page_title: Australian legal system
section_title: Arrival of English law through colonization
hierarchical_section_title: Australian legal system / History / Arrival of English law through colonization
caption_attribution_description: English: From a sketchbook in the State Library of New South Wales.
context_page_description: The legal system of Australia has multiple forms. It includes a written constitution, unwritten constitutional conventions, statutes, regulations, and the judicially determined common law. Its legal institutions and traditions are substantially derived from that of the English legal system. Australia is a common-law jurisdiction, its court system having originated in the common law system of English law. The country's common law is enforced uniformly across jurisdictions.
  The Australian Constitution sets out a federal system of government. There exists a national legislature, with a power to pass laws of overriding force on a number of express topics. The States are separate jurisdictions with their own system of courts and parliaments, and are vested with plenary power. Some Australian territories such as the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory have been granted a regional legislature by the Commonwealth.
  The High Court is Australia's apex court. It has the final say on the judicial determination of all legal matters. It hears appeals from all other courts in the country, and is vested with original jurisdiction.
context_section_description: The English legal system was introduced to Australia through colonization. Upon arrival to Australia, the colonists declared that the laws of England were to immediately apply to all settled lands. This declaration was asserted by reliance upon a legal fiction that the Australian continent was terra nullius; i.e. land belonging to no-one, as it was believed that the Aboriginal peoples already inhabiting the continent were not cohesively organised for a treaty to be struck with any single representation of their peoples. 
  Under the conventions of international law at the time, terra nullius lands were recognised as immediately adopt the laws of the relevant colonial power. As such, Indigenous Australian laws and customs were not recognised (including those pertaining to land ownership). The arrival of English Law was later expressly stated in statute by passage of the Australian Courts Act 1828 (IMP). The act stated that all laws and statutes in force in England at the date of enactment should be applied in the courts of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) so far as those laws were applicable. Since Queensland and Victoria were originally part of New South Wales, the same date applies in those States for the reception of English law. South Australia adopted a different date for reception, as did Western Australia. 
  The earliest civil and criminal courts established from the beginnings of the colony of New South Wales were rudimentary, adaptive and military in character. Although legality was not always observed, the courts limited the powers of the Governor, and the law of the colony was at times more egalitarian than in Britain.
  By 1824, a court system based in essence on the English model had been established through Acts of the British Parliament. The New South Wales Act 1823 provided for the establishment of a Supreme Court with the power to deal with all criminal and civil matters "as fully and amply as Her Majesty's Court of King's Bench, Common Pleas and Exchequer at Westminster". Inferior courts were also established, including courts of General or Quarter Sessions, and Courts of Requests.
  Representative government emerged in the 1840s and 1850s, and a considerable measure of autonomy was given to local legislatures in the second half of the nineteenth century. Colonial Parliaments introduced certain reforms such as secret ballots and female suffrage, which were not to occur in Britain until many years later. Nevertheless, Acts of the United Kingdom Parliament extending to the colonies could override contrary colonial legislation and would apply by "paramount force". New doctrines of English common law continued to be treated as representing the common law of Australia. For example, the doctrine of the famous case of Donoghue v Stevenson from which the modern negligence law derived, was treated as being latent already within the common law at the time of reception.
caption: Courtroom scene Sydney c1817. State Library of New South Wales
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