Australia is a signatory to a whole host of international human rights agreements. Some of these agreements include undertakings and expectations in relation to how criminal proceedings will be conducted. The statutory provisions which govern proceedings, including those in the Code, are subject to common law. This means the intepretations given by judges when they apply the provisions in actual cases. In doing this work, judges are expected to be cognisant, to varying degrees, of our international human and civil rights obligations. There is stong opinion among some members of the judiciary and legal professions that these obligations affect the extent to which a court can competently give an order excluding the use of a jury. This, together with the strong existing common law presumption against allowing a judge alone to determine subjective intention is what produces the implication that a murder trial ought not to be decided by a judge alone. Hopefully this addresses both your queries. If not, it would be great if we had a thread to talk specifically about procedural issues.