Essay Competition
Essay Competition Results
We are pleased to announce the winners of the Forbes Essay Competition for 2025!
We were very pleased to receive submissions from a wide range of schools and tertiary students within and outside NSW: there were 35 essays in the junior secondary category, 16 essays in the senior secondary category, and 9 essays in the tertiary category.
The Junior Secondary winner is Jake Lee for an essay titled, “Is Australia’s offshore processing a continuation of older anti-immigration practices, or a fundamentally new regime?”. Commendations were awarded to:
- Liana Hossain for an essay, “The role of altruism and personal responsibility in the law”
- Yumi Takusagawa for an essay, “Prosecution across waters – examining WW2 war crime trials in the Pacific”
- Charlotte Wong for an essay, “Why were the Freedom Rides in the 1960s so important in the development of indigenous awareness and action?”
- Alice Feng for an essay, “Discuss how Commonwealth v Tasmania (1983) influenced Australia’s constitutional system, political culture and approach to environmental protection”
The junior secondary schools were North Sydney Boys High School, St George Girls High School, Meriden School, and Abbotsleigh School.
The Senior Secondary winner is Samuail McIntyre for an essay titled, “The Silence of the Crown: The Historical Evolution and Constitutional Limits of the Royal Prerogative in Australia”. Commendations were awarded to:
- Livia Wong for an essay, “War to Autonomy: To what extent did the Anglo-Australian strategic disputes in World War II Pacific influence the enactment of the Statute of Westminster Adoption Act 1942?”
- Joshua Fok for an essay, “To what extent does Australian law’s regulation of wage entitlements reflect a continuous negotiation between private rights to fair remuneration and the state’s public responsibility to enforce compliance across history”
- Harry Tong for an essay, “Investigating the history of Australian femicide”
- Keaton Kearney for an essay, “From concurrent power to centralised control: How High Court interpretation of taxation shaped Australian federation”.
The senior secondary schools were Peel High School Tamworth, Presbyterian Ladies College Melbourne, Knox Grammar School, and Miami State High School.
The Tertiary winner is Bradley Hogan for an essay titled, “Cats, Chameleons and Chapter III Courts: The Tangled History of Judicial Power and the Constitutional Necessity of Indeterminacy”. Commendations were awarded to:
- Cirro Thuo for an essay, “The meaning of slavery: How the Aboriginals Preservation and Protection Act breached the Slavery Abolition Act”
- Lily Brooke for an essay, “Indigenous Legal Perspectives and the Frontier wars in Tasmania”
- Johan Choifor an essay, “’You can’t bring that in your carry on …’: Australian legal history in the eyes of aviation security”
The tertiary institutions were Monash University, Australian National University and the University of Sydney.
Formal presentations to 2025 essay prize winners will follow the lecture on 10 February 2026.
Essay Competition 2024 Results
We are pleased to announce the winners of the Forbes Essay Competition for 2024!
We were very pleased to receive submissions from a wide range of schools and tertiary students within and outside NSW: there were 36 essays in the junior secondary category, 15 essays in the senior secondary category, and 13 essays in the tertiary category.
The Junior Secondary winner is Evangelos Grillakis for his essay, “Heres Pallium Terroris: How have the Government’s counter-terrorism prerogatives been precedented by historical national security law?”
Commendations were awarded to:
•Daniel Jiang for an essay “The law, history and evolution of animal damage and trespassing”
•Annabelle Wolf for an essay “Why were the Freedom Rides in the 1960s so important in the development of indigenous awareness and action?”
•Sarah Seo for an essay “Discuss whether Australia should have a Bill of Rights in the Constitution”
•Jack Ding for an essay “How are human rights protected in Australia without a Bill of Rights? And does Australia need one?”
•Audrey Georgette for an essay “Why were the Freedom Rides in the 1960s so important in the development of indigenous awareness and action?”
•Jake Lee for an essay “Assess changing public perceptions of politicians as High Court Justices over time”
•Ethan Taylor for an essay “Sparks to a flame – Women’s suffrage in Australia”
•Alice Zhang-Kim for an essay “An Examination of Judicial Review in the Communist Party case and Thomas v Mowbray”
•Seara Ng for an essay “White Australia Policy”
The Senior Secondary joint winners were Picasso Nguyen for an essay, “Mabo decision”; and Aashi Singh for an essay, “Timelapse on Australian Citizenship”
Commendations were awarded to:
•Brandon Mai for an essay “Balancing the Scales: How Taxation Power shaped Australia’s Federal Future”
•Kevin Wu for an essay “Untangling Webb – William Webb and the Tokyo Trials”
•Mark Chi for an essay “A holistic history of oligopolistic industry in Australia”
The students’ schools were (alphabetically) Avila College, Barker College, Broughton Anglican College, Camberwell Girls Grammar School, Glen Waverley Secondary College, Hurlstone Agricultural High, James Ruse Agricultural High School, Newington College, Normanhurst Boys High School, North Sydney Boys High School.
The Tertiary joint winners are Peter Taurian for an essay “Poetry, Poiesis and Judicial Power: courting past, present and future in Colonial New South Wales” and Zoya Kovacs for an essay “An inward turn: The impact of the fall of Singapore on the foundational values of s.51(VI)”
Commendations were awarded to:
•Sophia Bleakley for an essay “Justifications for and limits on Australian colonial land acquisition from Lock’s Second Treatise”
•Jasmine Kundo for an essay for “Justice or Vengeance? Examining the Pacific War Crimes Trials and Australia’s Prosecution of Japanese Troops after WWII”
The tertiary institutions were Macquarie University, Melbourne University and the University of Sydney.
Essay Competition
2023
We were very pleased to receive submissions from a wide range of schools and tertiary students within and outside NSW: Glen Waverley Secondary College in Victoria, the Australian National University and the University of Queensland. There were 29 essays in the junior secondary category, 7 essays in the senior secondary category, and 10 essays in the tertiary category.
The Senior Secondary winner is Thomas Blanch for his essay, “Not for Publication: The Opera House Lottery and the Murder of Graeme Thorne”
Max Galanti received a commendation for his essay “Family Ties: The History of Divorce Legislation in the Commonwealth of Australia”
Gene Richards received a commendation for his essay “Irregulated: A brief overview of Australian Media Law”
The Junior Secondary winner was Kevin Wu for his essay, “The Australian Alien”
Jennifer Ou received a commendation for her essay, “Did I pass, Factors that affected the success and failure of the 1967 and 2023 referendums on indigenous struggles”
Alice Zhang-Kim received a commendation for her essay “Did the Disability Discrimination Act (1992) succeed in its historical aim of creating a “groundbreaking” legislative framework for protecting disabled people in the workplace?”
Isabella Aun received a commendation for her essay “Does the Federal System still offer advantages to the modern Australian state”
The students’ schools were (alphabetically) Abbotsleigh, James Ruse Agricultural, Normanhurst Boys.
The Tertiary winner is Archie Hornerman-Wren for his essay, “The facts as we know them today’: Law, narrative, and the Mabo decision as an exercise in Australian historiography.”
Jack Zhou received a commendation for his essay “A ‘dismal swamp’ down under: A history of Australian conflict of laws”
Laura Dawes received a commendation for her essay “’And along came DNA: The introduction of DNA evidence in Australian courts in the Applebee case”.
The tertiary institutions were ANU and UNSW.
In news after our December update, the prize supported by the Francis Forbes Fund for the best presentation by a higher degree research student or an early career researcher at the ANZLHS annual conference was awarded to Ash Stanley-Ryan for the paper ‘Ka mua, ka Muri: He Whakaputanga, Concealed Indigenous Histories, and the Making of International Law.’ This paper is to be published, subject to the usual refereeing process, in law&history. The announcement is here Sir Francis Forbes Society Prize awarded
2022 Competition
The Hon Andrew Bell, Chief Justice of New South Wales, delivered his Sir James Martin Oration address as an occasional lecture in Banco Court on Tuesday 28 March 2023 . At this event, Chief Justice Allsop presented prizes to the winners and commended entries in our 2022 Australian Legal History Essay Competition.
Essay Competition
2018
Tertiary Student category
The Prize goes to: Sebastian Cassinelli, a law student at Griffith University in Queensland for his essay is titled “The Constitutionally Implied Freedom of Political Communication: Australian Legal History’s Most Imperative Development”.
Senior Secondary category
The winner in the Senior Secondary category is Jingyoung Kim from The King’s School with an essay titled, “Distorted Narratives of Progress on Indigenous Land Rights”.
Daniel Se from Knox Grammar School received a commendation for his essay titled, “How have prominent women in Australian legal history navigated sexism and how have their achievements been represented and recorded?”.
Junior Secondary category
The winner in the Junior Secondary category is Annette Kim from Tara Anglican School for Girls with an essay in which she considered media coverage of Australian women involved in law and order.
- Sophie Ku from Pymble Ladies College received a commendation for her essay titled, “Rethinking Eddie Leonski, the Brownout Strangler”.
CONGRATULATIONS to all entrants and Prize winners.
Essay Competition
2017
Tertiary Student category
ANNOUNCEMENT OF RESULTS
In the Tertiary Student category, the winner is Damian Morris from the University of New South Wales for an essay titled, “A brief legal history of the New South Wales monetary system”. Daniel will receive a prize of $1000 and an Abbeys Bookshop voucher to the value of $1000.
Special commendations go to:
- Amelia Loughland, University of New South Wales, who considered the case of In re Jane New [1829] NSWSupC 11 and its implications (highly commended)
- Nanak Narulla, University of New South Wales, “Leadership from the Colony: Imprisonment for Debt Throughout the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries in England and New South Wales” (highly commended)
- Joseph Abi-Hanna, University of New South Wales, who considered the law of coverture (commended)
- Krishna Nand, Macquarie University, “The Strength of a ‘British Legal Empire’: Resisting British interdiction on convict freedom in colonial NSW” (commended)
In the Senior Secondary category, the winner is Sanjana Kumar from Trinity Anglican School with an essay titled, “Mandatory Minimum Sentencing: Australia’s Achilles Heel”. Sanjana will receive a prize of $250 together with an Abbeys Bookshop voucher to the value of $250.
In the Junior Secondary School category, the winner is Sophie Yeeun Ku from Pymble Ladies College with an essay on indigenous land rights.She will receive a prize of $250 together with an Abbeys Bookshop voucher to the value of $250.
Simon Chapple – Secretary, Francis Forbes Society for Australian Legal History
Essay Competition
2016
Tertiary Student category
ANNOUNCEMENT OF RESULTS
The Francis Forbes Society for Australian Legal History is pleased to announce the results of the 2016 Australian Legal History Essay Competition.
In the Tertiary Student category, the winner is Daniel McKay, who has recently completed an honours thesis in law at the Australian National University, for an essay titled, “Under the Crown: Evolving Interpretations of the Office of Australian Governor-General as Constitutional Link to the British Empire, 1890-1931”. Daniel will receive a prize of $1000 and an Abbeys Bookshop voucher to the value of $1000.
Special commendations go to Freeman Zhong, a student at Monash University, for an essay titled “A Continuity in Australian Judicial Review”, and to Madisen Scott, a student Curtin University of Technology, for an essay titled, “The Power of Dissent: Evolving the Law and Gaining the Admiration of the People”.
In the Junior Secondary School category, the winner is Kyung Suh Park, a year 7 student at Kincoppal Rose Bay, for an essay that explored the life and legacy of Thomas Jeffries. She will receive a personal prize of $250 together with an Abbeys Bookshop voucher to the value of $250. Her school will receive a $250 Abbeys Bookshop voucher.
The essays in this category were of a particularly high quality and special commendations go to the following essayists (in alphabetical order): Michael Chooi (for an essay on Australian prisons since 1788); Sarah Kim (for an essay on penal reform); Winona Lu (for an essay on police corruption); and Brandon Yoon (for an essay on the Gun Alley tragedy).
The 2016 Competition was characterised by essays of high quality on a wide range of topics. All essayists are to be congratulated for their efforts. All will receive a certificate acknowledging their participation in the competition.
