Across this year and 2020 Melbourne Law School farewells 12 distinguished academic colleagues. Concurrently, we welcome these scholars to honorary academic appointments. Taken together, this group has contributed approximately 300 years of service to Melbourne Law School. Each has anecdotes and insights about your Law School, its students, the ways universities have evolved across time, legal scholarship and law reform. To capture their experience, we have embarked on an oral history project. Rest assured their collective wisdom and experience remains available to MLS through their honorary appointments.
I know that many of you will have fond memories of departing staff, either from your time here as a student or through your ongoing relationship with MLS since graduating. The honour role of 2020 retirees includes: Professor Michael Crommelin AO (Dean of MLS for nearly two decades); Dr Linda Haller and Associate Professor Martin Vranken. In 2021, Associate Professor Mark Burton, Associate Professor Andrew Godwin, Associate Professor Cally Jordan, Associate Professor Michael Kobetsky, Professor Ian Malkin, Professor Bernadette McSherry, Professor Ann O’Connell, Professor Bruce Oswald CSC and Professor Ian Ramsay retire. I know you join with me in celebrating the contribution of these outstanding scholars, and I look forward to their ongoing connection with MLS.
As the country marks NAIDOC Week in July, MLS will launch its Indigenous Law and Justice Hub led by Associate Dean (Indigenous Programs) Eddie Cubillo and Professor Kirsty Gover. Dr Amanda Porter, who joined MLS in 2020, is a key member of the Hub’s criminal justice research and teaching focussed initiatives. I look forward to inviting you to future events hosted by the Hub, such as the upcoming discussion on water sovereignty, climate futures and the academy. If you would like to find out more, please join the Hub’s mailing list.
Later this month MLS will host the Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies Constitutional Law Conference. Convened by Professors Adrienne Stone and Jason Varuhas, the virtual conference will address two main themes: the rule of law (including its place in the High Court’s constitutional case law, Indigenous perspectives, and comparative lessons), and government, courts and the law after COVID-19 (including legal issues arising from hotel quarantine, legal regulation of the use of soft law, emergency powers, and the use of technology in court proceedings). We welcome you to register for this virtual conference.
In July we are also hosting the inaugural Ann O’Connell Distinguished Tax Lecture where David Bradbury will join us virtually to discuss tax challenges relating to the digitalisation of the economy, and the Sir Kenneth Bailey Memorial Lecture, currently scheduled in person, to consider international law’s response to the development of autonomous weapons and cyber capabilities. I invite you to join us for this stimulating program.
As always, stay well, stay safe, and stay in touch.
Professor Pip Nicholson
Dean, Melbourne Law School
Alumni recognised in Queen's Birthday Day Honours list 2021
Melbourne Law School congratulates a number of our alumni who were recently recognised in the 2021 Queen’s Birthday Honours list. The awards are a testament to the contributions and outstanding commitment made by MLS alumni to the Australian community.
News and Analysis
Unregulated non-doping performance-enhancing strategies in elite sport
Many of us are aware of anti-doping regulations in elite sport, but there are also unregulated non-doping performance-enhancing strategies that give an inequitable advantage to some athletes, says Doctoral Researcher Chui Ling Goh.
The news that Australia’s financial services regulator will take five AMP group companies to court over them charging life insurance and advice fees to dead people is a wake-up call to corporations, write Professors Jeannie Paterson and Elise Bant.
While the Government has introduced some significant changes with the Sex Discrimination and Fair Work (Respect at Work) Amendment Bill, it missed an opportunity to fully embrace Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins’ report and implement comprehensive change, writes Professor Beth Gaze.
Undertake a PhD in a cross-disciplinary subject pertaining to AI and Digital Ethics
The Centre for AI and Digital Ethics (CAIDE) is offering two PhD scholarships for domestic students looking to pursue research in the field of AI Ethics. Students will join a vibrant cross-disciplinary research centre and will be invited to participate in ongoing activities and research at CAIDE. Students must have two supervisors from differing CAIDE member faculties (Engineering and IT, Science, Arts and Melbourne Law School) to ensure the PhD is cross-disciplinary by design.
Domestic students are invited to submit proposals by Sunday 18 July and research must commence by the end of 2021.
Water sovereignty, climate futures and the academy: Can we heal country on stolen Indigenous land?
The 2021 theme of NAIDOC week is: Heal Country! This event will highlight a recent project from Melbourne Law School that demonstrates the power of respectful, justice-oriented research partnerships, reflecting on how settler and Indigenous knowledges can be brought together to heal Country and address the myriad challenges posed by the climate crisis.
This webinar will explore financial services laws in Australia through the lens of the Company and Securities Law Journal Special Issue: Financial Services Laws – Understanding the Devil in the Detail, launched by the Australian Law Reform Commission.
David Bradbury, from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and former Australian Assistant Treasurer, will present the inaugural lecture of this new series, named in honour of Professor Ann O’Connell who is retiring from the Law School after teaching for 40 years. The lecture will address the tax challenges of the digitalisation of the economy, including recent global developments at the G7 and G20.
In this lecture, Associate Professor Rain Liivoja, Deputy Dean (Research) from the University of Queensland Law School, will discuss the major debates about the adequacy of the current legal regulation of armed conflict on the increased autonomy in weapon systems and the proliferation of cyber capabilities. Professor Liivoja will seek to provide a general account of the similarities and differences of these two regulatory debates, and what these might mean for the future of the law of armed conflict and arms control law.
The Australia Chapter of the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) is spearheading a summer clerkship program for penultimate and final-year law students to experience working with an in-house legal team.
The ACC is currently seeking expressions of interest from in-house legal teams. Find out more about how you could host a law student clerk in your in-house legal team. The deadline for EOIs is 15 July 2021.
In the Media
The state of Australia’s publishing industry
IP law expert Associate Professor Rebecca Giblin speaks with The Guardian about Australia's publishing industry and her project Untapped: The Australian Literary Heritage Project, which aims to digitise 200 of Australia’s most important 'lost books'.