Keywords: Supreme Court
There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.
-
AUSTRALIA
- Fatima Measham
- 04 December 2015
51 Comments
Last Friday, Victoria passed an amendment to establish a protest-free zone around abortion clinics. I find it impossible to reconcile with the idea that personhood in utero depends on whether a baby is wanted or unwanted, but I also believe bodily autonomy is integral to the dignity of women. There is such a long history of women being deprived of agency across political, economic, social, sexual and cultural dimensions, that being able to make a choice carries its own compelling morality.
READ MORE 
-
RELIGION
- Frank Brennan
- 03 December 2015
The consideration of medico-legal problems in the public square of a pluralistic democratic society keeping pace with profound technological change is often marked by simplistic assertions, precluding considerations of comprehensive world views, whether religious or philosophical. It is now commonplace for doctors to be told to leave their consciences at the door, as their patients are consumers and they are suppliers and of course the market decides. Debates about law and policy are often resolved with simplistic assertions about individual rights and autonomy, with little consideration for the public interest, the common good, and the doctor-patient relationship. Even conscience is said to be a matter for contracting out. This evening I ask whether there are more compelling ways to resolve medico-legal dilemmas, while conceding a limited role for law in determining the range of acceptable answers.
READ MORE
-
AUSTRALIA
- Frank Brennan
- 12 August 2015
142 Comments
I readily accept that the Commonwealth Parliament will legislate for same sex marriage in the foreseeable future. When Parliament does, I will be fully accepting of that decision. If asked by politicians how they should exercise their conscience vote, there is no way that I would say that they should not support civil recognition of same sex marriage. But neither would I say that they must support it NOW. If I were a member of parliament, I would want four assurances before I voted for same sex marriage.
READ MORE
-
EUREKA STREET TV
- Peter Kirkwood
- 08 July 2015
7 Comments
Journalist Michael O'Loughlin is national reporter for Crux, the Boston Globe's regular supplement on Catholic Church issues. His book The Tweetable Pope: A Spiritual Revolution in 140 Characters, to be published in September. In this video interview, he analyses the US Bishops' response to the recent US Supreme Court ruling on same sex marriage.
READ MORE
-
AUSTRALIA
- Frank Brennan
- 03 July 2015
75 Comments
In its determination that same sex couples have a constitutional right to marry, the US Supreme Court took it upon itself to discover a definitive answer in the silent Constitution on this contested social question. This is regrettable, because there can be no doubt that the democratic process was taking US society in only one direction, and the Court's unilateral intervention has reduced the prospects of community acceptance and community compromise regarding the freedom of religious practice of those who cannot embrace same-sex marriage for religious reasons.
READ MORE
-
- Greg O'Kelly
- 01 July 2015
3 Comments
The phrase 'the public square' is peppered throughout Frank Brennan's work. The 1988 film Cinema Paradiso depicts the public square in a Sicilian village over 30 or so years, and its slow and subtle change from a place where human beings gather to laugh, play and discuss. Billboards and garish signs appear and it becomes a car park bereft of its humanity.
READ MORE
-
AUSTRALIA
- Frank Brennan
- 19 May 2015
11 Comments
The lesson from the trials of Boston Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and the Bali nine is that the death penalty is always political and macabre. In the US, Justice Scalia was not at all minded to consider the merits of the argument about the effects of the drug Midazolam because he thought the case was all part of a long term political campaign to delegitimise the death penalty.
READ MORE
-
- Frank Brennan
- 31 March 2015
10 Comments
Some of the Australian commentary on the Indonesian justice system has been understandably very critical. But living here in the USA for a year, I have come to realise that the death penalty infects every justice system no matter how good and robust it is. In the end, the death penalty is always political. That’s why I am very grateful to Pope John Paul II who changed his position.
READ MORE
-
AUSTRALIA
- Frank Brennan
- 09 December 2014
27 Comments
What a dreadful year it has been for parliamentary democracy. Speaker Bronwyn Bishop has taken pride in the number of members she has ejected. Senator David Leyonhjelm has introduced his same sex marriage bill in an orderly fashion, but the decision will rest with the Abbott Government, which won't want to to hand the bouquet for breaking the logjam to Leyonhjelm. To get arrangements for the bearing and nurturing of children right, we need our parliament to be a more considered and dignified place than a battlefield.
READ MORE
-
INTERNATIONAL
- Nikolas Feith Tan
- 03 December 2014
9 Comments
Israel is one of the world's developed countries that is attempting to deter asylum seekers from accessing the protection that international refugee law entitles them to. Yet Israel is a state with refugeehood in its roots. Israeli refugee advocates have encouraged a change of policy on the basis of Jewish exile in Egypt as recorded in the Torah.
READ MORE
-
RELIGION
- Paul Collins
- 11 November 2014
23 Comments
An important power shift occurred in Rome at the weekend, and it has a genuine Australian connection. The nuncio in Canberra Archbishop Paul Gallagher was named Secretary for Relations with States, which will put him third in charge at the Vatican. He has been popular here because he has kept in touch with pastoral life, having volunteered to help out in the far-flung western NSW of Diocese of Wilcannia-Forbes during his first Easter in Australia.
READ MORE
-
AUSTRALIA
- Frank Brennan
- 05 November 2014
38 Comments
Physician assisted suicide and euthanasia are back, in the courts of Canada and the UK, and in the parliaments of the UK and Australia. The Australian Senate is considering the Greens' formulation of a broad and fuzzy law that goes further than UK proposals in that it would allow Dr Philip Nitschke to administer a fatal injection.
READ MORE