Australian Legal System

Introduction

Legal systems consist of institutions, procedures, and rules that the public institutes and private ventures are done via legal mechanisms (Douglas 2018). It refers to a system of law interpretation and enforcement. It provides a platform for which responsibilities and rights are elaborated in different ways. Conventionally, legal systems consist of religious law, civil law, and common law as major components (O’Donnell et al. 2018). Other components of legal systems include tax systems that are applied in the assessment and collection of taxes, jury system that determines facts in the lawsuit issues and electoral systems used for the decision of democratically make choices (Altman et al. 2018).

Notably, the significance of legal systems in society is appreciated and acknowledged by all. Being part and parcel of the entire community were have a social responsibility to those surrounding us in terms of creating safety in the environment to allow them to feel a sense of security and fairly deal with each other (Groves et al. 2019). However, we are abiding by the rules and laws daily even though the enforcement responsibility is not pegged on us but the criminal justice systems.

The Hierarchy of Australian Courts

Generally, courts handle a variety of matters based on jurisdiction and its position in the hierarchy of courts. In the context of court systems, jurisdiction refers to the scope a court has in terms of tis authority to the matters of decision making (Wallance et al. 2017). For example, the type of cases to be handled and by who. The term jurisdiction originates the Latin; “juris” meaning law and “dictio” to mean declaring or saying. Therefore, jurisdictions given to various courts often depend on the primary purpose for which the court was set up initially and it is defined within the confines of the country’s legislation systems.

Besides, other factors determine a courts’ jurisdictions in terms of case determination such as the geographical area of the case, amount of money the case is involved in, priorities types and variations in the case at hand, and the offense’s maximum penalty severity (Harpur et al. 2017). For instance, in NSW, a maximum penalty of imprisonment (14 years) might be handled by the Supreme Court or District court whereas cases whose maximum penalties are fines or below 5 years can be heard at the local court systems. Consequently, some courts are characterized to be having special jurisdictions i.e. Family courts and children courts dealing with cases of topics that have narrow ranges. Others have general jurisdiction i.e. state Supreme Court that deals with a wider variety of cases (Douglas 2018).

The hierarchy of courts in Australia take the commonwealth’s three-level classification of the federal courts namely High court, Federal court, and Federal Circuit court (Altman et al. 2018). The main objectives behind the establishment of these courts were for the hearing and determination of matters that arise under the commonwealth laws (Ford 2018). The Australian High court was established by the constitution of commonwealth forming the apex court level of the Australian court system. The High court tops federal courts hierarchy and the state courts since some State Supreme Court’s decisions may be appealed and heard at the High Court.

Also, each of the states apart from Tasmania has three court levels of general jurisdiction; state Supreme Court, Victoria County Court- District court, and local court. Notably, the Australian capital, Northern Territory, and Tasmania do not have intermediate court levels at all. Another hierarchical context of classification is the aspect of superior and inferior courts. The Australian principal superior courts include the High court, Federal Court of Australia, Family Court of Australia, Supreme Courts of states and territories, Land and Environment Court of New South Wales, Industrial Relations Commission of New South Wale, and Industrial Court of Queensland (Ford 2018).

All the courts that are not classified in the superior context are dimmed inferior. The intermediate courts like the New South Wales District court fall under the technically inferior court thus handles hearing of cases that are not highly technical. The decision made by magistrates in that category is at the lower courts (Harpur et al 2017).

The Doctrine of Precedent

The precedent doctrine refers to the rules and guidelines that legal principles established under superior court should be applied in the determination of other future similar cases by other courts or that court in particular (Chen 2019). The main agenda behind the doctrine of precedent development was to advocate decision-making consistency by the magistrates and judges, based on similar cases being determined in a like approach or techniques. The precedent doctrine is of two kinds namely persuasive and binding precedent.

A precedent is said to be binding on a court under a circumstance where the precedent case was carried out by a superior court of higher hierarchy in the court systems (Stevens 2018). Notably, binding precedents must be applied if the case of precedence at hand is relevant to the context at hand and the situations, circumstances, or scenario of cases that sufficiently portray similarity. For instance, High court decisions in Australia are dimmed biding on all other courts, but the decisions of the Supreme Court to High court are not binding neither is the District court decisions binding on the Supreme Court (Varsava 2018).

On the other hand, a precedent is said to be persuasive if it was initiated under a superior court not highly positioned in the courts’ hierarchy. Meaning, such precedents are to be given serious considerations but not followed (Chen 2019). An example is where a Supreme Court of North-South Wales establishes a precedent. Such precedents are just persuasive to the Supreme Court of Victoria but not binding to that court because the two courts have equal authority and scope but are of different levels in the hierarchy of courts.

Conventional hearing and determination of court cases require evidence that constitutes information, materials, and documents presented to the court for fact approval in a case. For instance, in a traffic accident case, there could be a controversy concerning facts on the speed of the car or vehicle or visibility or weather conditions that could have led to the accident. The applicable shreds of evidence in such a scenario may be weather and visibility reports, eyewitness that can give an account of the accident, extent of vehicle damage i.e. direction and length of tires, body among others (Ford 2018).

On the same note, there are a couple of rules and guidelines that concern the kind of evidence that can be accepted in a court for considerations and circumstances at stake. Considerable pieces of evidence at the court are referred to as admissible evidence. Evidence guidelines at the court are to ensure fair and reliable evidence only are considered in courts for the factual circumstance determination in a case. The evidence rules were developed and advanced at common law even though the Australian Capital Territory, Victoria, Commonwealth, and New South Wales enacted similar legislation elaborating the majority of the evidence rules replacing most of the evidence rules at common law (Chen 2019).

Consequently, there are many varieties of evidence namely eyewitness where the evidence is based on direct observation by witnesses who are allowed to provide evidence at the court (Stevens 2018). The second type is circumstantial evidence that can be applied in making inferences regarding a fact that does not involve a direct witness (Stevens 2018). For instance, police evidence on the length and nature of skidding truck tires on the road can be applied to prove the side of the road the track was by the time the accident occurred.

Statute Law

Statute Law is the laws made by the parliamentary systems often referred to as legislation that consists of Rules, Regulations, and Acts. The interpretation and application obligation lies in the court systems especially to the cases they hear and determine their fates (Gardner et al. 2017). Normally, upon the agreement of the government, a bill is drafted by the counsels of the parliament. The bill is then taken to the parliamentary houses to be read and debated where it can either be rejected, approved, or changed. Upon the approval of the bill, it is handed over for the assent by the governor or governor-general of the commonwealth. In most cases, the parliament usually delegates legislation functions to the statutory authorities, local councils, and departments of the government for minor or sub statute laws though all the law is accountable to the constitution of the commonwealth (Prasad 2018).

Most of the statute laws are purposely applied by the administrative decision-makers and not by the judges and legal practitioners. Of course, some laws are given much consideration in the interpretation by the judicial than others due to stakes that some holds or because some of the position of the affected people to take their cases to court (Babie et al. 2018). Notably, the Australian courts have since neglected the traditional statute interpretation approaches such as the mischief, golden rule, and literal rule. The dominating approach applied in the Australian Statute law is not rigid because the overruling objective for that matter is the interpretation of the statutes as per the parliamentary interventions i.e. purposive approach (White et al. 2018).

There is often new laws official compilation done by the parliament in each state in Australia. For example, New South Wales Consolidated Act, Western Australian Consolidated Act, Victorian Consolidated Act, Tasmania Consolidated Act, Northern Territory Consolidated Act, Queensland Consolidated Act, and South Australian Consolidated Act (Prasad 2018). Law enactment is done chronologically often in the statute. The commonwealth of Australia Consolidated Acts is part of the federal laws and statutes including criminal laws.

Common-Law

This is a body of law established by judges’ law application to a given facts in the individual cases. Where legislative statutes does not counterbalance specific facts in a given case, judges apply legal decisions and principles to similar future cases’ hearing and determination. However, common law applications have become less recurrent (Zeller et al. 2019). In Australia, common law was developed in the 13^th century until today as precedent or case law by courts, tribunals, and judges. Australian High court has a general jurisdiction appellate charged by the State Supreme court in the Australian Constitution section 73(ii).

Equity

This refers to established legal rules and principles exclusively enforced and initiated by the English Chancery Court before 1873 and has been subjected to numerous modifications by different courts depending on their administration jurisdiction (Law et al. 2018). Because of delays that were experienced by the Chancery court, the Judicature Acts 186-6 was enacted to given reforms purposely to sort out the downfalls of Chancery Court. The Act had five divisions namely; Queen’s Bench, probe, chancery, divorce, and admiralty. In section 24 of the Judicature Act provided the strategies of power divisions to equitably administer remedies, recognize equitable rights, and hear equitable defenses (Shafei et al. 2019). Equity provides for specific performance such as injunction and gain bugling remedies such as constructive trusts and accounting for profits including equitable compensation.

In a legal sense Equity is judge-made law – an established set of complex legal principles developed by the Court of

Chancery in England before 1873 and since modified by all courts administering that jurisdiction. Equity is usually