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"Native" Landscapes, "Cultivated" Gardens and the Erasure of Indigenous Sovereignty in Two Recent Instances of Australian Cinematic Jurisprudence

Law, Culture and the Humanities

Published online on

Abstract

Although cinema is now commonly recognized as a significant source of knowledge about law, in this article I argue that it is also a space in which law is questioned, rethought and reimagined. Outside the traditional realms of legal philosophy, cinema is a pre-eminent site of jurisprudence. To illustrate this, I examine the recent films The Proposition (2005) and Australia (2009) as they each critique and justify the sovereignty of a specific legal order over a particular landscape. As part of an Australian tradition of ‘‘unease’’ concerning legal authority, these films provide compelling instances of cinematic jurisprudence.