In his opening essay in this book, Hal Wootten, former judge and law dean, asserts that lawyers and historians are ‘natural allies’. It is certainly true that the common law system builds on reports of the resolution of cases decided long ago and far away. In that sense, legal history lies at the heart of the technique of Australia’s legal system.

Nevertheless, this book indicates that all is not well in the relationship between professional historians and the courts. The historians are puzzled and hurt by the law’s methods of receiving their testimony. Lawyers are cautious about polemical historians who take on the causes of a client. They demand stringent proof of the witnesses’ qualifications and the factual premises for their opinions.

This book, published by the Australian Academy of the Humanities, reproduces papers prepared for a forum held in 2003. What began as an examination of the experience of expert historical witnesses, mostly in Aboriginal claims, becomes broadened into an examination of the topic more generally. Indeed, much of what is written in the book would be relevant to specialist disciplines other than history. Law serves a complex and highly technological society. Somehow, where there are disputes, the complexity has to be reduced in order to render possible an authoritative decision by non-experts.