Tracking the Rise of Pseudolaw in South Australia
Start year: 2023
Summary: Pseudolaw has come to be recognised as a distinct legal phenomenon in several jurisdictions over the last decade (Netolitzky 2018, 2019; Marko 2021). However, there is limited research about the phenomenon in Australia. In recent years, research has begun to map the broad contours of the Australian phenomenon (Cash 2022) and the way in which it manifests in distinct forms of legal argumentation (Young, Hobbs and McIntyre 2023Íž Hobbs, Young and McIntyre 2024). Additionally, some judicial officers have written on their experiences in a general context (Cash 2022) and in the media (Heilpern 2023). Nevertheless, there has been no systematic qualitative research on the judicial experience of the phenomenon in Australia. In other jurisdictions, research has been undertaken to examine the views of litigants, particularly with respect to conspiracy theories (Leader 2022), but the direct experiences of judicial officers remain undocumented. While it sometimes appears ridiculous, pseudolaw is a serious matter. People who make these claims rob themselves of meaningful legal opportunities and impose great costs to themselves and the community. It is also linked to violent extremism and indicative of growing social insecurity. Of particular relevance to this study, there is a significant concern that pseudolaw is becoming an increasing burden on the Australian courts (Kesteven and Carrick 2023). This research will create a unique insight into the judicial experience of pseudolaw in South Australia, to explore the impact of that phenomenon on litigation and examine how the judiciary responds. It weaves together two phases of research to explore both the 'seeing' and 'doing' of judicial practice: probing the direct experiences through interviews, and the concrete outputs in judgments.