Describes the encounter between the common law legal system and the tribal people of North America and Australasia. Looking at the nature of British imperialism and the position of non-Christian peoples in the 17th and 18th-centuries, this book describes the historical basis of relations through questions of sovereignty and self-determination.

These issues were addressed in many and varied imperial and colonial contexts, but all jurisdictions have shared remarkable historical parallels which have been accentuated by their common legal heritage. The same questioning continues today in the renewed and controversial claims of the tribal societies to a distinct constitutional position and associated rights of self-determination. Mc Hugh examines the political resurgence of aboriginal peoples in the last quarter of the Twentieth century. A period of 'rights-recognition' was transformed into a second-generation jurisprudence of rights-management and rights-integration. From the 1990s onwards, aboriginal affairs have been driven by an increasingly rampant legalism. Throughout this history, the common law's encounter with tribal peoples not only describes its view of the aboriginal, but also reveals a considerable amount about the common law itself as a language of thought. This is a history of the voyaging common law.

1. Chapter One: Introduction
Chapter Two:
The juridical status of non-Christian polities (to the end of the eighteenth century)
Chapter Three: Aboriginal sovereignty and status in the 'Empire(s) of Uniformity'
Chapter Four: A history of aboriginal status - the legal recognition of the individual and the group
Chapter 5:
aboriginal societies and international law: a history of sovereignty, status and land
Chapter 6:
An overview of the era of aboriginal self-determination
Chapter 7: Achieving recognition during the 1970s and '80s- foundations for a modern jurisprudence
Chapter 8: Moving beyond recognition: aboriginal governance in the turbulent 1990s
Chapter 9: Living Together Less Contentiously: the Jurisprucence of Reconciliation in the 1990s