Justice Spiegelman, a highly recognised lawyer in Sydney and now the Chief Justice of New South Wales recently commented that it the new cultural customs related to the treatment of migrant women and in particular attitudes to violence against women in abusive relationships will need to be a major priority for the legal system going forward. Justice Spiegelman beleives that the legal system is at present ill equiped to deal effectively with what he believes will be a growing problem in the future of violence against women perpetrated because of differences between western ideals and the realities of cultures which orginate in the Middle East and the South East Asia.

Justice Spiegelman addressed a gathering at the University of New South Wales where he voiced his concerns about the way that the legal system is prepared to deal with this issue. It is recognised that there has been a tension between customary aboriginal law and the british common law system ever since the rule of law was adopted into Australian law. This is what probably the most important high court case of the 1980s was about – terra nullius and claim that the British rule of law was founded on a fiction. Now it appears that the state’s leading judge is concerned that there might be a cultural challenge to the system of Justice from the large migrant populations in the major cities in Australia. In particular, he was concerned about legal dilemmas including honour crimes and forced marriages which emerge and the way that this could highlight the inconsistency between upholding universal values which abhor these principles, but being tolerant of the cultures of others who chose to practices them. There is the not the legislation in Australia to help prevent these types of crimes as there is in other countries. In his speech, Justice Spiegelman said the following:

”Human rights norms are, to a substantial degree, based on assumptions about individual autonomy, the full implications of which are not universally accepted … There is a fundamental conflict between a human rights approach to these matters, on the one hand, and the tolerance of cultural traditions, based on an assumption of an equality between cultures, on the other hand … There is no way of avoiding the dilemma arising from this conflict of values.”

It is certainly true that the these conflicts exist in the project of international human rights law and that this has potential to be expressed at the everyday level in Australia given the vast diversity of our culture. It will be interesting to see how the predictions of this highly respected lawyer and judge relate to the future of our legal system in particular in relation to the operation of the law in relation to divorce and immirgation.