Events

Recognise National Reconciliation Week with Melbourne University Sport and support our colleges as they take battle in the Buroinjin Cup.

A running and passing ball game played by the Kabi Kabi people of south Queensland, traditionally played with a ball made of Kangaroo skin sewn with tendons and stuffed with grass.

Play will kick off from 12pm at University Oval, following a smoking ceremony and welcome to country.

2025 Jim Carlton Integrity Lecture

Held in conjunction with the Accountability Round Table

In light of recent exercises of the power to pardon by outgoing US president Biden and recently inaugurated President Trump, this issue is topical once more.

The rough equivalent in Australia to the power to pardon is the prerogative of mercy which is used in exceptional circumstances to temper the law by providing clemency. The prerogative, seldom used and conventionally said to protect the law’s reputation, was recently used to pardon Kathleen Folbigg after she was convicted of killing her four children, and after 20 years in gaol. In that matter, the Governor of New South Wales exercised the prerogative of mercy to grant clemency to Ms Folbigg, a person convicted of crime. This followed the recommendation by the NSW Attorney General of a pardon and the NSW Governor, Her Excellency the Honourable Margaret Beazley AC KC, accepting the recommendation.

Justice Pritchard will review the history of each of the power to pardon and the prerogative of mercy (Locke, Blackstone etc), more recent practice in relation to the exercise of each, the relationship of each to the rule of law (including the immunity of the prerogative from judicial review), and more generally political theory and executive or prerogative pardons.