English Judicial Appointments Commission
• Keane laments exit after ‘wonderful’ innings on High Court ...