On Thursday, July 2, from 6 PM - 7 PM at the Chau Chak Wing Museum in Camperdown, NSW, Paula Jane Byrne speaks about her new book Law in the New Democracy exploring development of a legal system in colonial New South Wales. It is published by ANU press and with the assistance of the Francis Forbes Society for Australian Legal History. Here is the press's description of the book:
And here is the description of the book launch:In the 1850s, opposition to the Crown in New South Wales made for unsteady ground for the administration of criminal law. This study of skirmishes between magistrates, constables and the metropolis reveals just how far understandings of law could be stretched and warped by recalcitrant local populations. At Carcoar, the local population entirely controlled how law worked; on the South Coast, ‘the people’ influenced how law intervened in their lives; in the north west of the colony, publicans dominated; on the north coast, violence against First Nations/Aboriginal people was forcibly meshed into the day to day working of the courts. This study shows a ‘frontier’ centred on the coasts and in the minds of legal officials of the metropolis, but elsewhere, some recognition of the Aboriginal polity and an early understanding of Aboriginal rights.
Democracy in the 1850s was felt to be fragile and uncertain. At any moment, the rhetoric of the Legislative Council and Assembly tells us, the rights obtained by the citizenry might be thwarted by the cunning manoeuvres of the English crown.--Dan Ernst
Such rhetoric would shape how colonial New South Wales viewed criminal law. Across the colony, desultory clerks filled sheets of paper with the words of victims and witnesses, words that would be carried to the metropolis, to the offices of legal officials. Dragging behind these words were the chained prisoners of the colony, eager on their journey to obtain money for a barrister in court.
This discussion examines the traces of such events and the role of the historian of 2026 in interpreting them. It addresses right of reply by Aboriginal people to history making. It questions the idea of a move into lawlessness the further we travel from Sydney and the idea of the frontier.
