ANU Law School student’s essay skills impress in national awards

Source: https://law.anu.edu.au/news-and-events/news/anu-law-school-students-essay-skills-impress Parent: https://law.anu.edu.au/

13 March 2026

ANU Law School student Lily Brooke has received a commendation for her essay titled “Indigenous Legal Perspectives and the Frontier Wars in Tasmania” in the Frances Forbes Essay competition.

Lily’s paper endeavours to argue that Australian legal scholarship has historically marginalised both the frontier wars and Indigenous legal systems, and that a critical legal historiography can reframe that past to support truth-telling, justice, and decolonial legal reform.

She used the Black War in Tasmania (1804–1830) as a focal case study. She says in her piece, “I attempt to show how the intensity and legal significance of this conflict is routinely minimised in legal research and education, which sustains settler-colonial assumptions about sovereignty and ‘legal order’.”

“I propose a public-facing legal history podcast that combines narrative storytelling, archival audio, and expert interviews to foreground Indigenous jurisprudence and disrupt the idea that British law’s imposition was neutral or inevitable,” she explains.

This paper has a deeper meaning as well, with Lily telling us that this paper matters because it treats the frontier as a legally contested space (not an “extra-legal” prelude to order). The work, therefore, attempts to show how centering Indigenous law is necessary for any honest account of Australia’s legal foundations and future reform.

The Frances Forbes Essay competition is designed to promote interest and awareness and recognise excellence in the study of Australian legal history. Lily says, “Legal history reveals that law is not merely a neutral set of doctrines and institutions, but also an instrument that can be strategically deployed, or suspended.”

“This perspective, shaped by Susan Bartie’s Legal History course, has guided my future career by pushing me to study law with a critical lens. A perspective, which takes truth-telling seriously, recognises Indigenous legal authority, and asks whose voices and legal orders have been excluded from what counts as ‘law’.”

Congratulations, Lily, on your commendation. We hope you enjoyed celebrating this achievement with your family and fellow winners.