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The principle of legality operates to protect fundamental rights by requiring express words or necessary implication if legislation is to remove or restrict fundamental rights. The principle applies to secondary legislation but does so principally through the interpretation of the legislative power to make that secondary legislation, rather than interpretation of the secondary legislation itself. This article examines this mode of application of the principle of legality, with particular reference to courts' use of proportionality analysis to establish what degree of rights infringement broad and purposive secondary lawmaking powers permit by way of necessary implication. It sets out an approach that is both normatively attractive and able to explain recent doctrinal developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a brief outline of what it would mean to consider, from a critical perspective, the topic of tax justice in contemporary Australia. The article's approach is mostly theoretical, with a particular focus on methodological questions. Central to the article's concerns are questions of political possibility and political reality. The article argues that it is not possible to take a genuinely critical approach to tax justice without determining which features of economic and social life are to be taken for granted, and which are to be considered as things that might be changed. A critical discussion of tax justice that is not connected to a broader discussion of political action therefore risks building in complacency and, ultimately, failure. To avoid such failure requires considering how to establish and support virtuous cycles in which taxation settings contribute to strengthening democracy and hence reinforce democratic political power as a basis for achieving economic justice more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Appellate Body of the World Trade Organization has dismissed the appeal relating to the complaints against Australia's plain packaging laws for tobacco products. In doing so, the Appellate Body ended any argument that there might be a right to use a trade mark or even a presumption against regulatory requirements concerning the use of trade marks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on application of terms such as rights, privileges and legimate interests in Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). Topics discussed include Article 20 of TRIPS and Australian plain packaging legislation for tobacco, problems to be adressed by tobacco control measures, and the interpretation process of international treaties and TRIPS. It also discusses the Tobacco Act 1987 in Victoria.