Surveys the history of the House of Representatives and describes its structure, current function, and influence on American society.

The House of Representatives

The Age of apology: facing up to the past

That all states are free and equal under international law is axiomatic to the discipline. Yet even a brief look at the dynamics of the international order calls that axiom into question. Mobilising fresh archival research and drawing on a tradition of unorthodox Marxist and anti-colonial scholarship, Rose Parfitt develops a new 'modular' legal historiography to make sense of the paradoxical relationship between sovereign equality and inequality. Juxtaposing a series of seemingly unrelated histories against one another, including a radical re-examination of the canonical story of Fascist Italy's invasion of Ethiopia, Parfitt exposes the conditional nature of the process through which international law creates and disciplines new states and their subjects. The result is a powerful critique of international law's role in establishing and perpetuating inequalities of wealth, power and pleasure, accompanied by a call to attend more closely to the strategies of resistance that are generated in that process.

The Process of International Legal Reproduction: Inequality, Historiography, Resistance

Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination 1830-1867, and: 'More than Mere Amusement': Working-class Women's Leisure in England, 1750-1914, and: The Eternal Slum: Housing and Social Policy in Victorian London (review)

This article explores the potential of emerging digital cultures for Indigenous participation in policy debates in the rapidly changing Australian media landscape. From the Zapatista's ‘netwar’ to the ‘hashtag activism’ of IdleNoMore, Indigenous people have pioneered innovative uses of digital media for global connectivity and contestation. Digital and social media open up unprecedented opportunities for voice, and, in theory, participation in decision-making. But there is limited understanding about how Indigenous voices are heard at times of major policy reform, and whether increased participation in digital media necessarily leads to increased democratic participation. Leading Indigenous commentators in Australia suggest an inability of governments and other influential players to listen sits at the heart of the failure of Indigenous policy. This article presents two contemporary Australian case studies that showcase Indigenous participatory media response to government policy initiatives: firs...

Indigenous voices and mediatized policy-making in the digital age

Two relatively recent and overlapping developments potentially offer a new direction for the Indigenous self-determination project, which has been marginalised by Australian governments in recent years: first, the trend towards the domestic protection of international human rights through statutory bills of rights in Australian jurisdictions; and second, the burgeoning recognition of the right of self-determination for Indigenous peoples at the level of international law. This paper critiques the right of self-determination as it would operate under the kind of statutory bill of rights that predominates in Australia. The central argument is that enshrining the right of self-determination in a statutory bill of rights would be an ineffective guarantee of Indigenous self-determination. After developing a normative account of Indigenous self-determination that emphasises the importance of the Indigenous-state relationship, this paper suggests that two things are problematic for Indigenous self-determination in the statutory bill of rights context. The first concerns the standard consultation processes leading up to the introduction of statutory bills of rights; the second concerns the unilateral state control that would exist over the right of self-determination under a statutory bill. This paper concludes with a discussion of the problem of ‘juridification’ in relation to Indigenous self-determination.

The Politics of Inclusion: The Right of Self-Determination, Statutory Bills of Rights and Indigenous Peoples

The idea of the rule of law, more ubiquitous globally today than ever before, owes a lasting debt to the work ofVictorian legal theorist A V Dicey But for all of Dicey’s influence, little attention has been paid to the imperial entanglements of his thought, including on the rule of law This article seeks to bring the imperial dimensions of Dicey’s thinking about the rule of law into view On Dicey’s account, the rule of law represented a distinctive English civilisational achievement, one that furnished a liberal justification for British imperialism And yet Dicey was forced to acknowledge that imperial rule at times required arbitrariness and formal inequality at odds with the rule of law At a moment when the rule of law has once more come to license all sorts of transnational interventions by globally powerful political actors, Dicey’s preoccupations and ambivalences are in many ways our own

The Rule of Law and the Rule of Empire: A.V. Dicey in Imperial Context

More than two years on from the Federal Labor Government’s parliamentary motion of apology to the Stolen Generations – the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people wrongfully separated by government action from their families as children throughout the 20th century – questions continue to be asked and evaluations made of the Government’s performance in Indigenous affairs. Has the apology’s noble sentiment, undoubtedly one of the high-water marks of reconciliation in Australia, been matched with meaningful progress and action? Much focus has been on the Government’s commitment, made most prominently in Kevin Rudd’s apology speech, to ‘closing the gap’ between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in the areas of health, education and employment. In fact, this focus has been invited by the Federal Government itself: in February 2010, timed to commemorate the apology’s two-year anniversary, the Government delivered its second annual progress report on the advances made towards ‘closing the gap’. In light of the ongoing and dire problems of Indigenous disadvantage, such attention is certainly warranted. The focus of this paper, however, is different and much narrower: the Federal Government’s action, or more precisely, inaction, in relation to the provision of compensation to the Stolen Generations. In the wake of the apology, some positive federal initiatives specifically for the Stolen Generations have either been implemented or continued, including: the establishment of a working group of Stolen Generations members to assist in the development of healing services; the ongoing funding of the Bringing Them Home counselling program, Link-Up services and other programs; and, significantly, the establishment of a national Stolen Generations healing foundation. Yet the Government has ruled out the establishment of a national compensation scheme for the Stolen Generations and their families.I begin this paper by placing the Federal Labor Government’s denial of compensation in its historical, social, ideological and policy contexts. I then proceed to an analysis of the main arguments advanced by the Government in rejecting compensation for the Stolen Generations. These have been put forward on a number of occasions by former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and the Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Jenny Macklin. There is no indication from Prime Minister Gillard that the Labor Government under her leadership will take a different view. First, I offer a critique of the Government’s ‘closing the gap’ policy as a response to the Stolen Generations issue. This is followed by a consideration of the Government’s insistence that compensation can be sought through the courts. Analysed next is the argument that money can never sufficiently compensate the Stolen Generations for the harms they have endured. Lastly, I consider the possibility that negative and unintended social consequences may flow from the sudden influx of money into Indigenous communities resulting from the payment of compensation. None of these arguments put forward by the Federal Government, I suggest, offers a compelling case for refusing to compensate the Stolen Generations.

Monetary Compensation and the Stolen Generations: A Critique of the Commonwealth Labor Government's Position

In the post-1945 world, constitutionalism has transcended the nation state, with an array of transnational arrangements now manifesting constitutional characteristics-so says a growing number of scholars. This article reveals an earlier but largely forgotten discourse of transnational constitutionalism: the constitutional theory of the British Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Focusing on the work of Albert Venn Dicey, the article shows that, when the Empire was at the height of its power and prestige, British constitutional scholars came to see the Empire as a constitutional order and project. For Dicey, a committed constitutionalist and imperialist, the central dynamic of the imperial constitutional order was balancing British constitutional principles with imperial unity. This article focuses in particular on parliamentary sovereignty, a constitutional principle that, for Dicey, was both necessary for and dangerous to the Empire's integrity. An exercise in intellectual history, the article rethinks Dicey's work and the constitutional tradition in which Dicey has played such an integral part, seeking to reveal empire's forgotten significance.

Albert Venn Dicey and the Constitutional Theory of Empire

For more than a decade, Australians have been debating whether and how to ‘constitutionally recognise’ the continent’s first peoples, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. As these debates have evolved, Indigenous people have increasingly demanded that their identities as peoples be better recognised. The claims of Indigenous peoplehood, with their internationalist dimensions, present both a conceptual challenge – of reconciling Indigenous peoplehood with an ongoing Indigenous–settler constitutional association – and a justificatory challenge – of justifying the recognition of Indigenous peoplehood within Australia’s liberal–democratic constitutional traditions. This article argues that federalism, understood as self-rule combined with shared rule, provides a way of conceptualising and justifying the recognition of Indigenous peoplehood that falls between settler and Indigenous traditions. The article also shows how three major contemporary proposals to recognise Indigenous peoplehood – Indigenous parliamentary representation, treaties and the establishment of Indigenous States and Territories – can all be productively understood in federal terms.

Dylan Lino

Papers

The Politics of Inclusion: The Right of Self-Determination, Statutory Bills of Rights and Indigenous Peoples

The Rule of Law and the Rule of Empire: A.V. Dicey in Imperial Context

Monetary Compensation and the Stolen Generations: A Critique of the Commonwealth Labor Government's Position

Albert Venn Dicey and the Constitutional Theory of Empire

Towards Indigenous–Settler Federalism