2009 Program

Jennifer is a PhD candidate at The University of Queensland's, TC Berine School of Law.

Kai is a PhD candidate at The University of Queensland's, TC Berine School of Law.

Professor Croucher is a Professor of Law at the University of Macquarie University, she is currently on leave as Commissioner to the Australian Law Reform Commission. She specialises in wills, trusts, equity, legal history, property, and management of use of corpses.

In this presentation Professor Croucher examines the idea of testamentary freedom in its intellectual landscape – history, origins and articulation in contemporary law

Full paper available. Please email research@law.uq.edu.au to obtain a copy.

Professor Vicki Waye is a Professor of Law at the University of South Australia. Professor Waye’s teaching expertise includes arbitration law (both domestic and international), evidence and procedure, corporate law, contract law and wine law. Reflecting the globalised state of commerce and the legal profession, Professor Waye’s research incorporates international and comparative elements, and spans subject matter such as multilateral and bilateral treaties affecting the wine industry, comparisons between the Australian and United States’ systems of criminal procedure, matters affecting access to justice in England, Australia and the United States, and rights attendant upon dissolution of corporations in England, Australia and the United States. Much of her research has been process oriented , that is concerned with the efficacy of legal process. Professor Waye’s current research examines the trading of legal claims at common law in England, Australia and the United States.

In the United States, claims aggregators have appeared as a new form of litigation entrepreneur. Claims aggregators collect claims from nominal claim holders then prosecute the claims in a single action. As such they constitute a potential form of competition for class action attorneys and litigation financiers as providers of access to justice.

This presentation examines claims aggregation in three common law jurisdictions - England, Australia and the United States - and compares claims aggregation with another well established form of entrepreneurial litigation, the class action. Legal and financial impediments to the growth in claims aggregation are also considered.

Peter is a PhD candidate at The University of Queensland's, TC Berine School of Law.

As a means of preserving international uniformity, bills of lading have been regulated by a series of international conventions which have been described as creating, as between the carrier and shipper, an intricate blend of responsibilities and liabilities and rights and immunities in relation to the cargo carried. Against this international framework, should one of the contracting parties be resident in Australia, or the goods ultimately be discharged in an Australian port, or the contract require the provision of Australian services, it is possible that Australian legislation, and in particular the Trade Practices Act 1974 (Cth), would apply to the contract of carriage without one or more of the parties having directed their mind to the anticompetitive conduct proscribed by the Act.

This thesis aims to argue that the application of the Trade Practices Act to the field of international maritime transport where the carriage contract is governed by either a bill of lading and/or a charterterpary is intrusive, and has the material effect of distorting the precisely determined and internationally negotiated liabilities, rights and immunities available to the carrier as established by customary practices and the international framework which governs the carriage of goods by sea.

Jessie is a PhD candidate at The University of Queensland's, TC Berine School of Law.

Public interest litigation has experienced a dramatic growth in the common law jurisdictions since the 1950s. Due to the increasing recognition of the importance of public rights, the courts in Australia and England have allowed a liberal access to court under a generous conception of standing. However, in China, since the first public interest litigation appeared in 1996, it has proceeded with difficulties. Most public interest actions brought to the Chinese courts were dismissed on the ground that the plaintiff did not have standing or the issue was beyond the jurisdiction of the court. Until now, public interest litigation has not been legally accepted, which, to some extent, defers the development of the rule of law and democracy. Against this background, the thesis aims, using legal and comparative perspectives, to explore the legal and institutional factors that impede the progress of public interest litigation in China and how these factors are addressed within the common law jurisdictions. Based on the exploration, the thesis will work out some legal solutions which are suitable to the Chinese situation and which could be achieved in the short term in company with national long-term-oriented judicial reform.

Dr Smith was appointed as a Lecturer with the Monash University at the Faculty of Law in January 2002. His main interests are in legal philosophy, tort law and criminal law. He has published articles on legal philosophy in the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, the Modern Law Review and the Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence, and has recently published a book chapter in Scott Hershovitz (ed.), 'Exploring Law's Empire' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). He graduated from the University of Melbourne in 1997 with a LLB(Hons)/BA(Hons) and received a Masters of Arts degree from the University of Melbourne in 1999. In 2005, he received his doctorate in legal philosophy from Oxford University. He is currently a member of the Australian Society of Legal Philosophy. His areas of expertise are legal philosophy, Criminal law and Tort law.

Andrew Podger is National President of the Institute of Public Administration Australia and Adjunct Professor in public administration at both the ANU and Griffith University. Before his retirement from the Australian Public Service in 2005, he chaired a task force for the Prime Minister on the delivery of health services in Australia. Prior to that, he was the Public Service Commissioner for three years following six years as Secretary of the Department of Health and Aged Care. He has also headed the Departments of Housing and Regional Development and Administrative Services. Since retiring, Andrew has completed a wide range of consultancies including chairing a review of military superannuation, advising on budget reform in the Philippines and chairing a review of the culture of Australian Defence Force training establishments. He has also published articles and spoken frequently on public administration and social policy.

This seminar will provide an practitioners perspective on the administrative and political shifts to the Australian Public Service over the last 30 years including:

• the introduction of administrative law in the late 1970s and early 1980s,
• the New Public Management reforms of the 1980s and 1990s, culminating in the Public Service Act 1999, the Financial Management and Accountability Act 1997, and the CAC Act,
• the developments in training and management of public servants applying program legislation in its many forms, and
• the increasing role of ministerial staff and their influence on administration.

Professor Hall is a Professor of Law at the University of Otago (Wellington, New Zealand). Professor Hall specialises in criminal law, criminology, sentencing, sentencing information systems, transport law, public law, and sports law.

After nine years of a Labour Government in New Zealand, New Zealand has recently elected a National Government. One of Labour’s final gestures was the passage, and implementation in October 2007, of wide-sweeping amendments to the Sentencing Act. While yet to dismantle any of these provisions, the new Government has signalled that a review is imminent. These 2007 amendments were openly and unashamedly acknowledged to be designed to deal with New Zealand’s over-burgeoning prison population. The impact of these amendments will be considered together with the criminal justice package that was a significant feature of National’s highly-trumpeted election promise of “first 100 days in office” policy commitments.

The University of Melbourne, Law School.

The ICC is often derided as the “African Criminal Court.” That criticism cannot easily be dismissed: all of the Office of the Prosecutor’s (OTP) current investigations focus on African states -- Uganda, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Sudan -- and it is analyzing the situations in three other African states, Cote D’Ivoire, Kenya, and Chad, to determine whether formal investigation is warranted. At the same time, the OTP has declined to investigate the situations in a number of non-African states, such as Venezuela and Iraq -- the latter despite its conclusion that there was a “reasonable basis to believe” that UK nationals had willfully killed a number of civilians and subjected a number of others to inhumane treatment.

The OTP has not denied -- nor could it -- that it has focused exclusively on situations in Africa. Instead, it has argued that its investigative decisions have been driven solely by an objective assessment of the gravity of the various situations, as required by Article 53 of the Rome Statute. In its view, the African situations are simply graver than the non-African situations, because they involve far greater numbers of victims.

This presentation critiques the OTP’s quantitative conception of situational gravity. More specifically, it argues that the OTP should de-emphasize the number of victims in a situation in favor of three qualitative factors when it determines the gravity of a situation: (1) whether the situation involves crimes that were committed systematically, as the result of a plan or policy; (2) whether the situation involves crimes that cause “social alarm” in the international community; and (3) whether the situation involves crimes that were committed by States, instead of by rebel groups.

Ms Field joined the Faculty of Law at QUT in 1998.  Since that time she has taught both in the first year program (with a focus on facilitating first year transition to tertiary legal studies), and in dispute resolution subjects.  Her key research interests are family law, women and the law, non-adversarial lawyering and alternative dispute resolution.  Ms Field is close to completing her PhD on ethics in mediation for which she is supervised by Professor Hilary Astor at the University of Sydney.  Ms Field is also currently President of the Management Committee of Women’s Legal Service, Brisbane, having been a member of the committee since 1994.  Ms Field joined the Faculty of Law at QUT in 1998.  Since that time she has taught both in the first year program (with a focus on facilitating first year transition to tertiary legal studies), and in dispute resolution subjects.  Her key research interests are family law, women and the law, non-adversarial lawyering and alternative dispute resolution.  Ms Filed is close to completing her PhD on ethics in mediation for which she is supervised by Professor Hilary Astor at the University of Sydney.  Ms Field is also currently President of the Management Committee of Women’s Legal Service, Brisbane, having been a member of the committee since 1994.

Professor Robertson joined the The University of Melbourne's Law School in 1999. His teaching and research interests are in the law and theory of obligations and remedies. He has written numerous journal articles and book chapters on various issues in private law, mostly involving aspects of contract law, equitable estoppel and remedies.

Dr Peter Billings is a Senior Lecturer at The University of Queensland's TC Beirne School of Law where he teaches in Administrative Law. Previously he worked at the University of Southampton and the University of the West of England, Bristol. He has taught Public Law and Civil Liberties at undergraduate and graduate level, and Refugee Law and Research Methods at postgraduate level. His research interests are in Public Law (particularly administrative justice) and the law relating to refugees, subjects on which he has authored several journal articles. He is currently writing a monograph on comparative asylum law and policy and contributing a chapter on refugee status determination procedures to a collection of essays on Gender and the Law.

Dr Andrew Johnston is a senior lecturer at the TC Beirne School of Law. He teaches and researches company law and corporate governance, and is particularly interested in using economic and sociological theories to analyse law and corporate behaviour. A monograph entitled “EC Regulation of Corporate Governance” will be published by Cambridge University Press in November 2009.

School of Law, University of New England

Cardozo School of Law in New York

The University of Queensland, School of History, Philosophy, Religion & Classics.

Senior lecturer , University of Kent

Kings College of London

Kings College London

University College of London

Ms Bell is an Associate Lecturer at the TC Beirne School of Law, and a PhD Candidate at the Queensland University of Technology. She is in the final stages of her PhD research, which is examining how restrictions on land title and use, particularly those relating to environmental protection, can be most effectively managed within a Torrens framework of land registration. Ms Bell's presentation is based on her PhD research.

Both international and national environmental policy espouse the principle of integrated natural resource management – namely, that decision-making involving the environment should take into account all natural resources. However, in Australia, natural resource management has occurred on a largely fragmented basis, with each natural resource managed under a separate legislative regime.

This fragmented approach to natural resource management has created an information barrier to sustainability. For example, in Queensland it is necessary to consult a myriad of registers, Acts, regulations and plans to adequately ascertain the range of restrictions that affect a parcel of land.

This paper will canvass some of the approaches being used in Australian jurisdictions to provide information on natural resource management. It will discuss the effectiveness of these methods, and critically analyse whether they are meeting the goal of integrated natural resource management. This paper will also briefly discuss suggestions for reform.

Norm Stamper PhD was a police officer for 34 years. He served as chief of the Seattle Police Department from 1998-2000, and as executive director of Mayor Wilson’s Crime Control Commission. He has been an adviser to the Law Enforcement against Prohibition (LEAP) an association of former and current police officials and government agents who believe legalisation and regulation of drugs is the only ethical and efficient means of their control.

Dr Stamper is visiting Australia throughout October and speaking and consulting with stakeholders, agencies and the media under the aegis of the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation (ADLRF) a not-for-profit association advocating harm minimisation strategies. His visit to Queensland is facilitated by the Queensland Council for Civil Liberties (QCCL).

The ‘war on drugs’, particularly in the US, has failed. It has become a US$69billion ‘war on people’, with colossal sums being poured into ineffective policing and judicial and criminal punishment strategies.

This talk will give an insider’s perspective on this failure, from a former high-level police official. It will also consider alternative approaches such as legislation regulating drugs and experiences in Seattle establishing bureaux of Professional Responsibility, Community Policing and Family and Youth Protection.

The University of Bristol

Durham University

Alison is a PhD candidate at The University of Queensland's, TC Berine School of Law.