Staff
- Professor Adrienne Stone
- Professor Cheryl Saunders AO
- Professor Carolyn Evans
- Professor Simon Evans
- Associate Professor Kris Walker
- Associate Professor Michelle Foster
- Associate Professor Beth Gaze
- Associate Professor Pip Nicholson
- Mr Glenn Patmore
- Associate Professor Joo-Cheong Tham
- Dr Margaret Young
- Dr Kirsty Gover
- Dr Lael Weis
- Mr Ben Saunders
Professor Adrienne Stone
Director CCCS
Adrienne Stone became the Director of the Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies in July 2008. She was appointed to a Chair in Law in 2007. Her research interests lie in constitutional law, comparative constitutional law and constitutional theory. She has published extensively on Australian constitutional law, with a special focus on freedom of political communication, comparative constitutional law of freedom of speech and the legal and institutional questions surrounding bills of rights Her recent publications include Structural Judicial Review and the Judicial Role in Constitutional Law, (2010), University of Toronto Law Review (invited symposium); Comparativism in Constitutional Interpretation [2009] New Zealand Law Review 45;and Judicial Review without Rights, (2008) 28 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 1-32. She holds a grant from the Australian Research Council for a 4 year project investigating freedom of expression in democratic states.
She is Secretary of the Council of the Australian Association of Constitutional Law and a member of the Executive Committee of the International Association of Constitutional Law.
More information: faculty profile.
Email: a.stone@unimelb.edu.au
Professor Cheryl Saunders AO
Laureate Professor
Personal Chair in Law
Foundation Director CCCS
Cheryl Saunders is a laureate professor and holds a personal chair in law. She was the foundation Director of the Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies.
Cheryl Saunders has specialist interests in constitutional law and comparative public law, including federalism and intergovernmental relations and constitutional design and change, on all of which she has written widely. She is presently working on two major projects: an account of the Australian Constitution written from a comparative constitutional perspective and a text on comparative constitutional law.
Other positions presently held by Cheryl Saunders include President of the International Association of Centres for Federal Studies, member of the advisory board of International IDEA and member of the Program Committee of the Forum of Federations. She is an editor of the Public Law Review, a member of the advisory board of I.CON and a member of the editorial boards of a range of Australian and international journals, including Publius, Jus Politicum and the Constitutional Court Review, South Africa. She has held visiting positions at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Paris II, Indiana (Bloomington), Hong Kong, Copenhagen, Fribourg, Capetown and Auckland and has an honorary doctorate from the University of Cordoba, Argentina. She is President Emeritus of the International Association of Constitutional Law and a former President of the Administrative Review Council of Australia. In 2010, she will teach courses at Georgetown University on comparative constitutional law and constitution building.
In addition to her research and teaching activities, Cheryl Saunders is active in public debate on constitutional matters in Australia and internationally. From 1991, as deputy chair of the Australian Constitutional Centenary Foundation, she was closely involved in its pioneering work to encourage public understanding of the Constitution. She has had some involvement in aspects of constitutional design in other countries, including Fiji, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka, East Timor, Bhutan, Iraq and Nepal.
In 1994, Cheryl Saunders was made an officer of the Order of Australia, for services to the law and to public administration. She was awarded a Centenary Medal in 2003, and is a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur. She is also a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and a Foundation Fellow of the Australian Academy of law.
More information: faculty profile
E-mail: c.saunders@unimelb.edu.au
Professor Carolyn Evans
Deputy Director CCCS
Carolyn Evans is Deputy Director of the Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies. Her teaching and research are in the areas of constitutional law, human rights and religious freedom. Carolyn has degrees in Arts and Law from Melbourne University and a doctorate from Oxford University where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar and where she held a stipendiary lectureship for two years before returning to Melbourne in 2000. She also qualified to practice law and is a barrister and solicitor of the Supreme Court of Victoria. In 2010, Carolyn was awarded a Fulbright Senior Scholarship to allow her to travel as a Visiting Fellow at American and Emory Universities to examine questions of comparative religious freedom.
Carolyn is the author of Religious Freedom under the European Court of Human Rights (OUP 2001) and co-author of Australian Bills of Rights: The Law of the Victorian Charter and the ACT Human Rights Act (LexisNexis 2008). She is co-editor of Religion and International Law (1999, Kluwer); Mixed Blessings: Laws, Religions and Women's Rights in the Asia-Pacific Region (2006 Martinus Nijhoff) and Law and Religion in Historical and Theoretical Perspective (CUP 2008). She is an internationally recognised expert on religious freedom and the relationship between law and religion and has spoken on these topics in the United States, United Kingdom, Russia, China, Greece, Vietnam, India, Hong Kong, Switzerland, Malaysia, Nepal and Australia.
From 2007-2010 she is undertaking a joint ARC Discovery Project with Beth Gaze on the topic of religious freedom and non-discrimination that explores religious exemptions to non-discrimination laws and the relationship between religious freedom and equality. She also researches on the area of domestic protection of human rights, particularly the role of parliament in the protection of human rights and Commonwealth Bills of Rights and held a grant on this topic with Professor Simon Evans. Papers from both grants can be found on the website of the Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies.
More information: faculty profile
E-mail: c.evans@unimelb.edu.au.
Professor Simon Evans
Former Deputy Dean
Former Director CCCS
Simon Evans was Deputy Dean of Melbourne Law School from July 2007 to July 2010. His research and teaching are focused in the field of comparative public law. In late 2009 he was awarded an ARC Discovery Project grant to carry out research on the executive branch of government. He recently completed a major project with colleague Professor Carolyn Evans investigating the capacity of parliaments to protect human rights and the effectiveness of the Commonwealth model of human rights protection. He has also worked on the implementation of the Victorian Charter of Human Rights. Other interests include constitutional property rights, accountability of executive government and constitutional theory. He was Australasian Recent Developments Correspondent for I.CON (the International Journal of Constitutional Law) from its establishment. He was Director of the Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies from 2005 to 2007 and Director of Teaching from 2004 to 2006. He was a national finalist in the Australian Awards for University Teaching in 2005 and a Universitas 21 Teaching Fellow in 2006-7.
His latest working papers can be downloaded from SSRN.
More information: faculty profile
E-mail: s.evans@unimelb.edu.au
Associate Professor Kristen Walker
Kristen Walker is an Associate Professor at the University of Melbourne. Prior to joining the Law Faculty, she completed her articles with Arthur Robinson and Hedderwicks in Melbourne and also served as Associate to Sir Anthony Mason, then Chief Justice of Australia. Kristen teaches Constitutional Law and Law and Sexuality in the LLB program and, in the Melbourne Law Masters, Principles of Public and International Law. She has also taught international human rights law and legal ethics at Columbia Law School in New York.
Kristen's research interests are in constitutional law, law and sexuality, and international law, particularly human rights and refugee law. Kristen also practices at the Victorian Bar, where she specializes in constitutional law.
More information: faculty profile
E-mail: k.walker@unimelb.edu.au.
Associate Professor Michelle Foster
Michelle Foster is a Senior Lecturer and Director of the International Refugee Law Research Programme in the Institute for International Law and the Humanities. Her teaching and research interests are in the areas of public law, international refugee law, and international human rights law.
Michelle graduated with a BComm (Hons) and LLB from the University of New South Wales in 1996 and then worked as Research Director for the Hon AM Gleeson AC (then Chief Justice of NSW) in 1997. From 1997-2000 Michelle was the Legal Research Officer for the Solicitor-General and Crown Advocate of NSW, and also tutored part-time in Industrial Law at the
More information: faculty profile.
Email: m.foster@unimelb.edu.au
Associate Professor Beth Gaze
More information: faculty profile.
Email: egaze@unimelb.edu.au
Professor Pip Nicholson
Pip Nicholson joined the Asian Law Centre in 1997 and was a Senior Fellow of the Faculty from 1998. She joined the Faculty permanently as a lecturer in 2002, becoming a senior lecturer in 2004 and Director of Teaching in 2006-2007. A graduate in Law and Arts from the University of Melbourne with a Masters in Public Policy from the Australian National University and doctorate form the Law School University of Melbourne, Pip teaches on the Vietnamese legal system in both the LLB and Law Masters of the Melbourne Law School and teaches on Vietnamese law to a consortium of American law-schools.
Pip's doctoral research focused on the Vietnamese court system between 1945 and 1976, in the course of an analysis of the extent to which the Vietnamese legal system mirrored or diverged from its Soviet parent.
Pip is interested in the challenges of cross-cultural legal research and legal reform - particularly within Asia. She has recently completed research on corruption within the Vietnamese court system, the reforms to the Vietnamese court system commenced in 2002 and the take-up of labour law reforms in Vietnam. In 2005, she co-edited with John Gillespie, Socialism and Legal Change: The Dynamics of Vietnamese and Chinese Reform. Her most recent publication is Borrowing Court Systems: the Experience of Socialist Vietnam (Martinus Nijhoff, 2007). Her current research explores local Vietnamese mediation, drugs prosecutions within Vietnam and the utility of legal culture in the study of the transforming legal systems within Asia. Pip currently consults on changes in transitional legal systems, with particular focus on Vietnam.
More information: faculty profile.
Email: p.nicholson@unimelb.edu.au
Mr Glenn Patmore
Glenn Patmore studied law at Monash University, Australia and Queens University, Canada. He has been admitted to practice as a Barrister and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Victoria.
Glenn was a senior Tutor in Law at Monash University and currently works as a Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Melbourne. He has taught Torts, Constitutional and Administrative Law and an optional course on Australian democracy and the law entitled: Rethinking Australian Democracy: History, Politics and the Law.
He is presently researching and writing in the fields of democratic theory and practice, constitutional law, republicanism, industrial law and human rights law.
Glenn is a member of both the Centre for Employment and Labour Relations Law and Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies.
More information: faculty profile.
Email: g.patmore@unimelb.edu.au
Associate Professor Joo-Cheong Tham
Joo-Cheong Tham is a Senior Lecturer at the Law Faculty and has taught at the law schools of Victoria University and La Trobe University. His key research areas are the regulation of non-standard work and political finance law. He has also undertaken considerable research into counter-terrorism laws. He has published over 25 book chapters and refereed articles. His research has also been published in print and online media with Joo-Cheong having written more than 30 opinion pieces. He has also given evidence to parliamentary inquiries into terrorism laws and political finance law.
He is currently working on two separate areas. The first concerns the challenges of temporary migrant work to labour regulation, a project he is undertaking with Dr Iain Campbell, Centre for Applied Social Research, RMIT University. In the area of political finance, Joo-Cheong's book, Money and Politics: The Democracy We Can't Afford was published by UNSW Press in 2010. He is also currently editing two books, both of which will be published in 2011: one to be published by Routledge is devoted to international perspectives on political finance while the other, which has the working title, 'Electoral Regulation and Prospects for Australian Democracy', will be published by Melbourne University Press. Together with Associate Professor Graeme Orr, University of Queensland and Professor Brian Costar, he is leading an Australian Research Council project, Dollars and Democracy: The Dynamics of Australian Political Finance and its Regulation (2010-2013).
Joo-Cheong graduated with a LLB (Hons) from the University of Melbourne in 1998 and completed an LLM in 2003 with the same university. He was granted a doctorate of laws by the University of Melbourne on the basis of his thesis that examined the legal precariousness of casual employment. In 2007-2008, he was a British Academy Visiting Fellow at the Law School, King's College, University of London. He was also the Rydon Fellow for Australian Politics and History at the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, King's College, University of London in 2008.
More information: faculty profile.
Email: j.tham@unimelb.edu.au
Associate Professor Jeremy Gans
Jeremy Gans is an Associate Professor in Melbourne Law School, where he researches and teaches across all aspects of the criminal justice system. He holds higher degrees in both law and criminology. In 2007, he was appointed as the Human Rights Adviser to the Victorian Parliament's Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee.
Dr John Waugh
John Waugh researches and teaches in Australian constitutional law and history.
More information: faculty profile.
Email: j.waugh@unimelb.edu.au
Dr Margaret Young
Margaret Young joined CCCS when she commenced as Senior Lecturer at MLS in 2009. She was previously the William Charnley Research Fellow in Public International Law at Pembroke College and the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, University of Cambridge, where she also lectured in Cambridge's LLM course on WTO law. She has a PhD and LLM from the University of Cambridge and a BA/LLB (Hons) from Melbourne, and is a former associate to the Chief Justice of the Federal Court of Australia. Dr Young teaches international and public law classes in the Melbourne JD, LLB and MLM. Her monograph, Trading Fish, Saving Fish: The Interaction between Regimes in International Law, will be published by Cambridge University Press in early 2011. It examines the relationship between international trade law, environmental law and the law of the sea in efforts to achieve fisheries sustainability. Public law concepts, including the emerging discipline of global administrative law, are relevant to her analysis. Dr Young is currently editing Regime Interaction in International Law: Facing Fragmentation, which will be published by Cambridge University Press in 2011, and which was based on the successful conference she organized at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, Cambridge, in June 2009.
More information: faculty profile.
Email: youngma@unimelb.edu.au
Dr Kirsty Gover
Kirsty Gover joined the Law Faculty in 2009 as a Senior Lecturer and is affiliated to both the Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies and the Institute for International Law and the Humanities. Her research and publications address the law, policy and political theory of indigenous land claims and self-governance. She has a particular interest in tribal constitutionalism. Her most recent work examines the ways in which recognised tribes govern membership, by reference to the criteria used in tribal constitutions.
Dr Gover received her BA/LLB, from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, and her LLM from Columbia University, United States. She was a Columbia University School of Law Human Rights Fellow and James Kent Scholar, and was the first full-time Institute Fellow at NYU Law School's Institute for International Law and Justice (IILJ). She received her doctorate from NYU Law School, where she was a Graduate Institute Scholar of the IILJ, and a New Zealand Top Achiever Doctoral Fellow. Dr Gover was a Senior Advisor and then consultant to the New Zealand government on international and domestic policy on indigenous peoples, and taught in this field at the Canterbury Law School. She represented the New Zealand government at intergovernmental drafting sessions of the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
She is currently working on a book project, based on her thesis, entitled Constitutionalizing Tribalism: States, Tribes and Membership Governance in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States. Other work addresses the friction between tribal and settler state laws on the status of adopted children, and the participation of indigenous communities in international trade and investment dispute resolution fora. Her article ‘Genealogy as Continuity: Explaining the Growing Tribal Preference for Descent Rules’ (American Indian Law Review, 33-1, 2009) looks at changes in the way United States tribes have determined membership since the 1930s, with an emphasis on the increased tribal use of blood quantum rules.
More information: faculty profile.
Email: kgover@unimelb.edu.au
Dr Lael Weis
Dr. Weis joined CCCS in July 2010 as a McKenzie Post-Doctoral Fellow. She holds a PhD and JD from Stanford University from the Department of Philosophy and Law School. She completed her dissertation, “Public Purpose, Common Good: Constitutional Property in the Democratic State,” while a fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center during the 2009-10 academic year. Her research interests lie at the intersection of constitutional legal theory, democratic political theory, and property law.
More information: faculty profile.
Email: lweis@unimelb.edu.au
Mr Ben Saunders
Ben started as a Research Fellow at the Melbourne Law School in September 2010. Prior to returning to the Law School Ben was an Associate at Macpherson + Kelley Lawyers, practising mainly in corporate, financial services and water law. At M+K Ben was involved in establishing Australia's first Shariah compliant mortgage fund and also the class actions being run on behalf of investors relating to the Timbercorp and Great Southern collapses. He has worked as research assistant to Professor Ian Ramsay, director of the Centre for Corporate Law and Securities Regulation and has published numerous articles on corporate and financial services law. In 2009 he was joint winner of the Banking and Financial Services Law Association’s Research Prize. He is currently researching Australian constitutional law and history. Ben commenced a PhD at the TC Beirne School of Law, University of Queensland in July 2011. His thesis topis is "Representation and the Role of Parliament in the Australian Constitution".
Email: b.saunders@unimelb.edu.au