My Life in History

Bruce Kercher began undergraduate study in arts and law at Sydney University in the late 1960s, at the beginning of the rapid rise of university places in Australia. He later spent most of his academic career at Macquarie University when the study of law was changing from staid positivism to a rich engagement with the place of law in society. His discovery of legal history and the joys of archival research allowed him to see the distinctive place of Australia in the common law world, and law's impact on those from whom the land had been dispossessed.Keywords: Australian lawlegal historyhistorians' lives Notes1 Malcolm Abbott and Chris Doucouliagos, 'The Changing Structure of Higher Education in Australia, 1949–2003', School Working Papers – Series 2003 (Deakin University: Faculty of Business and Law, School of Accounting, Economics and Finance, 2003), https://www.deakin.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/402594/swp2003_07.pdf.2 Bruce Kercher, 'The Transformation of Imprisonment for Debt in England, 1828 to 1838', Australian Journal of Law and Society 2, no. 1 (1984): 60.3 Douglas Hay, 'Property, Authority and the Criminal Law', in Albion's Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England, ed. Douglas Hay et al. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1975), 17–63.4 Cable v Sinclair [1788] NSWSupC 7; [1788] NSWKR 7 (1 July 1788), Superior Courts of New South Wales, https://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/nsw/NSWSupC/1788/7.html; Cable v. Sinclair [1788] NSWKR 7; [1788] NSWSupC 7, Macquarie Law School, Trove, https://webarchive.nla.gov.au/awa/20130424184820/http://law.mq.edu.au/research/colonial_case_law/nsw/cases/case_index/1788/cable_v_sinclair/.5 Bruce Kercher, 'Resistance to Law under Autocracy', Modern Law Review 60, no. 6 (1997): 779; Bruce Kercher, Debt, Seduction and Other Disasters (Sydney: Federation Press, 1996).6 Hay et al, Albion's Fatal Tree.7 Bruce Kercher, An Unruly Child: A History of Law in Australia (St Leonards: Allen and Unwin, 1995).8 A.C. Castles, An Australian Legal History (Sydney: Law Book Co, 1982); preceded by A.C. Castles, An Introduction to Australian Legal History (Sydney: Law Book Co, 1971).9 Alex Castles, Lawless Harvests or God Save the Judges: Van Diemen's Land 1803–1855, a Legal History (North Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2007).10 Peter Karsten, Between Law and Custom: 'High' and 'Low' Legal Cultures in the Lands of the British Diaspora – The United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, 1600–1900 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002).11 See Stuart Banner, Possessing the Pacific (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009); Lauren Benton, A Search for Sovereignty (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009).12 Brent Salter, Negotiating Copyright in the American Theatre, 1865–1951 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2021).13 R v Ballard or Barrett [1829] NSWSupC 26; (1828) NSW Sel Cas (Dowling) 2 (13 June 1829), Superior Court of New South Wales, https://webarchive.nla.gov.au/awa/20130424184820/http://law.mq.edu.au/research/colonial_case_law/nsw/cases/case_index/1788/cable_v_sinclair/. Part of Superior Courts of New South Wales, AustLII, https://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdb/au/cases/nsw/NSWSupC/; and Decisions of the Superior Courts of New South Wales, 1788–1899, SCNSW Home, Macquarie Law School, Trove, https://webarchive.nla.gov.au/awa/20130424052838/http://www.law.mq.edu.au/research/colonial_case_law/nsw/site/scnsw_home/.14 Decisions of the Nineteenth Century Tasmanian Superior Courts, SCTAS Home, Macquarie Law School, Trove, https://webarchive.nla.gov.au/awa/20130503155304/http://law.mq.edu.au/research/colonial_case_law/tas/site/sctas_home/; and Superior Courts of Tasmania, AustLII, https://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdb/au/cases/tas/TASSupC/.15 They are now available at AustLII and Trove: Superior Courts of New South Wales, AustLII, https://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdb/au/cases/nsw/NSWSupC/; Colonial Cases, CC Home, Macquarie Law School, Trove, https://webarchive.nla.gov.au/awa/20130504211453/http://www.law.mq.edu.au/research/colonial_case_law/colonial_cases/site/cc_home/.16 Bruce Kercher and Brent Salter, The Kercher Reports: Decisions of the New South Wales Superior Courts, 1788 to 1827 (Sydney: Francis Forbes Society for Australian Legal History, 2009); T.D. Castle and Bruce Kercher, Dowling's Select Cases, 1828 to 1844: Decisions of the Supreme Court of New South Wales (Sydney: Francis Forbes Society for Australian Legal History, 2005).17 See for example, J. Spigelman, Becket and Henry: The Becket Lectures (Sydney: St Thomas More Society, 2004); Jeffrey Robertson, The Tyrannicide Brief (London: Vintage Books, 2006); H.V. Evatt, Rum Rebellion (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1938); and the many volumes of the Lives of Chief Justices by J.M. Bennett (Annandale: Federation Press)

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