Talk:Kruger v Commonwealth

Purported authorisation

The Plaintiffs challenged their removal on 2 grounds (1) there was no power to remove - the law was invalid & (2) if the power existed, it was not validly exercised - their removal was not "in the interests" of the child. The High Court held that the law was valid. The removal remained purportedly authorised however as the High Court did not decide the question of whether the removal was in the interests of each of the plaintiffs - see for example the judgment of Brennan CJ. @Nishidani: raises a good point in this edit in that the lead does not make this distinction clear. -- Find bruce (talk) 22:20, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your legal acumen. There are two potential sources here: (a) historians writing on the application of the (perceived) remits of the law and (b)legal scholars writing on the case itself. The former deal in verifiable historical behavior, and don't use 'purport'. The latter deal exclusively with the High Court interpretation of the merits of the plaintiffs' suit.

'Purport' in my experience on Wikipedia is introduced to insert doubt, i.e., the text was stating that historically it is not established that government agents either felt themselves authorized to remove Aboriginal children/youths from their families or did actually remove children against their parents' wishes. The legal lay of the land, as you parse it, left these discriminations in the air.

Since you have the relevant expertise, might I prevail on you to re-examine, not the problematical 'purportedly' (which always needs a strong (set of) sources), but the lead drafting which is awkwardly repetitive or stylistically troublesome.

rejected a challenge to (the) validity of legislation applying in the Northern Territory between 1918 and 1957 which authorised the removal of Aboriginal children from their families. The majority of Judges rejected the challenge to the validity of the 1918 Ordinance, including there was no implied right of legal equality, finding that 1918 Ordinance was beneficial in intent and did not have the purpose of genocide or restricting the practise of religion.

If you haven't the time, I'll try to iron it out.Nishidani (talk) 07:13, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

I am not aware any real doubt about 4 of the 5 Ws: who (the children of Aboriginal mothers) what (children were removed against the mothers wishes) when (1918 until 1957) where (Northern Territory). Instead the controversy was, and remains, why did that happen? The article doesn't introduce doubt about why this happened, but rather to reflect that there is a substantial disagreement about why this happened. This is reflected in the judgment where "purported" is used 22 times, almost half of which concerned the question of whether the power was validly exercised.

A neutral point of view should similarly reflect the differing arguments, not decided by the High Court, as to why the action was taken for any particular person. In this particular case the one thing I remind myself of while editing is that the article concerns the lives of real people who were affected by the events.

In my experience the addition of different perspectives usually improves an article. Happy for you (or anyone else) to redraft the lead. If I have any issues I will come back here to talk about them. Find bruce (talk) 02:50, 18 September 2017 (UTC)