Race, Legal Status and Subjecthood in Defamation Actions Across the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.

Project Member(s): Simmonds, A.

Funding or Partner Organisation: The Francis Forbes Society for Australian Legal History
The Francis Forbes Society for Australian Legal History

Start year: 2023

Summary: There are two conceptual aims to this project. First, to unearth and analyse legal records concerning non-Europeans who sued for defamation on the basis that racist epithets directed at them were ‘false and malicious’ throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Second, to consider how these actions contested ideas of British subjecthood and stimulated debate over the perceived attributes of subjecthood in law and society.

FOR Codes: Law in context, Expanding knowledge in history, heritage and archaeology, Australian history

Acknowledgement of Country

UTS acknowledges the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, the Boorooberongal people of the Dharug Nation, the Bidiagal people and the Gamaygal people upon whose ancestral lands our university stands. We would also like to pay respect to the Elders both past and present, acknowledging them as the traditional custodians of knowledge for these lands.