The ‘illegal sentences which magistrates were daily passing’: The Backstory to Governor Richard Bourke's 1832 Punishment and Summary Jurisdiction Act in Convict New South Wales.
Recent literature has recast the history of the British empire as a vast project of intervention in and reordering of colonial legal administrations. Closer inspection of local moments of legal reform, however, reveals substantial complications and contradictions in that project. This article re-con...
| Published in: | Journal of Legal History Vol. 38; no. 3; pp. 231 - 254 |
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| Format: | Article |
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Taylor & Francis Ltd
Dec2017
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=125811322&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 125811322 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 01440365 7JG jtl: Journal of Legal History issn: 01440365 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Dec2017 vid: 38 iid: 3 pid: 377 pub: Taylor & Francis Ltd artinfo: ui: 125811322 10.1080/01440365.2017.1387996 ppf: 231 ppct: 23 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 1.5MB tig: atl: The ‘illegal sentences which magistrates were daily passing’: The Backstory to Governor Richard Bourke's 1832 Punishment and Summary Jurisdiction Act in Convict New South Wales. aug: au: Roberts, David Andrew affil: School of Humanities, University of New England, Armidale, NSW, Australia su: Bourke, Richard Criminal sentencing Jurisdiction Punishment -- History Law reform History of New South Wales Illegality Prisoners -- History Nineteenth century History Australia sug: subj: Australia Bourke, Richard Criminal sentencing Jurisdiction Punishment -- History Law reform History of New South Wales Illegality Prisoners -- History Nineteenth century History ab: Recent literature has recast the history of the British empire as a vast project of intervention in and reordering of colonial legal administrations. Closer inspection of local moments of legal reform, however, reveals substantial complications and contradictions in that project. This article re-considers Governor Richard Bourke's Punishment and Summary Jurisdiction Act 1832, the most celebrated legal intervention in the history of the ‘convict colony’ of New South Wales by a governor whose liberalism and humanitarianism epitomized the spirit of imperial reform agendas. The nature and objectives of Bourke's so-called Fifty Lashes Act are widely misunderstood. This article shows that while Bourke positioned his Act as a matter of legal urgency, its core aim was to render convict punishment more useful and economical. Moreover, Bourke's reforms were less innovative than is commonly assumed, being mostly required to re-assert and refine existing law that was being disregarded. Nevertheless, Bourke's reforms did address long-contested legal issues surrounding the summary jurisdiction of colonial magistrates and the local application of English transportation law. The backstory to the Act reveals the remarkably complicated and truly disordered state of the law in New South Wales, but this article also shows how the implementation of legal reform was seasoned with confusion and caution. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Journal of Legal History is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Journal of Legal History holder: Taylor & Francis Ltd dt: @attributes: year: 2017 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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