Australian magistrates face many challenges in their work: heaving courtrooms, unrelenting court lists and cases involving a complex web of legally-knotted psychosocial issues. Innovative practices by a magistrate – creative ways of engaging with defendants, partnering with support services, and novel sentencing methods – can become essential for courtroom survival. Such methods may represent a challenge to the legitimacy, expectations and traditional practice of the wider court of which that magistrate forms a part.[1] However, a failure to seek new solutions can risk the court losing its relevancy.
Please access a pdf of the full article using the link to the left.
(2017) 40(2) UNSWLJ 897: https://doi.org/10.53637/VBRR6293
- See, eg, Kathy Mack and Sharyn Roach Anleu, ‘Opportunities for New Approaches to Judging in a Conventional Context: Attitudes, Skills and Practices’ (2011) 37 Monash University Law Review 187, 192–3; Jelena Popovic, ‘Court Process and Therapeutic Jurisprudence: Have We Thrown the Baby Out with the Bath Water?’ (2007) Special Series eLaw: Murdoch University Electronic Journal of Law 60 <http://elaw.murdoch.edu.au/archives/issues/special/courtBprocess.pdf>.