Content Warning: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised the following includes the names of First Nations people who have passed away.
Strategic litigation creates change. A legal case can be brought not only to seek justice for one person and their family, but also to help prevent others from experiencing the same injustice in the future.
Strategic lawyering can:
- Change policy
- Establish new legal principles
- Create accountability
- Prevent future harm
Changing a policy
Why this is strategic: An outcome from one of our cases might result in a policy being changed to prevent the same injustice happening again to another person.
For example: After the Benton family were told to remove their Yes23 shirts to vote during the 2023 Voice Referendum and threatened with police when they tried to complain, we supported the family to bring a discrimination claim.
Outcome: The Australian Electoral Commission agreed to cultural competency training for all 100,000+ temporary election workers, mandatory training for 1,000+ ongoing staff, and a dedicated support line for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voters. This change reinforces the importance of working together to remove systemic barriers and improve culturally safe access to public services.
Establishing new legal principles
Why is this strategic: Law reform is often too slow to keep up with the injustices communities are facing now. Strategic litigation can help close gaps in the law and establish new legal principles that better protect people and communities.
For example: Mona Lisa and Cindy Smith died in 1987 after the ute they were travelling in crashed near Bourke, NSW. The driver, a non-Indigenous man, was acquitted of drink-driving causing death by an all-white jury and a gap in the law at the time meant he could never be held accountable for the further harm caused to Cindy after her death.
Outcome: After more than 30 years of advocacy, Mona and Cindy’s mothers, Dawn and June Smith, worked with the National Justice Project to secure a fresh inquest. That inquest led the NSW Parliament to pass Cindy’s Law, creating a new legal pathway allowing a special verdict in cases of this nature, even where the exact time of death can’t be established. A legal gap that had stood for decades was finally closed.
Read more: Historic day as ‘Cindy’s Law’ is passed in NSW parliament
Preventing future harm
Why this is strategic: A coronial inquest can uncover what went wrong and make recommendations to prevent the same harm from happening again. It’s a formal legal inquiry into the circumstances of a death, led by a coroner, usually when the death was unexplained or happened in certain settings like police custody or state care.
For example: For three years, we worked with the family of Naomi Williams to secure a coronial inquest into the tragic death of their daughter.
Naomi, who was 6 months pregnant, went to the hospital with intense pain, nausea and vomiting. She was sent home 34 minutes later with only two paracetamol tablets and without a doctor being called.
She passed away from sepsis, a serious infection that is treatable with antibiotics.
Outcome: After exposing racial discrimination through the coronial inquest, the coroner handed recommendations for NSW Health to prevent racial bias in hospitals, many of which have now been implemented.
Read more: Exposing Healthcare Discrimination in Regional NSW
The Strategic Litigation clinicÂ
The Strategic Litigation Clinic, in partnership with with the University of Technology Sydney, the Jumbunna Legal Strategies Hub and the Faculty of Law, is managed by Principal Solicitor Ashleigh Buckett, Principal Solicitor Emma Hearne and Professor of Practice Craig Longman, Director of the Legal Strategies Hub at Jumbunna, with the support of the legal team at the National Justice Project.
Through the clinic, students work on real, high-impact matters affecting real people and learn how strategic litigation can drive law reform. Â
Read more: Why trauma-informed lawyering is the first thing we teach new lawyers
