The Francis Forbes Society supports the study and presentation of Australian legal history. Each year the Francis Forbes Society distributes funds to support the study and documentation of the history of Australian law. The Society is pleased to advise that grants have been made from the Fund for 2026 to support the following projects:

• Dr Zoe Smith (University of New South Wales) Coercive Control and ‘Mental Cruelty’ in Queensland, 1890-1975
• Associate Professor Sylvia Villios (Adelaide University), Law reform, Legal memory and Public Participation in South Australia
• Dr Rosemary Grey (Co-Director, Sydney Centre for International Law, University of Sydney), Embedding ‘Indigenous perspectives’ in international law-making: Australia’s role in the Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity treaty negotiations
• Dr Rowan Nicholson (Flinders University), The Unconquered Desert: The Law of Sovereignty and Invasion in Australia 1606–2026
• Dr Ben Mostyn (University of Sydney), Australia, the United Nations, and a History of Global Drug Policy
• Antonia Smith (PhD student, University of Melbourne), Historical relationship between indigenous settlor law in Aotearoa New Zealand

As well, the Society supports an Essay prize awarded for the best presentation by a higher degree research student or an early career researcher at the Annual ANZLHS conference, which may be published in law&history. 

The Annual Report 2025 details grants from the Fund up to 2025.  A number of recipients have presented over the past year. We encourage donations to the Fund to enable to us to support such research – the membership form makes provision for this.

The 2026 Joint presentation with the Ngara Yura Committee of the Judicial Commission of NSW explored the current Towards Truth subjects: contemporary policing and criminal offences, and the present work on historical policing.  Towards Truth is a partnership between the Indigenous Law Centre and the Justice and Equity Centre (formerly the Public Interest Advocacy Centre or PIAC).  The project is researching the vast body of laws and policies that have impacted Aboriginal people since 1788, broken down into four main ‘themes’ – Country, Kinship, Law and Culture, and People. 

The event was chaired by the Hon. Justice Phillip Boulten, Supreme Court of NSW and Ngara Yura Committee member, who introduced presenters/ panellists Anna Harding (Project Director of Towards Truth), Jonathan Hunyor (CEO of the Justice and Equity Centre), Shane Phillips (CEO Tribal Warrior) and Kate Sinclair (Solicitor, Strategic Litigation, Justice and Equity Centre).

On 7 May 2026, Dr Paula Byrne (Western Sydney University) presented a legal history tutorial titled, “Law in the New Democracy”.

This tutorial is concerned with some of the detailed legal information available in the surviving NSW court records of the 1850s. One can trace the thinking of the Attorneys General, the misgivings of the Judges and the attitudes of the Bar. It derives from research for Law In the New Democracy, but also involves later work. Some of the findings are – that in the 1850s no legal official recalled Murrell, that John Huburt Plunkett was not entirely the man we have assumed and that the New South Wales Bar can be proud of some of its efforts in arguing for the rights of Aboriginal people. Further details of the event together with the registration link will be provided next week.  At this legal history tutorial she will explore themes emerging from her published book, Law in the New Democracy.

The 2025 Annual General Meeting of the Francis Forbes Society for Australian Legal History was held on Tuesday 25 November 2025 

The Model of a Modern Solicitor General

The Solicitor General for New South Wales, Michael Sexton SC, delivered the Fourteenth Annual Plunkett Lecture titled “The Model of a Modern Solicitor General” on 23 October 2025 in Banco Court, Level 13 Law Courts Building, 184 Phillip St Sydney. Michael Sexton SC was appointed Solicitor General in 1998.

John Hubert Plunkett, for whom this annual Lecture is named, arrived in NSW from Ireland in 1832. For more than 30 years thereafter he made a major contribution to colonial law and society, serving, inter alia, as Solicitor General and Attorney General. See JH Plunkett Lecture for prior lectures.