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Suri Ratnapala

Professor of Law   Office: 351 GPN3 building, St Lucia campus Phone: +61 7 33652460 Fax: +61 7 33651454 Email: s.ratnapala@law.uq.edu.au Consultation: SSP

 Biography

Suri Ratnapala is Professor of Public Law at The University of Queensland. He holds the degrees of LLB (Colombo); LLM (Macquarie) and PhD (Qld), and teaches constitutional law and jurisprudence, fields in which he has published widely. Professor Ratnapala's work has received international acclaim, with his book Welfare State or Constitutional State? being awarded a Sir Anthony Fisher International Memorial Prize by a jury chaired by Nobel Laureate James Buchanan. He is the author of Australian Constitutional Law: Foundations and Theory 2nd ed, 2007 and the co-author of Australian Constitutional Law: Commentary and Cases 2007, published by the Oxford University Press. Professor Ratnapala's latest book Jurisprudence was published by the Cambridge University Press in June 2009. He has received fellowships from the prestigious international research centres, the Institute of Humane Studies, George Mason University, Virginia, the Social Philosophy and Policy Centre of the Bowling Green State University, Ohio and the International Centre for Economic Research, Turin, Italy. In 1998, his work received further recognition when he was elected to the membership of the Mont Pelerin Society, the international grouping of liberal intellectuals. In 2000, he received a John Templeton Foundation Award for his course 'Advanced Constitutional Law and Theory', granted 'on the basis of uniqueness, innovation, and interdisciplinarity and the balance of political, economic and social theory'. In 2003 he was awarded a Centenary of Australian Federation Medal by the Governor-General of Australia for his contribution to Australian society through research in law and economics. In 2007 Professor Ratnapala was made an Alan McGregor Fellow of the Centre for Independent Studies.

Professor Ratnapala has been a consultant with the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and AusAid in institutional capacity building projects in Asia. Prior to entering the academy he was Senior State Counsel in Sri Lanka. Professor Ratnapala's main academic interests are in constitutional law and theory, legal philosophy, and constitutional political economy.

 Research Interests

 Courses Taught