Reflections on 'Thick Decisions': The Importance of Power, Privilege and Textual Analysis in Responding to the Legal Colonisation of Anthropology (Response and Reply: Edmond's 'Thick Decisions' Oceania 74(3)‪)‬

In 'Thick decisions' (Oceania 74(3) 2004) Gary Edmond explores how 'judges practically [manage] law and evidence' in their judgments and how they do so using principles of legal reasoning (2004:190 emphasis mine). Edmond's case-in-point is Justice John von Doussa's judgment in the Federal Court of Australia known as 'Chapman v Luminis (No 5) [2001] FCA 1106' handed down on 21 August 2001. (1) Edmond explores how von Doussa managed the relationship of 'law and evidence' on questions of expertise. The paper's specific focus is von Doussa's judgment of my performance in a consultancy I undertook for the Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement in June/July 1994. That consultancy related to an application for protection under the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act, 1984 (Cwlth) (2) brought by Ngarrindjeri women in South Australia. (3) Edmond sought to reveal through his analysis the 'complexities in judging, especially in the combination of law and evidence, and degrees of indeterminacy and polysemy ... to provide a depth of description, analysis and comparison generally missing in discussions about anthropology and the law and anthropologists as expert' (Edmond, 2004: 219). Importantly, Edmond concludes his article by asking whether anthropologists can reflect upon and theorise the 'legal colonization' of anthropology. He invites us to reconsider how we respond to the appropriation of anthropology in legal contexts (Edmond, 2004:221).