Australian Law

Australian law is substantially derived from the English legal system, which superseded Indigenous Australian customary law as the country was colonized. Since federation, Australia has operated as a common law jurisdiction under a written constitution adopted in 1901, one notable for containing no bill of rights, so that individual protections have instead been built up through judicial interpretation of the constitution's other provisions. The system is federal: the national Parliament exercises only the specific powers enumerated in the Constitution, while the states retain a broader residual legislative authority, and the High Court of Australia sits at the apex of the judiciary with final say over the interpretation of the law. Full legal independence from Britain came only in 1986, when the Australia Act ended the possibility of legislation being enacted for Australia at Britain's request and abolished remaining appeals to the Privy Council, formalizing a divergence between Australian and English common law that had already been under way for decades.