Supreme Court of Cocos (Keeling) Island - Background To Establishment of Court

Background To Establishment of Court

The Territory of Cocos (Keeling) Island consists of approximately 27 coral islands located in the Indian Ocean about 2700 kilometres north-west of Perth, Western Australia. William Keeling discovered the uninhabited Islands in 1609. Alexander Hare first settled them in 1820 with people of Malay origin. In 1827 John Clunies-Ross settled on the Island to harvest coconuts. The Islands are named after the coconut “Cocos Nucifera”. The British Government annexed the Islands in 1857. The Islands became a territory of Australia on 23 November 1955 after having been administered as a dependency of the British Crown Colony of Singapore. As a result of the transfer in 1955, all laws in force before the transfer were to continue except as amended or repealed by Ordinance. The laws inherited have been described as “a complex legal legacy”. They include United Kingdom law, Straits Settlements laws, and Singapore laws. Punishments, such as whipping and beating, were still available as options for dealing with criminal offences.

Read more about this topic:  Supreme Court Of Cocos (Keeling) Island

Famous quotes containing the words background and/or court:

    Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.
    Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)

    “But such as you and I do not seem old
    Like men who live by habit. Every day
    I ride with falcon to the river’s edge
    Or carry the ringed mail upon my back,
    Or court a woman; neither enemy,
    Game-bird, nor woman does the same thing twice....”
    William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)