law&history special issue

Protest and law in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand

Rationale/overview: In 2027 the law&history journal plans a special issue on the history of protest and regulation in Australasia. We welcome proposals for articles up to 8,000 words (including references). Shorter articles are, of course, very welcome. Abstracts up to 200 words should be submitted by Friday 18 December 2026, with completed articles due by 31 May 2027. Following peer review and associated revision, the special issue will be published later in 2027. Contact details are below.

Indicative themes

We invite contributions on any aspect of protest and law in historical perspective in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. We would especially welcome proposals that compare the history of protest in the two countries.

Issues we are particularly interested in include (illustrative, not exhaustive):

• Protest, sovereignty and First Nations, Indigenous peoples: How have laws been structured to respond to Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander and Māori protests including Australia’s Northern Territory Wave Hill walk-off, the Aboriginal Tent Embassy to Invasion Day rallies, and New Zealand’s protest hīkoi (from the landmark 1975 hīkoi to the 2024 Hīkoi mō te Tiriti)?
• Environmental and climate protesting: From the Save Manapōuri and Stop the Franklin Dam campaigns in the 1970s and 1980s, to the School Strike for Climate and Rising Tide protests in more recent times, how has the law in Australia and New Zealand responded to environmental protesters, and why has climate protest and litigation become a focal point for legislative reform?
• Emergency, security and exceptional powers: How have Australian and New Zealand governments historically regulated protest in response to emergencies, terrorism events and security situations to justify restricting the right to assembly?  What can we glean from the history of peace movements and anti-war protests in the two countries, such as the long-standing campaign against the Pine Gap base in Australia or New Zealand’s anti-nuclear and Pacific testing protests dating back to the 1970s? What does a comparison of the anti-apartheid protests against the Springbok rugby tours in Australia in 1971 and New Zealand in 1981 reveal about protest regulation in the two countries?
• Constitutional and legal limits, and bills of rights: How did New Zealand’s 1990 Bill of Rights Act affect the right to protest? How did it shape, for example, the response to the 2022 ‘Freedom Camp’ occupying the grounds of parliament in Wellington? How has the absence of a federal entrenched right to assembly shaped Australian law? What does a comparison between the countries tell us about protest regulation and bills of rights? How have legal decisions, including those involving Australia’s implied freedom of political communication affected protests in that country? How do Australian states with charters of rights compare in practice?
• Historical regulation of speech, song, symbols and spaces: Is the regulation of symbols a unique contemporary feature of Australian and New Zealand law? Has there been historical practice of regulating speech around places of worship, for instance? To what extent is freedom of speech protected in protest songs?
• Policing discretion and prosecution: What aspects of policing and prosecutorial decision-making affect protest rights: discretion to charge people, surveillance, penalties, bail conditions, police tactics and culture?
• Inheritances and genealogies of law: How did English public order laws on riot, unlawful assemblies and sedition travel and adapt to Australasian colonies? Which present day powers (declared areas, move-on directions, permit systems) have colonial or twentieth-century antecedents?
• Memory, archive and record: How are protests remembered in legal records, police files, court transcripts and activist archives? What can these histories tell us about contemporary protest regulations?

Approaches and contributors

We especially encourage submissions from early career researchers, doctoral candidates and Indigenous and First Nations scholars, as well as from practitioners and activists with research interests in the field.

Abstracts

Please provide abstracts of up to 200 words and a provisional title for your proposed article to Josh.Gibson@monash.edu by Friday 18 December 2026. We will inform you whether your proposal has been accepted by Friday 29 January 2027, with completed articles from accepted proposals due by 31 May 2027, as indicated above.