New South Wales is that rare political creation, a state founded for and upon the criminal law. The history of its criminal law from settlement to Federation is uniquely fascinating. Drawing on his range of experience as a university scholar, a criminal law QC, and a judge, the author explains how Britain's criminal laws were established and developed in its (arguably) most successful colony. There are three themes:

• the horror and savagery of the criminal law transported to Australia and imposed there;
• the constitutional importance of basic criminal law rules requiring certainty of proof;
• the corrupt but necessary role of mercy in the administration of the law.

There are several genuinely remarkable features of this book. One is that the author draws upon a vast body of material recently brought to light by Bruce Kercher in his massive disinterment of early colonial case law in order to explain in detail the actual working of the New South Wales criminal courts. Another is that the core of the book is an analysis of New South Wales parliamentary debates between 1871 and 1883 on criminal law, illuminating the history of the law (and its future). Yet the most remarkable thing about this book is its rarity. Histories of the criminal law, or studies which can be so described, are rare or invisible.

This admirable study will become a classic in its field--required reading by legal scholars, historians of colony and empire, and astute legal practitioners making arguments for contemporary submissions or judgments.

Table of Contents

Foreword - Justice Mary Gaudron, High Court of Australia
Acknowledgments
Preface
Abbreviations
Notes on Citations of Statutes, Geography, and Conversions

CHAPTER 1: Savagery, principle and mercy in the criminal law
CHAPTER 2: Imposition and inheritance: The transportation of English criminal law to New South Wales
CHAPTER 3: Criminal law in a penal settlement
CHAPTER 4: Criminal law and Governor Macquarie: Right and wrong, cheek by jowl
CHAPTER 5: Crimes of the pen; and an experiment
CHAPTER 6: Struggling from chains: Juries, the lash and natives
CHAPTER 7: Making trials work: The other William Blackstone
CHAPTER 8: English reforms adopted: Retreat of the death penalty
CHAPTER 9: The colony legislates on crime
CHAPTER 10: The insanity defence: McNaghten and Knatchbull
CHAPTER 11: The end of transportation, 1849
CHAPTER 12: Sir John Jervis: Lower court reforms of 1850
CHAPTER 13: The Gold Rushes: Temporary problems for criminal law
CHAPTER 14: Outlaws and urchins
CHAPTER 15: "A most irregular traffic": Slaving cases in New South Wales courts
CHAPTER 16: The Mad Fenian: Criminal process under pressure
CHAPTER 17: The first Law Reform Commission and its 1871 Report
CHAPTER 18: Edward Butler and the Reform Bill: "Untoward circumstances"
CHAPTER 19: J G L Innes and the Reform Bill: A second failure
CHAPTER 20: W B Dalley and the Reform Bill: Yet another failure
CHAPTER 21: The larrikin residuum, 1881
CHAPTER 22: The 1882 debate: "Serving their term"
CHAPTER 23: The Great Bill passes: 1883
CHAPTER 24: The light that failed: Mandatory sentencing repealed
CHAPTER 25: Enter, the accused
CHAPTER 26: The accused as witness: The "comment" issue
CHAPTER 27: Doctor Malthus and the baby farmers
CHAPTER 28: George Dean and friends
CHAPTER 29: Tidying up in 1900
CHAPTER 30: Epilogue

Bibliography
Index of Cases
Index of Statutes
Index of Subjects
Index of Names

"This present history is the product of scholarship of the highest order and of extensive original research. It is replete with erudition and is a delight to read. It is a work from which even the most learned historian will acquire new knowledge, whilst for the general reader every page is a source of constant enlightenment and satisfaction.
In fascinating detail, the author... traces three inter-connecting themes which have been basic to the administration of... criminal justice in New South Wales: early savagery; the inheritance, adoption or development of important legal principles; and mercy. For the general reader, the first and third of these themes will attract the greatest attention, whilst for the historian and the lawyer it is the second which offers the greatest benefit and information....
Not least among the benefits of this book are the extremely informative and often entertaining character sketches of many of the... members of the legal profession and the colonial legislature in an era when the law was practised and politics conducted in New South Wales with an often unrestrained vigour and robustness..."

-- Descent (Aust. Genealogical Society), Vol. 34 No. 2, June 2004