Bringing Indigenous Voices into Judicial Decision-Making

ARC Discovery Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Researcher Nicole Watson
ARC Indigenous Discovery project Nicole Watson, Heather Douglas and Asmi Wood.

This Project will build a new relationship between the Australian judiciary and Indigenous people, by showing how Indigenous voices and stories can be written into judgments. This Project will build on methodologies created by international scholars for correcting the absence of women’s voices by re-writing judgments from a feminist perspective, and produce the missing Indigenous judgment in twenty decisions of Australian superior courts. Gaps between judge made-law and the lived experience of Indigenous litigants will also be identified through an in-depth examination of four test case exemplars. This Project will inform judicial thinking and be an original contribution to Australia's jurisprudence on Indigenous people and the law.

Workshops were held in Sydney and Brisbane in February 2019.