Among the many constitutional developments of the past century or so, one of the most significant has been the creation and proliferation of institutions that perform functions similar to those performed by courts, but which are considered to be, and in some ways are, different and distinct from courts as traditionally conceived. In much of the common law world, such institutions are called 'administrative tribunals.' Their main function is to adjudicate disputes between citizens and the State by reviewing decisions of government agencies - a function also performed by courts in 'judicial...

This book presents the papers and comments on those papers delivered at a colloquium held at the Australian National University in December 2008 to celebrate 50 years since the publication in the Harvard Law Review of the famous and wide-ranging debate between HLA Hart and Lon L Fuller. These essays do not to re-run that debate and they are not confined to discussion of the jurisprudential issues canvassed by Hart and Fuller. Rather they pick up on strands in the debate and re-think them in the light of social, political and intellectual developments in the past 50 years and changed ways of...