Talk:High Court of Australia

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Good article High Court of Australia was one of the Social sciences and society good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
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Contents

[edit] Eras of the High Court

  • Federation to 1920 - states' jurisdictions upheld
  • 1920-1940 - Expansion of Commonwealth powers
  • 1940-1980 - Status quo upheld
  • 1980 - present - Judicial activism?

Would this breakdown of the court's history be too POV? Kewpid 01:39, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Eras are generally termed in name of the Cief Justice of the time. I you can find some sources on eras go ahead and write a section on it. Xtra 11:49, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Where has the list of judges gone? Also, Whitlam described Fraser as "Kerr's cur", not Barwick. Xtra 01:14, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Whoops, forgot to fix that Barwick thing in my draft. The current list, and the list of the first three, are back in. There's a nice diagram I did over at List of Judges of the High Court of Australia also. --bainer (talk) 11:29, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
yes, good work. Xtra 11:40, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Wonderful, wonderful rewrite. I'd just like to make a few suggestions though.

  • Would it be possible to create a History of the High Court of Australia article? The material is excellent, but I think its sheer size (particularly the information preceding the court's creation) tends to swamp the rest of the article.
  • What would people think about implementing the table from Supreme Court of the United States for the composition of the current court?
  • I think a seperate qualifications section, outlining what has generally been required of judicial appointments could be quite helpful, as would branching the information about the building itself off to a seperate section, as with the SCOTUS article
  • Sections for procedure, checks and balances and citations, per the SCOTUS article, could be worthwhile additions in the future.
  • While the history section is far better than that in the SCOTUS article, it'd be nice to see some mention of the evolution of the court and its decisions over time; for example, there is no mention of the Mason court.

Anyway, regardless of any of these quibbles, it's a fantastic and much needed rewrite; kudos to you, bainer. :) Ambi 12:19, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

That was my next job ;) I was thinking of creating a new top-level section, possibly called "Jurisprudence", which would contain the court's legal history (as opposed to its institutional history). That could cover the various eras (as suggested above). Haven't yet decided whether to do it chronologically (Griffith court, Latham court, Dixon court etc) or thematically. We could also do with a "procedure" section like SCOTUS has. --bainer (talk) 12:53, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
I just copied the table over from List of Judges of the High Court of Australia, which is basically what is left after dropping the irrelevant column (approval vote) from the SCOTUS table. --bainer (talk) 13:04, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
Excellent. I also like the jurisprudence idea, as it would substantially clarify things (by not mixing up the two). :) Ambi 00:30, 11 December 2005 (UTC)


I vote for chronologically. I think it is a demonstrable and recognised phenomenon that the Court has had varying characteristics during the eras of at least the long term Chief Justices, eg Gleeson, Mason, Barwick, Latham.

[edit] Bank Nationalization

I don't think that individual rulings belong in the history section, which should focus on the history of the court itself. I'd support a 'landmark rulings' section, but we don't have one at the moment (List of High Court of Australia cases is used for this purpose though). - ҉Randwicked҉ 09:54, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

There is a List of High Court of Australia cases, perhaps this could be the solution. Xtra 10:02, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

When I rewrote this a few months ago I did plan to have a legal history of the court in a separate section, to go alongside the "history" section (which is the history of the court as an institution). It's proving to be much more difficult than I thought, however, so if you'd like to help you're welcome. --bainer (talk) 11:08, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
The bank nationalisation case was a particularly important one however. Tabletop 12:23, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
yep things like bank natinoalisation and engineers should be on the high court page. they're not the same as other (more mundane) cases. --Sumple (Talk) 00:33, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] GA promotion

I made one small format to clear an image before the next section started. Other than that it's well written congratulations on your efforts. Suggest that when someone has the time and is willing, consideration should be given to FA status. Gnangarra 15:54, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] References to CLRs

There are a bunch of decisions referred to in this article - has anyone thought about adding citations (say, in the footnotes)? Sambo 15:24, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

I've belatedly acted on this suggestion; all mentions of cases in the article are now footnoted with a citation to the case on AustLII. --bainer (talk) 14:44, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Jurisprudence

Ok, finally got around to finishing the other major part of my rewrite, the "Jurisprudence" section, which is basically intended to be a summary of major cases decided by each court. I've decided to split it up by reference to Chief Justices, which seems a fairly common way to do it. We already have a stub on the Mason court, I imagine that in time, each court will have its own article and the section in this article will be a very brief summary.

The other issue is that now the article is 64kb long, so we may want to consider breaking it off into smaller articles. Personally I like having it all in one, especially since it's got a comprehensively organised table of contents. --bainer (talk) 08:49, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

I think that the article has an apropriate ammount of information, however the original jurisdiction section needs to be re-written to not just be a verbatim repetition of the constitution. Otherwise, this article is top class and shoud be put up for featured soon. Xtra 11:00, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Brilliant work, as always. This new section makes for a really interesting read. Rebecca 12:10, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] GA Sweeps (on hold)

This article has been reviewed as part of Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles/Project quality task force in an effort to ensure all listed Good articles continue to meet the Good article criteria. In reviewing the article, I have found there are some issues that may need to be addressed.

1) The lead is too short and should consist of 3-4 paragraphs;

2) There are a lot of uncited sections, paragraphs and statements. I marked the most serious of them with appropriate tags.

I will check back in no less than seven days. If progress is being made and issues are addressed, the article will remain listed as a Good article. Otherwise, it may be delisted (such a decision may be challenged through WP:GAR). If improved after it has been delisted, it may be nominated at WP:GAN. Feel free to drop a message on my talk page if you have any questions, and many thanks for all the hard work that has gone into this article thus far. Regards, Ruslik 09:02, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Since no improvements have been made I will delist this article. Ruslik 06:08, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

In order to uphold the quality of Wikipedia:Good articles, all articles listed as Good articles are being reviewed against the GA criteria as part of the GA project quality task force. While all the hard work that has gone into this article is appreciated, unfortunately, as of October 23, 2007, this article fails to satisfy the criteria, as detailed below. For that reason, the article has been delisted from WP:GA. However, if improvements are made bringing the article up to standards, the article may be nominated at WP:GAN. If you feel this decision has been made in error, you may seek remediation at WP:GAR.

Ruslik 06:08, 23 October 2007 (UTC)