15 December 2015

Book review – Miscarriages of Justice: Criminal Appeals and the Rule of Law in Australia

In his foreword to this thought-provoking book, the Honourable Michael Kirby AC CMG wrote: "Practical individuals with conscience can sometimes help to change the world. Occasionally, they are lawyers."

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14 December 2015

Advancing the rule of law in the Maldives

"Two of the most important sources of law in any country are legislation and case law. If ambiguity or vagueness exists in either of these, then a state of general legal uncertainty prevails. Similarly, the larger a body of statute and case law becomes, the greater the potential for legal uncertainty should these laws be out-of-date, inaccessible and unconsolidated"

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11 December 2015

Navigating weak rule of law in South-east Asia

South-east Asia is a region of immense diversity, and difficult to manage effectively without a nuanced, market-specific, strategy. The opportunities are significant. And so are the challenges. South-east Asia is home to some of the fastest growing middle-class economies, while frontier markets such as Myanmar present numerous opportunities as the country looks to open its doors to global trade for the first time following decades of military rule. Whether investing in, or operating a business in the region, weak rule of law, erratic regulation and poor governance present significant risks.

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10 December 2015

Mass wedding project delivers access to employment and government services

Today, millions of Indonesians lack legal or national identity papers such as marriage or even birth certificates. In the poorest of households up to 55 per cent of couples do not have a formal marriage certificate, while an estimated 47 per cent, or almost 40 million children, either do not have a birth certificate, or the parents claim that they have but cannot produce it (Baseline Study on Legal Identity: Indonesia's Missing Millions, 2014).

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08 December 2015

The rule of law recaptured – dispossession and disadvantage in Indigenous communities

The rule of law in many Indigenous communities is in a state of neglect and disrepair. This state of affairs is a result of 200 years of dispossession. If the rule of law is something to be aspired to, and it is, then its restoration in Indigenous communities can only be achieved by an authentic attempt to return country and the traditional law that is inseparably connected to it.

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08 December 2015

Targeted recruitment and "special measures" in discrimination law: creating employment opportunities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people

Usually when there is public discussion of Australia's international human rights obligations, it is assumed that it falls to government to ensure that people in Australia enjoy their human rights. However, businesses have a key role to play in achieving practical human rights outcomes.

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07 December 2015

Eliminating violence against women is everyone's business, including the business community

In Australia alone, a woman is subjected to domestic or family violence every four minutes,(1) and a woman is killed as result of that violence every week.(2) Of women over the age of 15, one in three has experienced intimate partner violence, one in five has experienced sexual violence, and one in four has experienced emotional abuse.(3) A silent, widely underreported crime, these numbers likely only tell part of the whole story.

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04 December 2015

All of our business: why the rule of law is fundamental to human rights

Many Australian businesses now recognise that respect for human rights is not only the right thing to do, it is also beneficial for business. With enhanced innovation and productivity linked to the respect and promotion of human rights, businesses are increasingly taking proactive steps to support human rights: revamping their bullying, harassment and discrimination policies, ensuring there are robust internal grievance processes in place, openly reporting on their ways of working and reviewing their supply chains, and integrating human rights policies into their workplaces.

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02 December 2015

Advancing Together: Business and Rule of Law edition

The rule of law is an investment in the future: it has a strong impact on economic growth, sustainable development, human rights, and access to justice. In an ideal world, no one should be above the law, but in reality 57 per cent of the global population is struggling for human rights. This is four billion people, who are not under the shelter of the law.

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16 June 2015

Supporting the rule of law in Myanmar

I was first introduced to Myanmar by our customers. Sometime in early 2013, I started receiving queries from lawyers and businesses in Japan, Singapore, Korea, Hong Kong and Malaysia about the country. Some were about to start doing business there, some were already there and plans were underway for significant investment into the country.

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16 June 2015

Rule of law, Papua New Guinea and the marketplace model

The first thing I learnt in Tok Pisin - the language of PNG - was the widespread term wantok; loosely translated to one talk or someone who speaks my language. It conveys a sense of loyalty, family, community and togetherness. Yet the underlying reality of this saying also feeds the corruption which plagues layers of Papua New Guinean culture.

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10 June 2015

Promoting respect and support for the rule of law

At the LexisNexis® Rule of Law Now event held in New York in September 2013, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced the Business for the Rule of Law (B4ROL) initiative, to engage the business community in efforts to support the rule of law. In March this year, Joanne Beckett, General Manager of LexisNexis Legal & Professional Australia, together with the UN Global Compact Network Australia, hosted Australia's B4ROL Workshop.

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05 June 2015

Magna Carta and the rule of law

All educated persons, especially (but not only) those in places with an English heritage, think they know what the Magna Carta is and why it is important to our lives – but it is always helpful to stop and think about objects that have passed into legend and that over time have acquired significance and value that the originators could never have foreseen.

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01 June 2015

LexisNexis celebrating 800 years of Liberty – Advancing Together: Magna Carta edition

In March 2015, LexisNexis held a Pacific Consultation Workshop in Sydney with the critical purpose of ensuring that our region is included in a global framework. It will ultimately take the form of a guide for all businesses on how they can support the rule of law.

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