Friday, December 02, 2011

Australian High Court forces wife to give evidence against husband

One of the long-standing legal principles has been that a wife or husband cannot (at least as I understood it) be compelled to give evidence against the other. The Australian High Court appears to have overturned this understanding, at least so far as Australia is concerned. Decision here.

On the surface, this is quite a significant decision. Hopefully one of my legal blogging colleagues (Legal Eagle?) will elucidate all this.

Postscript

Legal Eagle has now discusses this case in Spousal right to silence abolished in Australia'

3 comments:

Evan said...

I was stunned to read this. Especially the comment that it wasn't part of common law.

I look forward to informed comment from others too.

Jim Belshaw said...

Pretty clearly, so was I. In a Facebook comment, Legal Eagle said that she would write something. I look forward to that.

Unknown said...

This is an interesting topic.

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