October Graduate Researcher Colloquium 2023

PhD Completion: Ella Vines
(Supervisors: Margaret Young and Jackie Peel)

At the Coalface: Legal Constraints on Coal Consumption and Extraction in Australia after the Paris Agreement

This thesis examines the influence of the Paris Agreement on the regulation of coal consumption and extraction in Australia. While the Paris Agreement does not expressly regulate this activity, despite its contribution to anthropogenic climate change, the parties commit to ongoing implementation of measures to meet temperature targets. The thesis finds that laws from a variety of specialised legal spheres including human rights and business law create legal pathways for the regulation of GHGs from coal. Drawing on domestic litigation in Australia, the thesis points to the guiding role of the Paris Agreement in the interrelationships between the analysed laws.

PhD Completion: Rafiqa Qurrata A'yun
(Supervisors: Tim Lindsey and Amanda Whiting)

Blasphemy Laws in Democratic Indonesia

This thesis examines the persistence of blasphemy provisions and their increasing use in post-authoritarian Indonesia. It addresses the question of why these provisions continue to be used despite the state's claims of guaranteeing freedom of religion and belief. I argue that their persistence reflects the illiberal nature of Indonesian legal and political order, which renders laws that privilege religious orthodoxy, like blasphemy provisions, a useful instrument for religious mobilisation for political purposes. This argument seeks to contribute to conceptual debates in this field that have been dominated by analyses of the cultural distinctiveness of Indonesian society and the lack of modern bureaucratic and legal institutions supporting secularisation.

PhD Completion: Jade Roberts
(Supervisors: Michelle Foster and Hilary Charlesworth)

Beyond the State: Approaches to Statelessness in International Law

The dominant approach to statelessness, reflected in the UNHCR Global Action Plan to End Statelessness 2014-2024, views statelessness as a legal anomaly: an exceptional occurrence and a problem to be solved by states through the grant of nationality. This framing of statelessness is problematic for a number of reasons, including because it obscures the role of states in the often-deliberate production of statelessness. This thesis explores alternative approaches to conceptualising and addressing statelessness. I identify and map five alternatives — global citizenship, regional citizenship, city citizenship, offshore citizenship and digital citizenship — and assess the implications of their adoption for the global efforts to address statelessness.

PhD Completion: Nick Ampt
(Supervisors: Christine Parker and Karen Jones)

Zoorisprudence: A Theory of Legal Personhood for Animals

To protect animals against abuse, liberal animal law theorists argue that animals should have legal personhood, the high legal status that humans have—as against property, the low legal status that animals now have. This argument, however, has been criticised on two sides. At one end, conservative animal law theorists argue that animal legal personhood is too radical. At the other end, critical animal law theorists argue that it is not radical enough. In this thesis, I strengthen and defend the liberal argument for animal legal personhood. Animal legal personhood is just radical enough.

PhD Completion: Lisa Archbold
(Supervisors: Megan Richardson and Andrew Kenyon)

Children’s developmental privacy law

My thesis contributes to the growing body of literature and discourse on children’s privacy law. I argue that in the digital environment it is useful to think about privacy for children in terms of their development, and I call this framework children’s developmental privacy. I claim that firstly, we should recognise that privacy is important and should be valued when it enables children to flourish and develop, both individually and collectively. Secondly, I claim that children’s privacy should be grounded in relational autonomy. In doing so, I propose we can better conceptualise and articulate the normative boundaries of children’s privacy laws.

PhD Completion: Saika Sabir
(Supervisors: Farrah Ahmed, Beth Gaze and Chantal Morton)

Citizens and Migrants in Assam: Law, Bureaucracy and Indirect Discrimination Against Women

In this thesis, I addressed a vital issue that has received inadequate attention in debates concerning women’s citizenship in India: do India’s laws, policies and practices relating to citizenship indirectly discriminate against women, and if so, by what mechanism? I researched this question in the context of the citizenship determination process in Assam, India, which visibly excluded more women than men from citizenship. Drawing upon an empirical data set, I argue and establish that India’s legal regime and practices relating to citizenship consistently produce disproportionately disadvantageous outcomes for women, amounting to systemic and indirect discrimination against them. This is distinct from any direct forms of discrimination.