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2004 News Archive

Constitutional Law Conference and Sir Anthony Mason Lecture

Professor George Winterton, Professor of Constitutional Law together with Dr. Peter Gerangelos of Sydney Law School have established an occasional lecture in Constitutional Law, to reflect the Law School’s strength and interest in Constitutional Law and to honour former Chief Justice Sir Anthony Mason, one of Australia’s greatest judges and a distinguished Law School alumnus. The Inaugural lecture was delivered by the Hon. Justice Michael McHugh AC, a Justice of the High Court, to a very well attended Banco Court on 26 November. In his stimulating and challenging lecture, entitled The Constitutional Jurisprudence of the High Court 1989-2004, Justice McHugh argued that there are greater continuities in the constitutional jurisprudence of the Mason, Brennan and Gleeson Courts than is sometimes supposed. The Mason Court’s supposed “radicalism” in constitutional issues, his Honour argued, was reflected more in the Court’s rhetoric than in its actual decisions. Justice McHugh’s speech is available here.

The following day, the Law School hosted the 2004 AACL Annual Conference at the State Library. The widely praised conference on the theme Constitutional Fundamentals and Judicial Power addressed the following subjects:

  • The Constitution – The Ultimate Foundation of Australian Law (Speaker: the Hon. Justice WMC Gummow AC of the High Court;
  • Comment by Pamela Tate SC, Solicitor-General of Victoria);
  • Legislative Intervention in Pending Cases (Speaker: Dr Peter Gerangelos of the University of Sydney Law School; Comment by Sir Anthony Mason);
  • Constitutional Issues Regarding Same-Sex Marriage (Speaker: Professor Geoffrey Lindell of the University of Adelaide Law School);
  • The Status of the Kable Decision in Today’s Jurisprudence (Speaker: Associate Professor Patrick Keyzer of UTS Law School;
  • Comments by Associate Professor Elizabeth Handsley of Flinders University Law School, and Dan Meagher of Deakin University Law School;
  • Forum on Judicial Appointment (Speakers: the Hon. Justice Ruth McColl AO of the NSW Court of Appeal, Stephen Gageler SC of the Sydney Bar, and Professor George Williams of UNSW Law School).

The Conference papers and comments will be published, together with Justice McHugh’s Sir Anthony Mason Lecture, either in a book or in the Sydney Law Review in 2006.

Saturday, 16th October 2004 marked the date of the Sydney University Law Society (SULS) final year dinner, which took place in the MacLaurin Hall of the University of Sydney’s Main Quadrangle.

As part of proceedings, SULS presented the 2004 Excellence in Teaching Awards, in recognition of the students’ appreciation of the teaching of the Law School’s academic staff in its undergraduate program.

The recipients in 2004 were:

Mr. Ross Anderson
Professor Peter Butt
Dr. Peter Gerangelos

Sydney Law School Hosts National Labour Law Conference

The second national biennial conference of the Australian Labour Law Association was held at the Law School on Friday 24th and Saturday 25th September.

Over 150 delegates from around Australia and the world attended the conference, entitled “Employment Regulation for the Changing Workplace”.

The conference heard over 30 papers from speakers as far afield as the United States, South Africa and New Zealand, as well as a wide range of papers from Australian speakers.

Presentations were given by academics, Trade Union delegates, judges and legal practitioners.

The keynote address was presented by UCLA professor Katherine van Wezel Stone an internationally recognized authority in the fields of labour law, labour history, and employment policy.

Her presentation, based on her recently released book From Widgets to Digits: Employment Regulation for the Changing Workplace (Cambridge University Press, 2004) provided a perspective of an integrated framework with which to understand and address problems generated by the changing nature of the workplace.

Professor Ron McCallum, Dean of the Law School, is Australian President of the Australian Labour Law Association, which is a member of the International Society for Labour Law and Social Security (ISLLSS).

The University of Sydney will host the international conference of the ISLLSS in 2009.

Contemporary Challenges for International Human Rights Law

The Sydney Law School recently played host to a highly participatory student conference entitled, Contemporary Challenges for International Human Rights Law.

The event brought together approximately 90 law students, half comprising international criminal law students at the University of Western Sydney and half representing international human rights law students at the Sydney Law School.

The conference program consisted of four short papers delivered by two students from each institution. As conference co-organiser and lecturer of international human rights law at the Law School, Dr. Fleur Johns commented, “These papers were of a remarkably high standard”.

Following these student presentations, eight separate negotiations took place, during which students teams were briefed to work towards a preliminary agreement on issues of contemporary legal and political significance to which international human rights law pertains. These negotiations were conducted in groups of between 9-12 students, with the guidance of eight volunteer facilitators drawn from the academy and the profession. Groups addressed such matters as the ongoing violence in north-western Sudan and the parameters under which pharmaceutical companies should be allowed to test experimental drugs in the Third World. UWS and University of Sydney students worked alongside each other on either side of these negotiations.

Dr. Johns reported: “The feedback we received was overwhelmingly positive; students apparently welcomed the opportunity to come together with students from other universities, to work on their negotiation skills and to gain a sense of the quandaries and possibilities of human rights law ‘in action’. “We hope to be able to turn this into an annual event, with improvements suggested by this year’s participants.” Dr. Fleur Johns organised the event in partnership with Steven Freeland at the University of Western Sydney.

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