Judgment review: ABC makes a case for cases that changed Australia

The ABC’s commitment to using the medium of television to educate viewers is increasingly impressive. If you wanted to teach people about things in 2026, would free-to-air television be the way you’d go about it? Of course not, and not only because the only people watching free-to-air left school decades ago.

Fortunately, Judgment: Cases That Changed Australia is as much a legal drama as it is a social studies lesson. Even if you already know the results of the cases covered here – including marriage equality and Mabo – there’s an intrinsic tension to watching a court case unfold, especially when the stakes are this high.

This series takes full advantage of that and, as we discover more than once, just because a case seems settled doesn’t mean someone’s not going to take another pull on the judicial pokie machine to see if they can get a different result.

Australia’s landmark legal cases

Across four episodes this examines a series of cases decided by the High Court of Australia that, as the title gives away, changed Australia. Cases brought before the High Court are often the result of activists or other motivated parties looking to change the law in a way politicians won’t; they’re a way to push change forward when other methods have either failed or aren’t available.

Week one is ‘Love’, looking at a decade-long struggle through the 1990s to strike down Tasmania’s law against consensual sex between two adult men. The tide had firmly turned against such laws on the mainland, but conservative forces in Tasmania stuck to their guns.

The efforts to overturn the law in Tasmania led to a prolonged campaign to allow same-sex couples to marry nationwide, with the High Court playing a central role.

‘Mabo’ features the long-running (nothing happens quickly when the High Court is involved) battle to overturn the concept of Terra Nullius – the idea that before the white man, Australia was a vacant continent. The story of Eddie Mabo’s legal fight is put into a wider context here; even once a judgment is handed down, the battle to implement it (or not) still continues.

‘We Will Decide’ looks at the contentious nature of our immigration laws, with the High Court first ruling one way, then the other. In 2000, the court sides with the Howard Government, giving the green light to some of the harshest anti-immigration laws in the world by endorsing indefinite immigration detention. Then in 2023 the High Court had the opportunity to strike down that precedent, forcing the now Labor government to pass new laws to try and keep indefinite detention on the books.

The final episode, ‘Vote’, looks at a string of cases deciding who gets to vote in Australia. Can prisoners vote? Can the government close the rolls early, denying first-time voters the chance to register? Or will common sense and justice prevail? At this stage of the series, the answer is legitimately up in the air.

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The human impact of legal decisions

Judgment: Cases That Changed Australia is as much a historical document as it is a legal one. Interviews with participants, reenactments, archival footage – all the usual methods are in play here. Deeply personal and moving stories play out next to often shockingly outdated views.

It seems Tasmanian politicians were happy to say publicly that if homosexuality was decriminalised, ‘thousands’ of gays would come crowding into Tasmania and ‘get their own way and everything they want’. Tasmania should be so lucky.

The one constant across the four episodes is the court itself. It’s less politicised here than it’s US equivalent, but it’s not exactly unaware of the way the wind is blowing either. There’s a largely unspoken question running throughout the series as to whether an unelected body should have so much power to shape things. Then again, someone’s got to interpret the laws Parliament hands down.

Whether the cases and verdicts shown here are a true representation of the High Court’s political leanings and role in our society is a matter well above the pay grade of a TV reviewer. Purely as television, Judgment is yet another first-rate attempt to slip viewers an educational pill (it’s both a history lesson and an example of how our political and justice system work) into a tasty slice of dramatic storytelling.

Just don’t expect any heated cross-examinations or judges banging their gavel before saying in a serious tone ‘I’m going to allow it’.

Judgment: Cases that Changed Australia premieres 14 April on ABC TV, with all four episodes available to stream on ABC iView.

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