Judicial entrepreneurism and the politics of institutional change: an analysis of the recent judicial role transformation in the High Court of Australia

dc.contributor.advisorHigley, Johnen
dc.contributor.advisorPerry, H. W.en
dc.creatorPierce, Jason Louisen
dc.date.accessioned2008-08-28T21:36:50Zen
dc.date.available2008-08-28T21:36:50Zen
dc.date.issued2002en
dc.descriptiontexten
dc.description.abstractThis dissertation explores a fundamental transformation that occurred in the High Court of Australia’s institutional role over the last twenty years. From the mid- 1980s to the late 1990s, the Court embarked on a concerted, systematic effort to recast its role within the legal and political systems. It went from operating at the margins of politics to the political storm center. Principally through watershed decisions on indigenous people's land rights and on free speech protections, the Court also shed its legal positivist traditions and ushered legal realism into its jurisprudence. Using data collected from personal interviews with over eighty senior appellate judges, including a majority of current and retired High Court Justices, the dissertation analyzes the causes and consequences of this transformation. It advances that an interplay of individual, institutional, and political factors contributed to the transformation’s genesis and its ultimate failure. Throughout, it highlights the importance of individual judges’ choices and the historical and institutional contexts that shape and constrain those choices.
dc.description.departmentGovernmenten
dc.format.mediumelectronicen
dc.identifierb57185864en
dc.identifierb57185864en
dc.identifier.oclc56889698en
dc.identifier.proqst3106583en
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/2152/847en
dc.language.isoengen
dc.rightsCopyright is held by the author. Presentation of this material on the Libraries' web site by University Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin was made possible under a limited license grant from the author who has retained all copyrights in the works.en
dc.subject.lcshAustralia--High Courten
dc.subject.lcshPolitical questions and judicial power--Australiaen
dc.subject.lcshJudicial process--Australiaen
dc.subject.lcshOrganizational change--Australiaen
dc.titleJudicial entrepreneurism and the politics of institutional change: an analysis of the recent judicial role transformation in the High Court of Australiaen
dc.type.genreThesisen

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