University of Wollongong Research Online Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers Faculty of Arts, Social Sciences & Humanities 1-1-2018 Potter v. Minahan: Chinese Australians, the law and belonging in White Australia Kate Bagnall University of Wollongong,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://ro.uow.edu.au/lhapapers Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons, and the Law Commons Recommended Citation Bagnall, Kate, "Potter v. Minahan: Chinese Australians, the law and belonging in White Australia" (2018). Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers. 3628. https://ro.uow.edu.au/lhapapers/3628 Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library:
[email protected] Potter v. Minahan: Chinese Australians, the law and belonging in White Australia Abstract This article tells the story of James Minahan, the Melbourne-born son of a Chinese father and a white Australian mother who was arrested as a prohibited immigrant under the Immigration Restriction Act in 1908. Minahan had been taken to China by his father as a five-year-old boy in 1882 and failed the Dictation Test on his return to Australia 26 years later. After Minahan defeated the charge in the lower courts, the Commonwealth appealed to the High Court - an appeal they lost on the grounds that, despite his years overseas, Minahan had remained a member of the Australian community. Although the case is well known in historical and legal scholarship on Australian immigration and citizenship, existing work has focused primarily on the High Court judgements.