Introduction

Abstract

Visitors to the National Museum of Australia's repository can encounter a crazy mechanical sculpture, entitled 'The Law Machine', constructed by political cartoonist Bruce Petty. A distinctive lawyer's wig, copperplate writing on wood, antique money, musical instruments, knives, forks and a range of old and new everyday objects are loosely assembled into an anthropomorphic machine evoking centuries-old traditions. When the handle of this unique apparatus is turned, the adversarial system pits defence against prosecution to process money, persuasion, judgement, penalties and human rights in an apparently random fashion. Consuming at the wig end and excreting jurisprudential outcomes at the other, Petty's Law Machine surprises the legal system's unclear logic and the icons of its authority.