The Rule of Native Title: A View of Mabo in the British Empire

Since 1992, Indigenous land rights have been granted in Australia under the legal doctrine of native title. The Mabo judgment which established this body of law in Australia has met with mixed reception: some have heralded it as the basis for a new, post-colonial Australia, others have damned it for its failure to live up to this promise, and conservative governments have attacked and restricted it. In this article, I place Australian native title in a context of British imperialism by historicising the international legal precedents. In the Mabo judgments, there was a reliance on the concepts of radical, beneficial and native title as developed in a series of decisions of the Privy Council arising from appeals from various Supreme Courts in West Africa in the first half of the twentieth century. I go on to examine the forms of colonial rule the legal system was designed to support, and then explore some of the consequences of importing this body of jurisprudence into Australia law