Bruce Kercher, Emeritus Professor of Law at Macquarie University, and his colleague Brent Salter have developed a volume of law reports from the first days of the NSW colony to the Dowling period, 1788 to 1827. Like Dowling’s Select Cases 1828 to 1844, this new volume of colonial reports concentrates on the work of the superior courts but it also includes one or two exceptional cases heard by magistrates. The material is presented chronologically rather than by subject matter in order to demonstrate the drastic change in character of the materials, from amateur to professional over 40 years. This approach also allows a clustering of cases around issues such as the coup against Bligh.
Kercher and Salter have covered a full spread of periods, judges, and types of cases. The character of the cases varies from the very earliest ones, in which the emphasis is on the evidence given, to the later ones (1824-27), where the cases presented are closest to the current meaning of law reports. The gradual professionalisation of decision making, demonstrated through Kercher & Salter’s selections, is one of the main themes of the book.
The sources used in the new volume are manuscripts held by State Records NSW and the Sydney Gazette. In addition the volume includes Kercher & Salter’s introductory notes about why particular cases were significant, e.g. first woman hanged, or first white person hanged for murdering an Aborigine (Kirby in 1820, not Myall Creek 1838), as well as a Foreword by the Honourable J Spigelman, AC, Chief Justice of NSW.
The Kercher Reports, 1788 to 1827, was published in 2010 by Federation Press with support from the Council of Law Reporting.