- Title
- The case of Peter Mungett : Born out of the allegiance of the Queen, belonging to a sovereign and independent tribe of Ballan
- Creator
- Cahir, David (Fred); Clark, Ian
- Date
- 2009
- Type
- Text; Journal article
- Identifier
- http://researchonline.federation.edu.au/vital/access/HandleResolver/1959.17/35935
- Identifier
- vital:3467
- Identifier
- ISSN:1832-2522
- Abstract
- This paper is concerned with the jurisdiction of the British colonial criminal law over Indigenous Australians, particularly in the area of serious offences such as murder and rape. In particular, the paper examines the attempted use in the 1860 case of Regina v Peter of the legal demurrer that the accused Aboriginal man was not subject to the jurisdiction of the court because he was not born a British subject and had never entered into allegiance to the British Queen. The paper also discusses some of the difficulties which the legal authorities found in dealing with this issue, even as late as 1860. The issue of the amenability to British law was a significant one in the early colonial period; it then largely disappeared from serious public consideration but has resurfaced since the 1980s in the context of land rights, native title, and the status of Aboriginal customary law.
- Publisher
- Public Record Office Victoria
- Relation
- Provenance : The Journal of Public Record Office Victoria Vol. 8, no. (2009), p.15-34
- Rights
- Open Access
- Rights
- This metadata is freely available under a CCO license
- Rights
- Culturally sensitive
- Subject
- 2103 Historical Studies; Colonial; Criminal law; Indigenous Australians; Colonial history; Colonial British law
- Full Text
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