Simon Rice
he fight for social justice            

As lawyers and law-related workers, we bring particular skills to the fight for social justice. By social justice I mean relief from poverty, equality of outcomes, and non-discrimination in social relations. Principally, our battlefield is the law, and our weapons are the statutes and the case law which, we say, grant rights and entitlements which must be respected.

We advocate for these rights to government, insurers, financial institutions, service providers, employers, landlords, lenders and neighbours. We advocate for individuals, incorporated associations, clubs and teams, families, neighbourhoods and interest groups. The thread running through our advocacy is justice being done according to law.

This is our contribution to the fight for social justice. It is far from the whole of the fight. There are other skills, other strategies; ours are the law and legal argument: in court, in negotiation, in transactions, in policy, reform and education.

Our concept of law is a progressive one, one that promotes and protects the integrity and dignity of the individual and, at times, of the group. We struggle with tensions between interests, with achieving broad social goals on the one hand and a result for a client on the other, with the professed dispassionate nature of law on the one hand and the inherently political nature of our practice of law on the other.

We have as our weapons the common law, and our interpretation of it. We have statutes, still smouldering and sparking from the fires lit by Lionel Murphy. We have occasionally, and in the hands of a few, our Constitution. We don’t have a single statutory guarantee of fundamental rights, a Bill of Rights, but that is a different, though related, discussion.

We play our part in the struggle for social justice according to a well-practised sense of justice under rule of law, a rule-based approach to fairness, and a strong sense of the self-evident truth that what we are doing is right, and that we can be trusted to do it. We employ our legal weaponry using particular skills: analysis of language, logical thought, adversarial argument, persuasion, lucid articulation, assessment of risk, exploitation of weakness; all the abilities which are praised by those who benefit from them and condemned by those who suffer by them.

What I have described I call conventional lawyering. But in CLCs we are unconventional lawyers –that at least is the rhetoric and the self-perception - a distinctive characteristic which is wilfully ignored, if not under deliberate attack, by government models of accountability for performance according to imposed targets with marginal relevance to broad goals of social justice.

Society is not just, and we want it to be. We want society to change, so we engage in the battle for social change.

My position at Redfern Legal Centre in the mid 1980s was called ‘poverty lawyer’. The newspaper had run the ad saying that the Centre was looking for a ‘property lawyer’. The phrase ‘poverty lawyer’ wasn’t familiar then and it doesn’t have much currency now. It is important for so many reasons that CLCs’ work is both distinctive and widely understood. CLCs’ work is and must be seen to be different from legal aid work. It is and must be understood to be fundamental to achieving a just society in Australia. It is and must be recognised as being part of a global movement for justice which is outside government and within the rule of law.

Conventional lawyering is not necessary antithetical to social change, but it is largely concerned with stability based on maintaining past practices. We believe that what we have, and by and large what we have had, is not good enough, that there are different, and mostly new, ways of managing social relations among citizens, corporations and government which will bring about social justice.

Though not antithetical to achieving social justice, conventional lawyering is not necessarily apt to the task. Legal practice operates in a limited environment, principally achieving benefits through commercial transactions and resolving disputes through courts. To get beyond the particular of delivering a personal remedy to a client, and into the larger field of law operating to regulate society – the bigger game of collective need and policy reform – requires something more than conventional lawyering.

Some say, with justification, that it rarely requires lawyers at all. But if only to the extent that the changes which are achieved must be articulated, documented, made stable and reliable, defended and entrenched in a new social order, lawyers have a role. Beyond that however, lawyers can – and CLC lawyers show this – achieve change through use of conventional legal weapons in unconventional ways. We can make out a case, without it having to be a case in, or in anticipation of, court: a case for change through constructing arguments, supporting them with probative evidence, articulating them in a persuasive way. The raw material we work with is law, and law is the material of government. So we can deal with government, we can understand its language and its protocols. Lawyers can walk the walk and talk the talk of power.

It is ‘where’ and ‘why’ legal skills are used that adds the unconventional dimension to ordinary legal practice. The traditional paradigm of lawyering sees a lawyer taking instructions, conducting the matter, achieving a result and closing the file (with a bill). A CLC lawyer will do the same but for rendering a bill (and what a luxury we enjoy in that) and as well will identify in the instructions a larger social issue. Dealing with the consequent complexity of client trust and ethical obligations, a CLC lawyer will build on those instructions a case of a different order, a case for systemic change that obviates the individual problem recurring. Such a case – even a test case – is not resolved in court alone, or in a private transaction; a case for change takes the lawyer’s conventional skills into the realm of public debate, government lobbying, research, reasoning and argument on a grand scale.

Use of lawyers’ skills beyond the conventional paradigm of legal practice is not exclusive to CLCs. Commercial lawyers serve the interests of the corporate sector, if not of capital, in much the same way. Commercial law firms have Canberra-based offices whose avowed purpose is to lobby government, for clients, for change, at least in as far as change suits the very substantial private interests at stake.

The difference between the CLCs’ unconventional lawyering and the commercial lawyers’ unconventional lawyering is only this: CLCs purport to do it for the public good, and do do it for no financial gain beyond a modest salary; the commercial lawyer is doing it such that direct or indirect financial gain will accrue to private interests, even though the private interests are widely held across, say, an industrial sector.

For me, ‘unconventional lawyering’ is both the use of lawyers’ conventional weapons in imaginative and novel ways, and the use of lawyers’ conventional skills in activities other than usual legal practice, all in the battle for social justice. It is too the recognition and harnessing of others’ skills in that battle – such as aspects of psychology, science, history, or data analysis.

Another prospective weapon, another piece of lawyers’ armoury, under-used by CLC lawyers, is the law of human rights. It is under-used generally, still seen as being not quite the usual way to go, a bit different, and perhaps lacking relevance or utility.

In casework as well as going to the relevant Act and the recent case law, and wondering whether there is an arcane constitutional argument which will bring on a flurry of 78B notices, if not win the case, there is a further recourse: to human rights principles.

In terms of lawyers’ usual learning about where they go for a solution to a problem – in their heads, on their bookshelves, in their CD ROM stacks – human rights is a novelty. The aspiration therefore is put simply: to have lawyers in their daily practice recognise human rights principles as readily and confidently as they do the provisions of common law, equity and statute.

So much of CLCs’ practice is human rights: family law, criminal law, juvenile justice, occupational health and safety, labour law, fair trading, social security, privacy – it’s a long list.

For all these matters there is an extensive human rights jurisprudence to draw on – there are principles, definitions, construction of instruments, and reasoning in cases. There is a whole new stream of law rich in reasoning, analysis and principle. Where you might look to a domestic statute for authority, consider looking too at a relevant international instrument. Where you might look at a case for authority, think too of looking at the opinion of an international human rights body, of the European Court of Human Rights, and of common law countries already coloured by human rights jurisprudence: Canada, New Zealand, India, South Africa and, increasingly, the courts of the United Kingdom applying European human rights law.

Issues of child custody, peaceful assembly, evictions, debt collection – the daily business of community legal centres, and central to pursuit of social justice – are now writ larger than our domestic law, despite its venerable history. Those same local issues are addressed on a world stage, across increasingly similar socio-economic conditions, in the international covenants:

the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
the Convention on he Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women
the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination
the Convention on the Rights of the Child
the Declaration on the Rights of Disabled People.

And my hope is that CLC lawyers will go there, expand our thinking, our world, our reasoning, our campaign for justice. Take the fight to a global level, articulate it in the shared terms and common philosophy of international human rights.

Consciously adopting a human rights perspective in legal advocacy offers advantages, for a number of reasons.

Firstly, it makes explicit what is implicit.  It brings to the fore of our thinking and action the human rights principles that underpin so much of our daily work.

Secondly, human rights is a universal language – its strength as an advocacy tool for local issues lies in its connection with similar issues, similar battles elsewhere, in other communities and other forums. A breadth of experience and depth of analysis becomes available through this common language.

Thirdly, human rights are a highly developed framework for analysis of issues in social justice. It is a language and thinking which, of its nature and unlike the language of the common law and legislation, is attuned to addressing poverty, disadvantage and inequity. In that sense its rationale is affirmative and progressive, even if in a measured and far from revolutionary manner. The principles of human rights are a comfortable fit for social justice advocates, a home perhaps for those whose professional lives are spent trying to bend and twist the conventional rules of social regulation into active forces of social justice.

Fourthly, human rights is, or can, be an ‘a-political language’. It can and usually does transcend political divides. Over the last 55 years, and most successfully in the last 20, it has fulfilled its rhetoric and reached a level of ‘fundamental’ appeal. For the first generation to have inherited an established concept of human rights, and at the same time to be connected by mass communication, human rights really do now identify something accepted as fundamental to humanity, beyond the party political if not clearly outside political philosophies. It is therefore an effective advocacy tool, more persuasive, less confrontational, perhaps less obviously ideological, than the language of social change aligned with left politics and commonly associated with an assault on capitalism.

I acknowledge that I am suggesting that a virtue of human rights is that it can be a less obviously political course to adopt – it has the appearance, and often the reality, of being less than politically charged, and consequently less problematic as a language for change. That is not to say that human rights are not actually political in the issues they raise. The relationship between human rights, capital markets and democracy is complex, but for our purposes the concept of human rights is rooted squarely within the prevailing global phenomenon of capitalism, and an aspiration to popular democracy.

The politics of human rights in Australia has focussed recently on the apprehension of a ‘rights culture’ and on a sense that advocates for rights are at the same time advocating for the abrogation of responsibilities. A related argument is that a culture of rights is irrationally absolutist, setting up competing rights and thereby creating tensions and dissatisfaction, if not unrest.

This is a real and current political debate in Australia, but an arid and enervating one. It is premised in a misconception, or wilful blindness, as to both the necessary symbiosis between rights and responsibilities recognised in the international instruments, and the necessary limitations on the enjoyment of rights which are, again, recognised in the international instruments.

Fifthly, the international aspect of human rights remedies for domestic issues introduces a new forum, new processes, for seeking remedies and making change. The international forum can be a powerful one – it shifts the onus of achieving change from a complainant who, in ordinary legal proceedings would have not only to prove a case but enforce a decision and make all the running on any intended larger consequences of the result. In the forum of international human rights a complainant triggers a process which invokes other, larger, and potentially more effective forces for change.

Unlike a court decision, which is really only published to the parties and legal profession or, worse for purposes of social change, mediated settlements which are kept secret, international human rights findings are published directly to the government of the relevant nation-state. Of their nature, human rights decisions have political relevance, they tie into issues of international standing which are important for trade and diplomatic purposes. One person’s case, instead of staying as one person’s case, becomes a case that an independent international body makes against a government.

The domestic aspect of human rights jurisprudence has to be approached differently. Far from being new processes in new forums, seeking new remedies with new argument, it is a question of being in the same old forums with the same old processes seeking the same old remedies, but with new arguments.

The status of those arguments is reasonably clear: we know how far we can go with attempts to give effect to international human rights obligations in local courts. The courts tolerate it to a point, but that point is moving inexorably along a line drawn from strict application of legal rules regardless of their sense and fairness in contemporary society, towards the interpretation and application of legal rules in a way that is relevant and fair in contemporary society. And an increasingly important feature of contemporary society is the expectation of parity with global standards. There is a substantial, and substantially argued, issue in relation to judicial activism, statutory interpretation and use of ‘extraneous’ material such as human rights instruments in our legal system. But it is a live issue, and not merely a passing one. It is one that more lawyers could, and I say should, engage in.

I say ‘should’ to the conventional lawyers because the duty to the client obliges them to pursue every reasonably available avenue, and legal advocacy in human rights terms is increasingly such an avenue. I say ‘should’ to lawyers for social justice because of their same duty to the client, and as well because there is a powerful extra tool for achieving change, and a groundswell and momentum which needs to be picked up, increased and converted into a real development in legal advocacy in Australia.

For lawyers who apply their skills to more that formal legal advocacy, and who take the fight for social justice outside the courts to the media, the politicians and the public, human rights is a new language for advocacy. It engages a campaign in an international movement, and brings with it new opportunities for articulating arguments for social justice.

The final two points I make about the advantages of human rights in CLCs’ fight for social justice relate not to casework but to the further, other activities CLCs engage in. The first is lobbying and reform. Human rights offer the opportunity to participate in international scrutiny of Australia’s compliance with its human rights obligations, through the reporting processes under the international covenants.

A recent example for CLCs is the very effective use that Australia’s indigenous peoples have made of the reporting process under the Convention for the Elimination of all forms of Race Discrimination (CERD).

CLCs last year were part of a coalition of non-governmental organisations which made up the Australian Social and Economic Rights Project (ASERP). ASERP submitted a parallel, non-governmental report to the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights review of Australia’s compliance with its obligations under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. ASERP identified issues such as Australia’s failure to give legal force in Australia to rights under the Covenant, reduced financial commitments to HREOC and legal aid, failure to address the training needs of long-term unemployed, encroachments on employment security, restrictions on access to social security support, and failure to address adequately the needs of the homeless.

The most developed ‘other’ use of human rights for activist lawyers is the field of human rights education. CLCs have a long and impressive history of community legal education, and have worked to elevate CLE to a level of expertise among its practitioners, and of respectability and necessity among funders and government. In doing so CLE has taken on the language and practices of appropriate methodologies, principally adult education, experiential learning, and community development.

Human rights education, which has been articulated and defined most extensively by NGOs in the developing world, is a sophisticated approach to community awareness and empowerment which would supplement and enhance CLCs’ own pursuit of these goals through their CLE.

Having outlined why human rights advocacy can be useful to CLCs, there remains the question of how it can be done. I am going to suggest an approach to human rights advocacy in the casework practice of CLCs. That leaves unexplored in this paper the way in which CLCs can use the reporting mechanisms as an avenue for social change, and the way CLCs can engage in human rights education.

You don’t have to be in the High Court arguing Dietrich – the case about right to legal aid – to take a human rights-based approach to a client’s case.

The example I carry around in my daydreams is this. I spent about six years on a legal aid duty solicitor roster to attend Waverley Local Court in Sydney. I’d go into the cells at 8 am, take instructions for adjournments, bail applications and pleas, and then spend the rest of the day at the bar table with, to my left, a confident and blokey police prosecutor completely at home playing the daily game of criminal procedure, over my right shoulder a serial procession of unkempt, tired, frightened, angry, strung out, hung over or, occasionally, cocky clients going through the dock, and in front of me, above me, a stony faced, deeply bored and burnt out, uninterested, unsympathetic and, at times I was convinced, slightly sadistic, magistrate.

I’d be spelling out a bail application, my boiler plate submissions adapted to the circumstances of my client of the minute, and all I’d see was the blank stare of the magistrate, as if unamused by my taking his time, before he’d say quietly and flatly, ‘Bail refused. Adjourned to this court for plea or mention in 3 weeks. Next’.

I’m sure now that I could have cracked that face, caused him to hesitate before giving his formulaic decision, and upset the unthinking confidence of the prosecutor, if I’d added

Your Worship would be aware of the obligations assumed by Australia under Article 9(3) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which says that ‘it shall not be the general rule that persons awaiting trial shall be detained in custody’. To the extent that the Bail Act requires that bail be refused in some matters it is contrary to this guarantee of fundamental human rights. Your Worship would be aware too that the United Nations Human Rights Committee has said that the provision effectively requires that p re-trial detention is an exception and should be as short as possible. This requirement, Your Worship will recall, was relied on in the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal decision of DPP and Serratore.

And when the police prosecutor says that three weeks isn’t enough and they’ll need six to put the brief of evidence together, then I’d have said

But your Worship would be aware of the further obligation under Article 9(3) to bring anyone detained on a criminal charge promptly before a court. The Human Rights Committee has said that while time limits can fixed by law, “delays must not exceed a few days”.

There is so much to be said about the ways that human rights laws can work in Australian law. What is said is so much more than is actually done. What has been done has occurred in family law; criminal bail, defence and sentencing; social security entitlements; administrative review and censorship, as well as in constitutional law and in the clearly human rights-based area of anti-discrimination laws.

My Waverley Court daydream illustrates only that human rights are there, in daily legal practice. Made explicit, they bring with them a raft of new arguments, new angles, new ways of making our laws relevant to a fight for social justice.

In saying this I am glossing over established common law rules about how human rights principles can properly be brought to bear on statutory interpretation, adaptation of the common law, and gaps in domestic law. The Bangalore Principles define how far “the proper nature of the judicial process and well-established judicial functions” will extend so as to have regard to human rights principles.

As challenging as the Principles are to a deeply traditional approach to the judicial function, they scarcely touch the possibilities of a new international jurisprudence which recognises universally the fundamental principles of human rights. These rules are a real barrier that even the most adventurous of our judges respect, to date limiting human rights principles to a marginal role, no matter how loudly the shouting is from the sidelines.

But the opportunity is there. Judges have made it clear that human rights arguments are tolerated and even helpful. This opportunity can be ignored and can fade into having been a fad, or it can be picked up, used, and made credible, acceptable and, finally, unremarkable. Human rights needs to become an argument that is necessarily made, what any lawyer has to do for the sake of their client, if not for the sake of social justice.

The chart ( overhead) shows common, generalists CLC matter types. It shows relevant international rights. It shows where there is authoritative commentary which expounds on the meaning of those rights. And it shows some of the recorded occasions when Australian courts have engaged with these issues.

I say ‘engaged’ because on a close reading, none of the cases turns on the application of human rights principles, and few of them do more than reinforce common law-based reasoning by reference to human rights principles. I take this not as defining the point beyond which human rights arguments cannot go, but the point at which they are just beginning. We don’t stop there – we have scarcely begun.

What I am proposing is this. That CLCs describe their work, more than they do now, as human rights work. That CLCs use, more than they do now, human rights language. That CLCs advocate, more than they do now, in terms of human rights policies and principles.

In short, that CLCs explicitly identify themselves as human rights NGOs, and their work as human rights advocacy. What already happens extensively among workers in specialist centres and networks can happen in CLC casework.

Taking on the role of human rights NGOs, of skilled, legal human rights NGOs, is an opportunity for CLCs, and is necessary for advancing social justice advocacy in Australia.

As an accessible way of achieving this, I have three proposals.

A network of human rights lawyers

Australian Lawyers for Human Rights already operates a national electronic network of information exchange and professional support among lawyers, law students, academics and law-related workers.  This is rapidly proving a powerful tool for increasing lawyers’ confidence in using human rights language, and the extent of human rights in daily legal practice. It is a network which CLC workers could usefully join.

A communications network

There is the opportunity for CLCs to be a part, in fact the large and essential part, of a national network identifying, formulating and conducting communications under the international conventions to the UN committees – the Human Rights Committee (HRC), the Committee on the Elimination of all forms of Race Discrimination (CERD) and the Committee Against Torture (CAT). The ‘opportunity’, as I call it, comes about this way.

Even allowing for the limited access anyone has to them, the international communications procedures are under-used by Australia. To the extent that they are used, the communications are often not of high quality, in terms of both merit and presentation.

Australia is far from alone in making poor use – quantity and quality – of the communications procedures. And it is arguable that the greater need for understanding and using of the procedures is in countries, many near us, where civil and political rights in particular are under much greater threat, if they exist at all, than in Australia.

I agree. But that is not to say that Australia should not be getting its own yard into order. There is a continuing failure in Australia to make human rights a consistent and accepted feature of our public dialogue, of our social policy formulation, and of our system of law. This is resulting in entrenched disadvantage within Australia, in a marked decline in Australia's own standards, and in a severely compromised leadership role in the region.

A small aspect of a much larger campaign to raise the profile of human rights in Australia is to increase the extent and improve the way in which we use the international mechanisms for human rights remedies.

The proposal in brief is this. A panel of human rights experts is already available to advise and consult, in the public interest without fee, on the prospective communications; Australian Lawyers for Human Rights is organising that, following up an initiative of Hilary Charlesworth some years ago, and with the enthusiastic support of other legal human rights organisations such as the Castan Centre.

But whom will the experts advise? Who will see the issue, seek the advice, pursue the necessary avenues, take the instructions, collect the information – in short, represent the client?

So far it has been an occasional legal centre, a legal aid commission office, an aboriginal legal service, a private solicitor. It has been done ad hoc, and not always with the resources necessary to do it well. The opportunity is – my proposal is – that the CLCs are the national network to pick up those communications, to identify them and run with them, using the support of a panel of human rights experts.

For CLCs to engage in human rights advocacy in their casework, or to use the covenants’ reporting mechanisms, or to become human rights educators, CLC workers need to know about human rights. They need to know the principles, the structure, the processes, the language (and, most alienating of all, the acronyms).

This is a matter of skills training and professional development. It’s hard to find a short, sharp, accessible course in human rights law, practice and advocacy. Such training is done in-house by various NGOS and institutions, and subjects are available within a degree course.

We need a course which is accessible, instructive and practical. Through Australian Lawyers for Human Rights and its networks I hope that in the next few months there will be such a course. I’ll let you know. In the meantime I can give you a list of some written and on-line resources ( overhead) which are a useful start.

To take a human rights identity further within CLCs, I hope that the momentum already apparent in many of the specialist networks continues to build; that debate, discussion and development continues through the CLCs’ human rights network; that all CLC workers begin to characterise themselves and their work in terms of human rights, and that legal strategies for social justice will increasingly be pursued explicitly in terms of human rights.

Resources for human rights practice in Australia Introduction to human rights

Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Human Rights Explained at http://www.humanrights.gov.au/hr_explained/index.html

Legal Information Access Centre Hot Topics: Human Rights, at http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/other/liac/hot_topic/17/toc.html

U.S. Department of State's Office of International Information Programs What are Human Rights at http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/hrintro/hrintro.htm and Human rights and You at http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/humrts/

David Kinley (ed) Human Rights in Australian Law The Federation Press 1998

Nick O’Neill, Robin Handley Retreat from Injustice The Federation Press 1994

Stephen Bottomley and David Kinley (eds) Commercial Law and Human Rights Ashgate Publishing 2001 (forthcoming)

Justice Michael Kirby ‘The Australian Use of International Human Rights Norms: From Bangalore to Balliol – a View from the Antipodes’ (1993) 16 (2) UNSWLJ 363

Justice Michael Kirby ‘The Road from Bangalore the First ten Years of the Bangalore Principles on the Domestic Application of International Human Rights Norms’ at www.hcourt.gov.au/speeches/kirbyj/kirbyj_bang11.htm

Tim Anderson ‘Criminal Oversight: a human rights review of recent criminal justice law in New South Wales’ in Public Space #3 2001, UTS Law and Legal Research Centre at http://www.law.uts.edu.au/~utsclc/research.htm

Kate Eastman ‘International Human Rights Remedies’ in chapter 15.3 Lawyers Practice Manual (NSW) LBC (loose leaf)

Australian Human Rights Centre A Guide to the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights at http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/other/ahric/booklet/index.html

Christine Chinkin ‘Using the Optional Protocol: the Practical Issues’ (1993) Aboriginal Law Bulletin 6

Sarah Joseph, Jennifer Schultz and Melissa Castan, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: Cases Commentary and Materials OUP 2000

Sarah Pritchard (ed) Indigenous Peoples, the United Nations and Human Rights Zed Books / The Federation Press 1998

Table of some CLC matter types and human rights

Type of CLC matter	Human Right	International Covenant provisions and non-binding standards [i]	General Comments of the Committees	Australian cases and communications[ii]
Bail application	Right to liberty of the person	ICCPR - Article 9(3) CROC - Article 37(b)	HRC General Comment No. 8 - Article 9	DPP v Serratore (1995) 38 NSWLR 137
Sentencing	Right not to be arbitrarily detained	ICCPR - Article 9(1) and Article 14(5)	HRC General Comment No. 8 - Article 9, and General Comment No. 13 - Article 14
No legal representation in criminal matters	Right to a fair trial	ICCPR - Article 14(3)(d)	HRC General Comment No. 13 - Article 14	Dietrich v R (1992) 177 CLR 292 DPP v Saxon (1991) 28 NSWLR 263
Young people in detention	Rights of detainees to be treated with humanity and dignity	ICCPR - Article 10(2)(b) and (3) CROC - Articles 37 and 40 CAT - Article 13 Beijing Rules	HRC General Comment No. 21 - Article 10
Poor prison conditions and inadequate programs	Rights of detainees to be treated with humanity and dignity	ICCPR - Article 10 CAT Article 13 Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners	HRC General Comment No. 21 - Article 10	R v Hollingshed and Rodgers (1993) 112 FLR 109
Need for an interpreter in court	Right to a fair trial	ICCPR - Article 14(3)(a) and (f) for criminal matters	HRC General Comment No. 13 - Article 14	Gradidge v Grace Bros (1988) 93 FLR 414
Deportation facing torture	Right not to be deported if likely to be tortured	CAT Article 3	CAT C’tee General Comment No. 1	Elmi v Australia 20/05/99CAT/C/22/D/120/1998

Beijing Rules United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice ("The Beijing Rules")
CAT Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
CAT C’tee Committee against Torture

[i] In preparing this chart Kate Eastman identified for me the International Covenant provisions and non-binding standards which relate to the CLC matter types. Kate points out that, as well, an argument based on the articles of the UDHR and customary international law could be made out for many of these rights.

[ii] The Australian cases are from K Eastman and C Ronalds, Using human rights laws in litigation in D Kinley (ed), Human Rights in Australian Law, The Federation Press 1998.  See also the cases collected by Justice Kirby in his article and speech on the Bangalore Principles.

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This page last updated 4th May 2004