Melbourne Law School Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies

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 Professor Adrienne Stone
Director CCCS

 

Adrienne Stone took up the directorship of the Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies in July 2008.  She was appointed to a Chair in Law in 2007.   She was previously a Fellow in the Law Program at the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University where she was also a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Law.  Previous positions include Associate-in-Law at Columbia Law School, a solicitor at Malleson Stephen Jaques in Sydney and Associate to the Hon. Justice M.H. McHugh of the High Court of Australia.  She has also taught as a visitor at Tulane Law School and the University of Western Ontario (Canada).

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 Hate Speech and Freedom of Speech in Australia (co-edited with Dr Katharine Gelber, Federation Press, 2007) and 'Judicial Review without Rights'  (2008) 28 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 1.
 
She is a member 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 is Associate Dean (Juris Doctor) within the Law School and 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 and member of the Program Committee of the Forum of Federations. She is an editor of the Public Law Review, a symposium editor 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 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. She has been elected a visiting fellow in 2009 at Corpus Christi College, Oxford.
 
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 and Iraq.
 
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 an honorary doctorate from the University of Cordoba, Argentina in 2005. She is 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

Associate Professor Carolyn Evans
Deputy Director CCCS

Associate Professor Carolyn Evans is Associate Dean (Research) of the Melbourne Law School and a 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. She also qualified to practice law and is a barrister and solicitor of the Supreme Court of Victoria.

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) and Mixed Blessings: Laws, Religions and Women's Rights in the Asia-Pacific Region (2006 Martinus Nijhoff). 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 and Australia. From 2007-2009 she is undertaking a joint ARC Discovery Project with Beth Gaze on the topic of religious freedom and non-discrimination.
 
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.  She is currently completing an ARC Discovery Grant on this topic with Associate Professor Simon Evans. Papers from the project can be found on the website of the Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies.

More information: faculty profile

E-mail: c.evans@unimelb.edu.au.

Associate Professor Simon Evans
Deputy Dean
Former Director CCCS

Associate Professor Simon Evans is Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Law. He was Director of the Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies until July 2007 and Director of Teaching from July 2003 to December 2005.

He researches and teaches in constitutional law, constitutional theory, and property law. His particular fields of research are the constitutional provisions that limit the ability of governments to take or regulate private property for public purposes and the mechanisms for ensuring the accountability of the executive government.

He has worked as an Associate to Sir Anthony Mason at the High Court of Australia and as a solicitor at Mallesons Stephen Jaques in Sydney.

He is a member of the Australasian Law Teachers Association, the Australian Association of Constitutional Law, the Australian Institute of Administrative Law and the Australian Society of Legal Philosophy.

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.

Dr Michelle Foster

Dr 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 University of New South Wales.  From 2000-2004 Michelle completed an LLM and SJD at the University of Michigan, where she was a Michigan Grotius Fellow and won a number of awards including the William W. Bishop Jr. Award for study in international law, a Certificate of Merit for first place in Comparative Human Rights law, and a Community of Scholars Graduate Student Fellowship.  Michelle was awarded the SJD degree in 2004 for her thesis entitled Refuge From Deprivation: Forced Migration and Economic and Social Rights in International Law.  While at Michigan she co-authored a number of papers with James C. Hathaway on various aspects of the 1951 Refugee Convention, and participated in the 2001 and 2004 Michigan Colloquiums on Challenges in International Refugee Law as student and rapporteur respectively.  She also worked as an intern at the Advice for Individual Rights in Europe (AIRE) Centre in London and conducted seminars in Dubrovnik, Croatia on cultural relativity and international law for the University of Zagreb.

More information: faculty profile.

Email: m.foster@unimelb.edu.au

 Associate Professor Beth Gaze

Beth Gaze's interests are in anti-discrimination and equality law, feminist legal thought, and administrative law including tribunals.  Current funded research projects include a study of the enforcement process under Australian federal anti-discrimination law, and the need for substantive updating of Australian anti-discrimination laws.  Beth is also a member of the Victorian Mental Health Review Board, and has been a member of the Social Security Appeals Tribunal.  She contributes to the teaching of law to medical students, and has experience in University equity and human research ethics areas.  Before she became a legal academic she was a computer programmer. 
 
Beth is invovled in two research projects funded by ARC Discovery Grants.  With Belinda Fehlberg she is continuing a project originally devised by Associate Professor Phillip Swain "Coherent, independent and user-friendly? Participant perceptions of social security administrative review processes in Australia and Britain", which is running from 2005 to 2008.  With Carolyn Evans she is engaged in a project on "Non-discrimination laws and religious freedom: current conflicts nad future directions" running from 2007-2009.

More information: faculty profile.

Email: egaze@unimelb.edu.au

Associate Professor Pip Nicholson

Assoc. Prof. 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 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

 Dr 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 research focusses on the regulation of non-standard work, anti-terrorism laws and political finance law. 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 a British Academy Visiting Fellow at King's College, University of London and is undertaking a comparative study of control orders in Australia and the United Kingdom in relation to the protection of human rights. He is also writing a book on Australian political finance law that will be published by UNSW Press in 2009.

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.
 

 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.

 
His early research focused on fact-finding in sexual assault trials, the subject of his doctoral thesis and a number of published articles, and criminal investigation, especially the technique of DNA identification. He is the co-author of an evidence law text and a forthcoming human rights text, and is currently working on a criminal law treatise. He has contributed to public debate on criminal justice in a number of forums. He publishes a running commentary on Victoria's Charter of Human Rights and Responsbilities at charterblog.wordpress.com.

Mr John Waugh

 John Waugh researches and teaches in Australian constitutional law and history.

More information: faculty profile.

Email: j.waugh@unimelb.edu.au

 

Ms Katy Le Roy is doing her doctoral research on constitution making in the Asia Pacific looking specifically at constitution making processes in Fiji and the Solomon Islands, and democratic participation in constitution making. Katy has been working as a consultant for the United Nations Development Program since April 2006, coordinating the constitutional review process in Nauru. Katy worked with the Nauru Constitutional Review Commission which has just completed its report and recommendations for constitutional amendment. She will be advising the Nauru Constitutional Convention that began on 23 April 2007. Katy is also working with Professor Thomas Fleiner of the Institute of Federalism in Fribourg,  Switzerland, on the translation from German to English of  Profesor Fleiner's book “A General Theory of State – Constitutional Democracy in a Multicultural and Globalised World” (co-written with Lidija Basta Fleiner). She is teaching Constitution Making in the Melbourne Law Masters program in July 2007.
 

Dr Madeline Grey
Centre Administrator

The Centre Administrator is responsible for the management of the Centre. The Administrator also organises the many events hosted by the Centre. To register for any of these events or for more information, please call on (03) 8344 1011 or email: law-cccs@unimelb.edu.au.

Madeline joined the Centre in May 2007. She previously worked for the Parliament of Victoria as a researcher and administrator. Madeline holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne in history. She is the author of Challenging Women: Towards Equality in the Parliament of Victoria. (ASP 2009) which was launched at Melbourne Law School by the Minister for Women's Affairs in March 2009.