Daniel Lavery

Daniel graduated Arts and Law from the University of Queensland and began his legal career with the Department of Justice. He then investigated deaths for the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in both Queensland and the Northern Territory before pursuing postgraduate studies on indigenous legal issues at the University of Ottawa in the Canadian capital.

While studying in Ottawa, he conducted the inaugural study of Indigenous Australians and the law school experience.  This was published in the Legal Education Review in 1993 as 'The Participation of Indigenous Australians in Legal Education' and resulted in a national network of successful pre-law programs for Indigenous students entering upon legal studies (see Lawyers in Australia by John Littrich & Karina Murray (Federation Press, 2007)). That research also kick-started an increased awareness of the need to make legal studies and the legal profession more receptive to indigenous perspectives.  (The law school model has been adapted for Australian medical schools and has likewise been very successful in getting Indigenous students into such studies and retaining them to graduation.)

He returned from Canada to work throughout northern Australia on native title/infrastructure issues as a lawyer and negotiator while completing a PhD on indigenous sovereignties re-emerging in the Australian jural landscape in the native title era.  He argued that the recognition of native title in each of the 600+ positive determinations of native title in the post-Native Title Act era is an affirmation and re-emergence of the ancient allodial sovereignties that existed prior to British colonisation.

In the course of his work, Daniel has visited many discrete Indigenous communities throughout northern and central Australia including Aurukun, Bamaga, Bäniyala/Blue Mud Bay, Cherbourg, Daguragu, Doomadgee, Elliot, Ganbalanya/Oenpelli, Haasts Bluff, Hermannsburg, Jilkmangan, Jumbun, Kalkarindji, Kowanyama, Lockhart River, Mer/Murray Island, Milikapiti, Moa Island, Mt Liebig, Gununa/Mornington Island, Mowanjum, Napranum, Nauiyu/Daly River, Ngukurr, Palm Island, Peppimenarti, Pormpuraaw, Papunya, Thursday Island, Wooliana, Woorabinda, Wujal Wujal, Yirrkala and Yuendumu.

His forthcoming article is an examination of the unresolved issue of whether compensation is payable for the extinquishment of native title at common law.  In the only decision in Australian law to touch on the issue, the Mabo [No 2] decision in 1992, native title was recognised in the Australian common law but it also narrowly concluded 4:3 that the extinquishment of native title at common law was not compensable.  Dr Lavery argues that this issue is now ripe for re-examination.

Dr Lavery is a leading authority on the legal position of Australia's Indigenous peoples in the pre-Constitutional colonial framework.

In early 2026 (February through May) Daniel is a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University's College of Law, Policy and Governance where, at the invitation of the ANU's First Nations Portfolio and the National Native Title Council, he is assisting their Indigenous-led 'Unfinished Business and the Law' research project.

Daniel has published widely including, most recently:

- (with Harry Hobbs) The Present Judicial Burden of Justifying Past Dispossession: Thomas and Saik’uz First Nation v Rio Tinto Alcan Inc., Public Law Review (forthcoming in 2026 Volume 37 Issue 1)

- (2025) Searching for Terra Nullius in all the Wrong Places, James Cook University Law Review, 31, 147

- (2023) Native Title as Property: Yunupingu v Commonwealth, James Cook University Law Review, 29, 125

- (2022) Renovating the Orthodox Theory of Australian Territorial Sovereignty, University of New South Wales Law Journal, 45 (2) 499

- (2020) Judicial Distancing in the High Court: Love/Thoms v Commonwealth, James Cook University Law Review, 26, 159

- (2019) No Decorous Veil: the continuing reliance on an enlarged terra nullius notion in Mabo [No 2], Melbourne University Law Review, 43 (1) 233

Daniel has a forthcoming publication, The Killing of Charlie, focusing on an Indigenous death in custody in remote Cape York Peninsula.