Demandred said:
I am abit surprised that the HCA had to fully carve Brown in stone.
I've only briefly skimmed the
Banditt judgment, and by that I mean I skimmed topic sentences, but I'd been inclined to infer that the clarification of
Brown was necessary due to the Lord Mustill's very strong dissent in it.
The dissent raised a lot of controversy in English law and was probably, at least in academic and judicial circles, very unsettled in Australia as well.
From memory I think it was mainly humanitarian/queer groups protesting in England with relation to judges' generally conservatively negative views on homosexual masochistic activities because a subsequent case in which a husband carved his name in his wife's butt cheeks was charged with same convictions as in
Brown when she suffered "grievous injuries", but not convicted. I guess there were also other important matters of contention too.