Jen Jewell Brown’s essay ‘Sex Crimes in Suburbia’ offers another personal insight into the workings of the legal system. Brown’s account of her rape, as a sixteen-yearold, by a middle-class boy in his North Balwyn house, is dispassionately recalled, yet the reader is left in no doubt that the events described had a cataclysmic effect on her. She reflects upon the advances in both the scientific and legal spheres, which now admit detailed forensic evidence and allow closed court hearings to protect victims. It is a memorable essay because of its unflinching assessment of a traumatic experience that was, and presumably still is, under-reported.

It is this fusion of the personal and the legal, the interaction between subjective experience and the objective eye of the law, that generates some of the issue’s best material. Truman Capote’s explanation of his literary technique in In Cold Blood (1966) – that he was attempting to combine ‘the persuasiveness of fact’ with ‘the poetic attitude fiction is capable of reaching’ – informs one of the most interesting essays, ‘Legal Fictions’, by David S. Caudill. In an elegantly written and rigorous examination of Capote’s most famous work, and the recent cinematic depictions of the writing of the book and the criminal court case it was based on, Caudill considers the role of lawyers as ‘persuasive storytellers’: ‘the facts in any legal dispute might support several different interpretations, and each counsel’s resolution of doubts in favour of a client can result in conflicting stories in a trial in which neither counsel is lying.’ Caudill keeps this in mind as he discusses Capote’s often ethically cavalier approach to his material while striving to write a book of reportage that was also a ‘work of art’. This leads to a questioning of the ethics of New Journalism. Caudill asserts that, even though Capote always distanced himself from the New Journalism movement, In Cold Blood contributed to its momentum, but more importantly, that the issues it raises are of direct relevance to the law:

The risks of non-fiction storytelling present challenges not only for New Journalists but also to judges. Every law student learns that facts, in lawyer’s arguments and in judicial opinions, can be selected and manipulated – the facts are as interpretable and unstable as legal doctrine. This phenomenon leads us to consider the ethical limitations on legal storytelling.

Megan Richardson contributes a fascinating short essay discussing the privacy issues around unstaged street photography. In the 1930s and 1940s, American social realist photographer Walker Evans took a series of portraits of New York City subway commuters without their consent. The now famous images were secretly captured using a camera hidden inside his coat. He apparently felt so nervous about potential legal action for invasion of privacy that he waited twenty years to exhibit the images. The exhibition, Many Are Called, later published as a book (1966), presented a compelling gallery of raw, ordinary, unguarded faces. But the legal issues are fascinating. How far can one take the claims of art? What is its legal status? ‘If judges are capable of assessing the contribution of a claimed privacy interest to human dignity,’ Richardson argues, ‘then surely they are also capable of assessing the particular contribution that art can make to our understanding of the human condition.’

John Bryson, author of the best-known book on the Lindy Chamberlain case, Evil Angels (1985), offers an absorbing essay on the role of juries in criminal trials. He discusses the failings and successes of the jury system, with an emphasis on some notorious cases (Chamberlain, Ronald Ryan, Jaidyn Leskie), and explores the unpredictable ways that juries have responded to judicial guidance or even to superficial things about the defendant. The tension between a layman’s perspective and the formalities of the judicial process is potentially dramatic. Like Caudill, Bryson is interested in the different ways a jury can be swayed to acquit or convict a defendant. He believes that judges are expected to guide juries in the law, anticipating potential areas of prejudice and bewilderment, and, in the case of particularly long trials, fatigue. His position is unequivocal: ‘Rogue juries,’ he argues, ‘are the fault of the judge.’

There are many more interesting and absorbing contributions. ‘Law and Justice’, the essay by civil-rights advocate and barrister Julian Burnside, makes a case for the establishment of a Human Rights Act in Australia. Burnside eloquently draws upon examples of injustice to asylum seekers, and traces the historical and political events that have created a divide between justice and the law. In this sobering piece, Burnside demands to know why there is such a lack of empathy for the plight of refugees.

In a lecture delivered at the Two Fires Festival in Braidwood this year, Aboriginal activist Nonie Sharp recalls her involvement in the land-rights movement and, in particular, her work with Eddie Mabo; Bain Attwood analyses the significance of John Batman’s 1835 treaty with the indigenous people of Port Phillip; and Brian McFarlane’s lively critical survey of recent and classic crime feature films, from Hot Fuzz to The Ladykillers, wonders why we love cops and crims on the screen.

The issue is rounded out with some striking poetry and fiction. Kate Middleton’s poem, ‘Notes for a Crime Novel (with Lana Turner)’, impresses with its witty lines and silken imagery; I also liked MTC Cronin’s offerings in homage to Pablo Neruda, Fernando Pessoa and Ranier Maria Rilke. Robert Drewe’s muscular short story, The Lap Pool, which portrays a character up to his neck in corporate fraud and embezzlement charges, is an atmospheric and slightly sinister work. Add to this Michelle de Kretser’s sinuous vignette about a mysterious poisoning in colonial Ceylon, and this is one of the most consistent issues of Meanjin I have read.

Island (109, $11.95 pb, 144 pp) editor Gina Mercer has reason to boast of the prize-winning nature of this issue. The winners of the 2007 Wildcare Tasmania Nature Writing Prize and the 2006 Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize are both published here, as are some of the finalists. Dael Allison’s account of her time spent in Nias, the small Indonesian island devastated by a massive earthquake in the aftermath of the 2006 tsunami, is a confident and evocative piece of writing, and is deserving winner of the Wildcare Prize. Elizabeth Campbell’s winning poem, ‘Structures of the Horse’s Eye’, is entrancing: ‘If you want to better love the world, / ask counsel of those who never come inside.’ With its spiky irreverence and curiosity about the strangeness of animal perspectives, the poem recalls some of Harwood’s sharp wit and intelligence. David McCooey’s work is always noteworthy; I particularly liked ‘Yield’, with its keen observations inspired by the familiar yet fluid landscape rushing past the window of the Geelong to Melbourne train.

Beyond the prize-winners and more established contributors, however, Island seems a little thin when set beside the more robust Meanjin.