Justice Kriewaldt, Aboriginal identity and the criminal law

Description

Justice Martin Kriewaldt, a judge of the Northern Territory Supreme Court from 1951 to 1960, frequently struggled with the question of how to understand and distinguish Aboriginal people in relation to the criminal law; his views continue to inform current debates in criminal justice. This article examines some of Kriewaldt’s reported and unreported judgments, focusing on his attempts to identify Aboriginal people in relation to the criminal law. Issues dealt with in the article include the tensions between formal and substantive equality; the relevance of customary law to sentence and penalty; the state of civilisation of the accused relative to a white standard; the assimilation role of penalties; evidence issues, including the question of language and interpreters; and Licensing Ordinances, “drinking cases” and the restriction of the supply of alcohol to Aboriginal communities.

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