The Law of Civil Penalties

Civil penalties play a central role in regulation in Australia. Since the first civil penalty provisions were enacted in Australia in 1904, there has been an ever-developing corpus of cases relating to the imposition of civil penalties alongside the increasing enactment and use of civil penalty provisions. The past decade has seen three landmark decisions of the High Court of Australia directed at the fundamental principles of the law of civil penalties.

This collection of essays considers the purpose of civil penalties, the principles underpinning their imposition, and their deployment in different areas of the law as important tools of regulation and enforcement. The collection features a variety of different perspectives judges, barristers, solicitors, academics, regulators, policy-makers and NGOs from which it examines the doctrine of the law of civil penalties and reflects upon potential further development in this critical area of regulatory law and practice.