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The Rule of Law in a Penal Colony: Law and Politics in Early New South Wales (Studies in Australian History)

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New South Wales colony was the original British colony in Australia, and several books have already been written about its beginnings. But this text offers a fresh and different perspective. The author explains how Sydney started as a colony where often the permanent residents were convicts who had served their sentences but were forbidden to return to Mother Britain. Under such circumstances, the prospects for a normal society seemed dim indeed.

Yet in those early decades, through the local courts and local case law, the backbone of such a society emerged. Probably helped by the fact that most of the convicts were not homicidal maniacs. Those would have been already hung in Britain, instead of being transported to Sydney. Most convicts had committed fairly minor infractions, that were severely punished by British law, which was mostly to protect the upper classes.