Native Title in the Twenty-First Century

Sean Brennan

In Mabo v Queensland (No 2) (1992) 175 CLR 1 (Mabo (No 2)), the High Court of Australia said that under defined conditions Indigenous property rights that long pre-dated the arrival of British colonists could be recognised in the present day as ‘native title’. That inflection point in Australian law and society was about a decade old when the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law (the Centre) was established, and the law of native title was about to undergo a phase of judicial retrenchment in the High Court. ….