Guantanamo Redux: The Obama Effect and its Significance for David Hicks and Australia

Tuesday 20 October, 6 - 7:30pm (registration from 5.30pm)

Sydney Law School

Presenters:
Kate Eastman, Barrister
Professor Geoffrey Garrett, University of Sydney
Katie Wood, Amnesty International Australia

Please click here for more information.

Vodcast

To view the video of this event, please click here.

 

Legal and Political Perspectives on Foreign Investment and China

Vivienne Bath, Sydney Law School

Dr James Reilly, Dept of Government and International Relations, Sydney University

Prof Geoff Garrett, CEO, US Studies Centre, Sydney University

Tuesday 22 September 2009, TBA

International Law Reading Groups

Upendra Baxi, 'Global Development and Impoverishment' (Mostafa Haider (PhD candidate) introducing)

Monday 14 September, 4-5 pm

Faculty Board Room (435), Sydney Law School

 

Melinda Cooper, 'Preempting Emergence:  The Biological Turn in the War on Terror' (Edwin Bikundo and Melinda Cooper introducing)

Monday 24 August, 4-5 pm

Faculty Board Room (435), Sydney Law School

 

Emilios Christodoulidis, 'Strategies of Rupture' (Richard Bailey (PhD candidate) introducing)

Monday 3 August, 4-5 pm

Faculty Board Room (435), Sydney Law School

Symposium: WTO Litigation: Issues and Reforms

Friday 14 August 2009

Sydney Law School (Camperdown Campus)

Litigation in the World Trade Organization affects issues of paramount importance to Australia, and its trade relations.  Since the introduction of the WTO dispute settlement system in 1995, there have been 400 complaints under the system leading to 120 reports of panels and the WTO Appellate Body, and to authorization of retaliation in 16 instances.   Understanding this process of litigation is critical to understanding the rights that Australia can exercise on behalf of its exporters.    

To further scholarship and understanding in relation to this emerging system of law,  the Sydney Centre for International Law (SCIL) is hosting a symposium on WTO Dispute Settlement on Friday 14 August 2009 at University of Sydney Law School.  The symposium will consider various issues arising in WTO dispute settlement including treaty interpretation, burden of proof, standard of review, and retaliation procedures; and also the WTO negotiations reviewing the WTO Understanding on Dispute Settlement. 

Keynote Speaker: Professor Yasuhei Taniguchi, former Member (2001-2008) and Chairperson of the WTO Appellate Body, Geneva

Prof Taniguchi is visiting Sydney Law School in July and August 2009. His keynote presentation will be on: “The WTO dispute Settlement as seen by a Proceduralist”.

Presentations: We are also pleased to have assembled a group of practitioners in WTO litigation from the Australian and New Zealand governments:

Bruce Gosper, Deputy Secretary, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

Andrew Stoler, Director, Institute for International Trade, University of Adelaide and Former Deputy Director General of the WTO

Mark Jennings, Office of International law, Attorney General’s Department

Patricia Holmes, Director, WTO Disputes Section, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

Clare Fearnley, International Trade Law Advisor, New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade

Jo Feldman and Jessica Giovanelli, Office of International law, Attorney General’s Department

Brett Williams, University of Sydney Law School

Click here to access the Symposium program...

Click here to access the Symposium brochure...

 

Are the World Trade Organization Negotiations Leading Nowhere? Arguments for a Critical Mass Approach

Wednesday 12 August, 6 – 7:30 pm

Sydney Law School (Camperdown Campus)

Presenter: Andrew Stoler, Executive Director, Institute for International Trade and Former Deputy Director-General of the World Trade Organization

Chair: Dr Brett Williams, Senior Lecturer, University of Sydney Law School and Director, Research Programme in Public International Economic Law, Sydney Centre for International Law

The Sydney Centre for International Law and the Ross Parsons Centre of Commercial, Corporate and Taxation Law invite you to a thought-provoking public lecture on the current difficulties in negotiating trade liberalization in the World Trade Organization, and whether the difficulties are so great as to demand that other alternatives be explored.

About the Seminar:  The Doha Development Round of World Trade Organization negotiations collapsed in disagreement in July 2008.  Reports indicate that WTO Members are still trying to reach agreement.  This talk by an experienced trade negotiator and former WTO Official will discuss the prospects for the achievement of trade liberalization through the rounds of WTO negotiations.  He will draw attention to some of the aspects of the draft Doha package which indicate that any WTO deal would only achieve modest liberalization and may have detrimental effects on the rules for future negotiations.  He will discuss whether it is time to reconsider some of the accepted rules, particularly, the concept of the single undertaking under which everything should be agreed as one package, and that all member should sign on to the same package of agreements.  Andrew Stoler is currently managing a research project with trade experts from around the world which considers the merit of an alternative approach, Critical Mass Agreements in which subsectors of WTO Members might reach agreement on liberalization either across all trade or even in single sectors.

About the Speaker:  Andrew Stoler is the Executive Director of the Institute for International Trade and holds the title of adjunct Professor of International Trade at the University of Adelaide.
Currently, he serves on the International Academic Advisory Committee of the United States Study Centre (University of Sydney), the Advisory Board of the European Centre for International Political Economy and Stanford University's GATT Digital Library Advisory Board. He is also a Senior Advisor to the Shanghai and Shenzhen WTO Affairs Centres.  Previously he served on the Australian Foreign Minister's Aid Advisory Council and the Board of Directors of the Australian Services Roundtable.
Over the course of a long career in international trade, he has served as Deputy Director-General of the Geneva-based World Trade Organization (1999-2002) and as a senior official of the Office of the United States Trade Representative, Executive Office of the President (Washington, DC). He holds an MBA in International Business from George Washington University and a BSFS in International Economic Affairs from Georgetown University.

 

Global Health Beyond the Millennium Development Goals

Thursday 6 August, 6 – 8 pm

Sydney Law School (Camperdown Campus)

Presenters:

Professor Larry Gostin, Georgetown University; Director, O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law

Presentation: “Meeting the Survival Needs of the World’s Least Healthy People: A Proposed Model for Global Health Governance”

Professor Daniel Tarantola, Health and Human Rights, University of NSW; Co-founder, Medecins sans Frontiers

Presentation: “Beyond the Social Determinants of Global Health”

Professor Roger Magnusson, Health Law & Governance, Sydney Law School

Presentation: “Partnerships, Collective Action, and the Global Response to Chronic, Noncommunicable Diseases”

Chair: Professor Gillian Triggs, Dean, Sydney Law School

This 'Twilight Seminar' is jointly hosted by the Sydney Centre for International Law and the Centre for Health Governance, Law & Ethics.

2009 Public Seminar Series: Semester 1

Book Launch: International Business; Corporate Governance in Japan

Professor Gillian Triggs, Dean of the Sydney Law School invites you to join Vivienne Bath, Robin Burnett and Luke Nottage to celebrate the launch of their new books.

Thursday 18 June, 5.30-7.00pm
Reflection Lounge, Level 1, Sydney Law School

The books will be launched by The Honourable James Spigelman, AC, Chief Justice of NSW.

Law of International Business in Australasia
Robin Burnett and Vivienne Bath
This book is a successor to Robin Burnett’s Law of International Business Transactions. It provides an up-to-date analysis of the legal environment for international trade and covers:

• the changes made to payment and letters of credit by reason of the adoption of the UCP 600, which became effective in 2007, and other means of payment which are currently used;
• the provisions and possible adoption of the UNCITRAL Draft Convention on the Carriage of Goods Wholly or Partly by Sea;
• recent developments in the law relating to international sale of goods;
• the question of international arbitration and other means of dispute resolution; and
• the strategies and issues of international operations while incorporating and building on the comprehensive information and material in the previous book.

It will assist practitioners and students in their understanding of the legal and practical aspects of international and overseas trade and operations.

Corporate Governance in the 21st Century: Japan's Gradual Transformation
Edited by Luke Nottage, Leon Wolff and Kent Anderson
The ‘lost decade’ of economic stagnation in Japan during the 1990s has become a ‘found decade’ for regulatory and institutional reform. Nowhere is this more evident than in corporate law. In 2005, for example, a spate of reforms to the Commercial Code culminated in the new Company Act, a statute promising greater organisational flexibility and shareholder empowerment for Japanese corporations competing in a more globalised economy. But does this new law herald a more ‘Americanised’ system of corporate governance? Has Japan embraced shareholder primacy over its traditional loyalty to other key stakeholders such as ‘main banks’, core employees, and partners within diffuse corporate (keiretsu) groups? This book argues that a more complex ‘gradual transformation’ is unfolding in Japan – a process evident in many other post-industrial economies.

‘The essays in this collection approach Japanese corporate governance in the 2000s from a variety of novel perspectives – novel in terms of subject matter, methodology, and points of comparison. The result is a comprehensive portrait of the current dynamics of change and stasis in the institutional environment for Japanese firms.’ – Curtis Milhaupt, Columbia Law School

TRIPS Provisions on Enforcement of Intellectual Property Law: What Guidance from the China-IP Decision of January 2009

Dr Brett Williams, Faculty of Law, University of Sydney

Tuesday 5 May, 5:30 – 7 pm

Faculty Seminar Room 403, Law School Building, Eastern Avenue, University of Sydney

In the recent China IP case, the Panel and AB considered the provisions on provision of remedies and application of criminal sanctions.  Dr Williams  will present an overview of the provisions of TRIPS Part III and discuss the impact of the recent China – IP case.  This recent case considered, in particular, the obligation to provide remedies in the context of a censorship law, the obligation to provide a remedy of removing infringing items from circulation and the obligation to impose criminal penalties.

You may wish to bring your copy of the TRIPS agreement and even your copy of the China – IP case.

About the Speaker: Brett Williams is a Senior Lecturer and Associate of the Sydney Centre for International Law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Sydney.

Current Issues in International Commercial Arbitration

Professor James Crawford SC LLD FBA, Whewell Professor of International Law, University of Cambridge

Monday 4 May, 6 – 7:30 pm

Sydney Law School, Building F10, Eastern Avenue, University of Sydney (Camperdown Campus)

This lecture analyses major current developments in the field of international commercial arbitration. At the international level it focuses on the nearly-completed review of the 1976 UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules; at the national level on the pending review of the International Arbitration Act 1974 and associated controversies.  Finally, current UK case law will be discussed. This displays an unresolved tension between international and European policies on such matters as competence-competence and anti-suit injunctions. 

About the Speaker: James Crawford is the Whewell Professor of International Law at the University of Cambridge and Chair of the Faculty of Law. He was a Member of the Australian Law Reform Commission until 1992, and is a member of the International Law Commission, where he was responsible for the Draft Statute for an International Criminal Court (1994) and the Articles on State Responsibility (2001).

Professor Crawford has an extensive practice in international law and international arbitration, and is author of numerous books, as well as co-editor of the British Yearbook of International Law. Along with Philippe Sands QC and Ralph Wilde, he prepared an opinion on the question of the compatibility of Article 98(2) and the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC Statute) for the Lawyers' Committee on Human Rights and the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture.

RSVP: law.events@usyd.edu.au

To download Prof Crawford's paper, please click here.

To hear the audio version of Prof Crawford's speech, please click here.

Israel's War in Gaza and International Law

Professor Yuval Shany, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Wednesday 15 April, 6 – 8 pm

Sydney Law School, Building F10, Eastern Avenue, University of Sydney (Camperdown Campus)

About the Speaker: Professor Yuval Shany is the Hersch Lauterpacht Chair in International Law at the Faculty of Law, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He also serves as the academic director of the Minerva Center for Human Rights at the Hebrew University and as a Director in the Project on International Courts and Tribunals.

Professor Shany has published a number of books and articles on international courts and tribunals, as well as on other international law issues such as international human rights and humanitarian law. He has taught in a number of law schools in Israel, and has been in recent years a research fellow in Harvard and Amsterdam University and a visiting professor at the Georgetown University Law Center and Michigan Law School.

This lecture is part of the Sydney Law School Distinguished Speakers Program 2009.

To download the audio version of Professor Shany's speech, click here.

An Australian Bill of Rights? Learning from the British Experience

Professor Conor Gearty, Professor of Human Rights Law and Director of the Centre for the Study of Human Rights, London School of Economics

Wednesday 8 April, 6 – 7.30 pm

Sydney Law School, Building F10, Eastern Avenue, University of Sydney (Camperdown Campus)

About the Speaker: Conor Gearty is Professor of Human Rights Law and Director of the Centre for the Study of Human Rights at the London School of Economics. He is a founding member of the barristers' chambers Matrix, from where he practices law, specialising in public law and human rights. He has appeared in the High Court, the Court of Appeal and the House of Lords.

Professor Gearty's scholarship is mainly in the fields of human rights, terrorism and civil liberties. His most recent work focuses on the dilemma that terrorism poses to civil liberties. During the 1990s, Professor Gearty advised Tony Blair on terrorism law, and was also an executive committee member of the British-Irish Association, involved in facilitating informal discussions between the various parties and members of civil society in Northern Ireland.

This lecture is part of the Sydney Law School Distinguished Speakers Program 2009.

To download the audio version of Professor Gearty's speech, click here.

Judging in the International Court of Justice and Other National and International Courts and Tribunals

Sir Kenneth Keith ONZ KBE QC, Judge of the International Court of Justice

Tuesday 7 April , 6 – 8 pm

Sydney Law School, Building F10, Eastern Avenue, University of Sydney (Camperdown Campus)

About the Speaker: Sir Kenneth Keith has been a judge of the International Court of Justice since 2006. He was appointed Barrister and Solicitor of the High Court of New Zealand (1961) and Queen's Counsel (1994), and was a judge of the New Zealand Court of Appeal and Supreme Court (1996-2006). Sir Keith was also a judge of appeal in Samoa, the Cook Islands, Niue and Fiji; a member of arbitration tribunals; a law commissioner in New Zealand; and a member of the legal offices of the United Nations and the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He was also a law faculty member at the Victoria University of Wellington for almost thirty years, including five years as Dean, and is now a Professor Emeretus.

In 1988, Sir Keith was awarded the title of Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to legal education and law reform.

This lecture is part of the Sydney Law School Distinguished Speakers Program 2009.

To hear the audio version of Sir Kenneth Keith's lecture, click here.

 

Race Discrimination, The Intervention and Indigenous Australians

George Newhouse, Greg Marks, Dr Ben Saul (chair)

Tuesday 24 March 2009, 5 - 6pm

Sydney Law School, Building F10, Eastern Avenue, University of Sydney (Camperdown Campus)

About the Seminar: In January 2009 a number of Aboriginal people from the Northern Territory who are subject to the Northern Territory Emergency Intervention (NTER) requested the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (the CERD Committee) to act under its Early-Warning Measures and Urgent Procedures to recommend to the Australian Government that it immediately take all necessary steps to end the exclusion of the Racial Discrimination Act in respect of the NTER. They also requested that CERD propose to the Australian Government that it undertake no further implementation of the NTER until CERD is satisfied that the measures are ‘special measures’ within the meaning of the CERD Convention. CERD was also requested to direct the Australian Government to enter into discussions with the Aboriginal peoples of the Northern Territory in regards to the NTER and compliance with international obligations.

About the Speakers:
George Newhouse has assisted indigenous people in the preparation of their communication to CERD. The complaint has recently been considered by CERD at its 74th session from 16 February to 6 March 2009. George Newhouse will provide an update on the complaint, its consideration by CERD, and actions to follow on this consideration. George is a practicing solicitor, a former member of the NSW Consumer Trader and Tenancy Tribunal, and an arbitrator (2001-2004) and Mediator (2001 to date) of the Workers Compensation Tribunal. George has held a number of elected position and statutory appointments in local government and in 2007 he ran against Malcolm Turnbull as the Labor candidate for the Federal Seat of Wentworth. He has a special interest in Human Rights and has acted in a legal capacity for Vivian Solon, Cornelia Rau and Richard Niyonsaba. He has also acted in numerous high profile anti-discrimination cases and in a stolen generation case. Newhouse began his professional career with J P Morgan in Sydney, and transferred to the bank’s Treasury Planning and Development Group in New York. He moved to London and joined the Banking and Capital Markets Department of Clifford Chance, the largest law firm in the United Kingdom.

Greg Marks is a Canberra-based international lawyer and consultant specialising in international human rights law, in particular Indigenous rights. He also has expertise in native title, land rights and Indigenous policy.  He is rapporteur of the International Law Association (ILA) Committee on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the convenor of Indigenous Rights Committee of the ILA Australian Branch. Greg has represented Australia in bilateral development assistance negotiations and at various UN fora. He has authored a number of submissions to UN treaty bodies, and published articles and reviews on indigenous policy, native title and land rights, the origins of international law, the work of the UN Human Rights treaty bodies and the relationship between international obligations and Australian law and practice.

To download Greg Marks' speech notes, please click here.

Chair: Dr Ben Saul, Director, Sydney Centre for International Law.

Policing in Nepal: In Transitional Context

Professor Yubaraj Sangroula, Kathmandu School of Law

Friday 27 February, 5 – 6.15 pm
Sydney Law School, Building F10, Eastern Avenue, University of Sydney (Camperdown Campus)

About the Seminar: While Nepal established its formal modern police institution only after the British left India in 1947, the legacy of British colonial policing was fully imported by the Nepal Police. Even today, the police service in Nepal behaves like a force rather than a 'service delivery' institution. The interface between police and the people is very weak, and the Nepalese police psyche that 'use of force' is the primary alternative is deeply rooted. The lack of professionalism and specialisation in works is also a serious weakness, the institutional autonomy is politically vulnerable, and acts of corruption and irregularity are still serious problems within the institution, which are mainly responsible to 'the phenomenal failure in crime investigation and control'. 60% of cases charged in the court are failing.

Presently, the government has sensed an urgency to 'improve the condition' of policing in Nepal. Nepal is passing through an interesting time of transition, with traditional political, social and cultural values being overtly challenged. The change in the system of policing is an aspiration of the people, and the protection of human rights and enhancement of law enforcement efficiency have been emphasised by the government. A high level taskforce has prepared a detailed report to improve the condition along with restructuring plan.

About the Speaker: Professor Yubaraj Sangroula has a PhD in criminal justice and policing. He has been a Professor at Kathmandu School of Law (KSL) since its establishment in 2000, and is the Founder Executive Director of KSL. He was a visiting scholar at Georgetown Law Centre in 1996, and has taught as visiting professor at universities in India, Bangladesh, Japan, Thailand and Sweden. Professor Sangroula is currently working as Convener of the Law and Governance Committee at South Asia University, a newly established regional university, and has worked as consultant in Nepal and abroad for the office of the UN Human Rights Commissioner. Recently, he headed the Nepal Government High Level Taskforce for Modernisation of Security Agencies in Nepal. Professor Sangroula’s visit to Sydney is supported by AustLII and AusAID ISSS.

Language, law and democratic participation: International law and linguistic minorities' engagement in public life

Dr Jacqueline Mowbray, Sydney Law School

Thursday 26 February, 12.30 – 2 pm

Sydney Law School, Building F10, Eastern Avenue, University of Sydney (Camperdown Campus)

About the seminar: In this paper, Jacqueline will take the discussion of the role of English in aboriginal communities as a starting point for exploring the relationship between language and democratic participation, and the role which international law plays in regulating that relationship.

How can language policy enhance individuals' ability to exercise control over the decisions which affect their lives? Conversely, how can language function to exclude individuals from the public sphere, preventing effective democratic participation? In the first part of this papershe willconsider these issues, and note the various ways in which current structures of social and political life may limit democratic participation by linguistic minorities.

'Linguistic justice' requires continual reform of these structures to enhance effective participation by all citizens, regardless of language. She turns to consider the extent to which international law contributes to, or encourages, this process of reform.

In conclusion, while international law seeks to encourage democracy and popular participation, it adopts a narrow or restrictive interpretation of these concepts. This limits the potential for international law to open up and democratise the public sphere, a limitation which has particular implications for linguistic minorities.

About the Speaker: Dr Jacqueline Mowbray joined the Faculty of Law in 2008. She is a graduate of the Universities of Queensland (BA/LLB (Hons)), Melbourne (LLM) and Cambridge (LLM (Hons)). In June 2008, she successfully defended her PhD thesis at the University of Cambridge. Her thesis considered issues of international law and language policy.

Jacqueline has practised law with Freehills in Melbourne and Barlow Lyde & Gilbert in London, and she teaches on the European Masters program in human rights, which is taught at the University of Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina. Her particular area of interest is international law and legal theory, with a focus on international human rights law. She also teaches in the area of commercial law and has a particular interest in international commercial issues.

RSVP: law.events@usyd.edu.au

The Future of Investment Arbitration - Is There a Backlash?

Professor August Reinisch, University of Vienna

Thursday 19 February, 6 – 7.30 pm
Minter Ellison Room, Level 13, Law School (St James Campus)

173-175 Phillip St, Sydney (cnr King & Elizabeth Sts)

About the Seminar: Investment arbitration has been a success story so far. This special form of mixed dispute settlement between States and private parties has many advantages, such as being widely available through jurisdiction-conferring clauses in BITs, a high level of enforcement probability, and maybe even an indirect good governance effect on States. Still, questions are being raised whether the boom of investment arbitration can be maintained. Some commentators suggest that the current 'hype' may have already passed its zenith and point to disintegrating developments, such as the public announcement by States like Bolivia and Venezuela to exit the ICSID system or to various attempts in treaty negotiation to limit the availability of direct investor-State arbitration.

This presentation will focus on three recent problems: poorly reasoned decisions and awards, inconsistent dispute settlement outcomes and significant delays through the ICSID system of annulment. It will then address possible solutions and try to assess the future of the system.

About the Speaker: Professor August Reinisch is a Professor of European and International Law and Director of the LLM Program at the University of Vienna/Faculty of Law. He holds degrees in law and philosophy and a doctorate from the University of Vienna and an LLM from New York University. His considerable consulting and research experience in the field of international investment disputes includes serving President in an UNCITRAL investment arbitration and as a member of the former ILA Committee on the Law of Foreign Investment and now as a co-rapporteur on the ILA Study Group on the Role of Soft-Law Instruments in International Investment Law. He has widely published in the field of International investment land and recently edited Standards of Investment Protection (OUP 2008).

Click here to download Prof Reinisch's presentation notes.

Socialist Constitutions in a Free Market Economy: Insights from India and China

Dr Surya Deva, City University of Hong Kong

Wednesday 18 February, 6 – 7.30 pm
Minter Ellison Room, Level 13, Sydney Law School (St James Campus)

173-175 Phillip St , Sydney (cnr King & Elizabeth Sts)

About the Seminar: The Indian Constitution of 1950 and the Chinese Constitution of 1982 have socialist underpinnings. However, in the last quarter of the 20th century, both India and China embraced a free market economy, but without expressly or totally discarding the socialist orientation of their respective constitutions. Against this backdrop, this seminar will examine how the socialist constitutions of India and China have changed in a free market economy. In particular, the seminar will compare the model of constitutional socialism adopted by these two countries and explore if marrying socialism with the free market ideology has created a constitutional tension in the two jurisdictions.

About the Speaker: Dr Surya Deva is an Assistant Professorand LLB Programme Leader at the School of Law, City University of Hong Kong. He holds BA (Hons), LLB and LLM degrees from the University of Delhi and a PhD from the University of Sydney. Dr Deva has taught previously at the Faculty of Law, University of Delhi and at the National Law Institute University, Bhopal. His primary research interests lie in Corporate Social Responsibility, Indo-Chinese Constitutional Law, International Human Rights, andGlobalisation. He has published widely in these areas and has also delivered guest lectures at several universities.

Rethinking Social Regulation for Global Firms

Professor Gregor Murray, University of Montreal

Friday 13 February, 12.30 – 2 pm
Sydney Law School, Building F10, Eastern Avenue, University of Sydney (Camperdown Campus)

About the Speaker: Professor Gregor Murray is one of Canada's foremost scholars on contemporary labour relations and globalization. His research interests cover:

• Comparative evaluation of union renewal
• Globalization and labour regulation
• Adaptation of legal framework and new forms of collective representation
• Empirical analysis of new forms of production management and work organization;
• Collective bargaining trends.

RSVP: law.events@usyd.edu.au

 

2008

2008 Public Seminar Series: Semester 2

Asylum Denied and Refugee Roulette: Achieving Administrative Justice in Refugee Status Determinations

Professor Phil Schrag, Georgetown University

Professor Mary Crock, Sydney Law School

Monday 28 July, 5.30 – 7.00 pm
Lecture Theatre 6, Level 2, Law School

173-175 Phillip St , Sydney (cnr King & Elizabeth Sts)

About the Seminar: Professor Philip G. Schrag will speak on Refugee Roulette: The Role of Chance in the Adjudication of Asylum Applications in America. His talk will have two dimensions. On one level, Prof. Schrag will tell the story of single victim of political persecution and torture, David Kenney, and of Kenney’s arduous attempts to win asylum in America. At the same time, Prof. Schrag will show how Kenney’s individual story fits into the larger picture of asylum adjudication in America—a system that as a whole is lenient (compared with the asylum systems of many Western countries) but which, at a finer level of detail, is one in which outcomes depend largely on the prior work histories, ideologies, and backgrounds of the hundreds of adjudicators who decide individual cases. The disparities in grant rates among bureaucrats deciding essentially identical cases makes the American system one in which justice is all too random.

Professor Schrag will illustrate his talk with photographs of Kenney’s saga and colored graphs demonstrating the arbitrariness of American justice for asylum seekers. Sasha Lowes of the Legal Services Commission of South Australia will comment.

Philip G. Schrag is a professor of law at Georgetown University and director of its asylum clinic, which has won asylum for more than 100 refugees. He has written extensively on asylum, consumer protection, nuclear arms control, clinical legal education, student financial aid, legal ethics, District of Columbia statehood, and other public policy subjects. In 1996, he helped to lead an effort to stop Congress from barring asylum for anyone who applied for it more than 30 days after entering the United States; that story of public interest lobbying is told in his book A Well-founded Fear: the Congressional Battle to save Asylum in America (Routledge 2000). More recently, his book Asylum Denied: A Refugee’s Struggle for Safety in America (with David Ngaruri Kenney) (University of California Press 2008) is the gripping narrative of his co-author. It relates Kenney’s persecution and torture in Africa, his escape to America, and his Kafkaesque encounters with the U.S. immigration system. In 2009, NYU Press will publish Professor Schrag’s 14 th book, Refugee Roulette (with Jaya Ramji-Nogales and Andrew I. Schoenholtz).

Professor Schrag is a graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School. Before beginning his teaching career in 1971, he served as Assistant Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and as the first Consumer Advocate of the City of New York. He interrupted his academic work from 1977 to 1981 when he served in the Carter administration as the Deputy General Counsel of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. At the 2008 Annual Meeting of the Association of American Law Schools, he was awarded the Deborah L. Rhode award, given to one law professor each year for “outstanding contribution to furthering pro bono and public service opportunities in law schools through scholarship, leadership and service.” In June, Lexis/Nexis presented him with its 2008 Daniel Levy Memorial Award for Outstanding Achievement in Immigration Law.

David Hicks in the Australian Courts

The Hon Justice Tamberlin, Federal Court of Australia

Tuesday 29 July, 5.30 – 6.45 pm
Minter Ellison Room, Level 13, Law School

173-175 Phillip St, Sydney (cnr King & Elizabeth Sts)

About the seminar: The Seminar will focus on the Court decision in Hicks v Ruddock (2007) 156 FCR 574 and will look at the way in which the proceedings arose, the relief sought, and the pleadings. The issues raised concern an attack on the Minister’s decision not to return Hicks to Australia and also consider the availability of habeas corpus. The Court considered the concepts of “custody or control” and the “unlawfulness” of the detention at Guantanamo.

The Seminar refers to Act of State doctrine and the concept of “justiciability” in relation to the issues raised. There will be a reference to the “gag order” imposed on the plea bargain in the United States. Reference will be made to the Australian control order, and legislation restricting his personal profit making from the proceeds of selling any story relating to his experiences. There will be a brief reference to some recent developments in the United States, including the Supreme Court decisions in Boumediene and the decision of Robertson J permitting the Hamdan case to proceed which was delivered on 18 July 2008. The Seminar will also briefly refer to the duty of a State to protect its citizens and the enforceability of any such duty and consider whether Australia should consider a provision such as the US Hostage Act which provides for the Executive to take measures to protect its citizens.

Brian Tamberlin is a Federal Court Judge who has served over fourteen years on that court at both an appellate and trial level. He graduated BA, LLB (Hons 1) from Sydney University Law School in 1962 and from Harvard Law School with an LLM in 1963. He has worked as In-House Counsel with two multinationals, Unilever and IBM in 1961 and 1963-64. Between 1965 and 1967 he practised as a solicitor with a leading Sydney Law Firm and from 1967 to 1994 as a Barrister. He took Silk in 1981. He has served on the NSW Bar Association. Between 1965 and 1972 he taught Australian Constitutional Law at Sydney University Law School.

In 1990 he delivered a paper on Crown Immunity and International Arbitration at the Berlin Congress of the Union Internationale des Avocats. Since appointment to the Federal Court in 1994 he has continued to engage in teaching overseas in Vietnam, Thailand and the United States and has studied the activities of the World Trade Organisation and the World Intellectual Property Organisation in Geneva, Switzerland. For seven years his Honour was the Convenor of the Federal Court Admiralty Panel in Sydney.

Climate Change and Emissions Trading in Australia

Martijn Wilder, Partner, Baker & McKenzie

Tuesday 5 August, 5.30 – 6.45pm

Minter Ellison Room, Level 13, Law School

173-175 Phillip St, Sydney (crn King & Elizabeth Sts)

About the seminar: Martijn Wilder has practiced in the climate change area for over ten years managing to service an international client base of governments, multi-laterals, banks and companies out of Sydney. On the eve of the introduction of an emissions trading scheme in Australia, Martijn will talk about some of the key experiences and transactions he has worked on as a lawyer over this time and what one can expect as Australia introduces its own emissions trading regime.

Martijn Wilder heads Baker & McKenzie's Global Climate Change and Emissions Trading Practice and is regarded as one of the leading legal advisors in the world having worked in the area for over 10 years. Representing an international client base, Martijn has advised numerous governments and international agencies on the development and design of climate change and emissions trading laws including the EU, Australia and NZ, Malaysia, a number of Southern African governments, UNEP and UNDP. He also works with an international client base on international carbon transactions on a daily basis. Of particular note he is external counsel to multilateral banks such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank in respect of their climate change activities and acts for many of the leading carbon funds. Martijn has always worked with market leading clients on market leading deals and is currently working on a number of avoided deforestation projects in PNG, Indonesia, Brazil and on the post-2012 carbon frameworks. Martijn is Chair of the NSW Climate Change Council, Chair of the NSW GGAS DSA Transition Taskforce, on the NSW GGAS Transition Taskforce, on the advisory board of the Voluntary Carbon Scheme Agriculture, Forestry and other Land Use (AFOLU) Standard on the Governing Board of the UK Government's Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership (REEEP), Chair of TRAFFIC (Oceania) and a Governor of WWF. He is on a founder of, and on the Advisory Board of the Renewable Energy and International Law Project (REILP). Martijn is on the Board of the Australian Branch of the International Law Association (having previously been its Vice President and Secretary), has been a visiting Fellow in International Environmental Law at UNSW and a Visiting Professor to Hoftrsa University Law Summer School. He was formerly President of the Australia-Southern Africa Business Council. Martijn has honours degrees in Economics ( Sydney) and Law (ANU) and was a Cambridge Commonwealth Trust Scholar where he obtained an LLM. He has published widely in the international law and climate change area.

National Human Rights Institutions in the Asia-Pacific

Kieren Fitzpatrick, Asia-Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions

Tuesday 12 August, 5.30 – 6.45pm

Minter Ellison Room, Level 13, Law School

173-175 Phillip St, Sydney (crn King & Elizabeth Sts)

About the seminar: The Asia Pacific is the only region in the world lacking an inter-governmental human rights system.  In the absence of any inter-governmental mechanism, the Asia Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions (the APF) is playing a significant role in coordinating regional cooperation on human rights issues.  Established in 1996 with a founding membership of 4 national human rights institutions the APF has expanded rapidly and is currently comprised of 17 constitutionally or legislatively established national human rights institutions.  In the absence of a regional human rights court the APF has also established a Judicial Advisory Council comprising of eminent judicial officers nominated by its member institutions.  This session will focus on the role of the APF internationally, regionally and nationally.

Kieren Fitzpatrick is the foundation Director of the Asia Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions.  Over the last 17 years he has been involved in the development of international and national human rights law and mechanisms.

Torture Team: Cruelty, Deception, and the Compromising of Law

Professor Philippe Sands QC, University College London

Monday 18 August, 5.30 – 6.45pm, Sydney Law School

173-175 Phillip St , Sydney (crn King & Elizabeth Sts)

Click here for details...

Boumediene v Bush (2008): Has the US Supreme Court Had the Last Word on Guantanamo?

Dr James Renwick, Barrister, Selbourne Chambers and Fulbright Scholar

Professor Geoffrey Garrett, CEO, United States Studies Centre, Sydney University

Tuesday 26 August, 5.30 – 6.45pm

Minter Ellison Room, Level 13, Law School

173-175 Phillip St, Sydney (crn King & Elizabeth Sts)

About the seminar: Perhaps the most controversial legal  policy issue of the post 9/11 era has been the decision of the United States to detain and then attempt to conduct  military commissions at its Naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.  Although Guantanamo was chosen to deny inmates any avenues of legal redress, a series of historic majority decisions of the US Supreme Court has clarified World War II precedents on commissions and detention without trial in a way which has diminished Presidential power and expressed strong disapproval of the Guantanamo concept.  

So far at least the Supreme Court has not stopped military commissions:- there has been one conviction following a plea bargain  - namely David Hicks – and one contested trial has begun.  But there are more challenges being made. The most recent decision of the Supreme Court in Boumedienne is a timely opportunity to reflect upon whether the US Supreme Court has had the last word on Guantanamo, and why it is that the United States has persisted with the military commission concept in the face of strong legal opposition at home and abroad.  These are questions which raise a complex mixture of law and legal policy as well as strategy and pure politics.    Our two speakers are ideally placed to discuss the topic.

Dr. James Renwick is a NSW Barrister who has pioneered the teaching of national security in Australia.  He briefly represented Australia at Guantanamo Bay in 2004.  He has appeared in many recent High Court cases concerning detention without trial.  A former Fulbright Scholar, he was awarded the first SJD by an Australian University, from Sydney University in 1993.

Dr. Geoffrey Garrett is founding CEO of the United States Studies Centre. He was previously President of the Pacific Council on International Policy, where he remains a Senior Fellow, and Professor of International Relations, Business Administration, Communication and Law at the University of Southern California.  Among the most widely cited political scientist of his generation, Garrett is an expert on the causes and consequences of globalization, American politics and foreign policy, and the impact of China’s rise on the US and the rest of the world.  He is author of Partisan Politics in the Global Economy and editor of The Global Diffusion of Markets and Democracy, both published by Cambridge University Press.

Garrett has been quoted and interviewed by leading media sources around the world and his essays and opinion pieces have appeared in newspapers and magazines in Australia, the US, Asia, Europe and Latin America. Garrett served as founding Dean and Vice Provost of the UCLA International Institute and has held academic appointments at Oxford, Stanford and Yale universities and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.  He is a member of the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations.  A dual citizen of Australia and the US, Garrett was born and raised in Canberra and holds a BA (Hons) from the Australian National University. He earned his MA and PhD at Duke University in North Carolina, where he was a Fulbright Scholar.

The 2008 breakdown in the WTO Doha Round of trade negotiations

Dr Brett Williams, Director of the Public International Eocnomic Law Program, Sydney Centre for International Law

Tuesday 2 September, 5.30 – 6.45pm

Minter Ellison Room, Level 13, Law School

173-175 Phillip St, Sydney (crn King & Elizabeth Sts)

About the seminar: In July 2008, the WTO Held a meeting of Ministers to attempt to complete the modalities stage of the Doha Round of trade negotiations which commenced in December 2001. In particular, the Members were aiming for draft agreements on Non Agricultural Market Access and also on Agricultural trade. Dr Williams will explain what happened at the Ministerial meeting by presenting a general description of the draft texts that were on the table before the Ministerial meeting and of the issues that were under discussion. He will also make some general observations on what the parties have done wrong over the course of the negotiations, and assess what might happen next. 

Dr Brett G Williams is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Law at the University of Sydney, where he teaches courses on Law of the World Trade Organization and also teaches Competition Law and Public International Law. His publications include the co-authored book China and the World Trading System, a book chapter on “Non-Violation Complaints in the WTO system”, and “The Influence and Lack of Influence of Principles in the Negotiation for China’s Accession to the World Trade Organization (in GWILR). In 2006, he coached the moot team which won the ELSA moot court competition in WTO law.

The Prohibition of Cluster Munitions: After the Dublin Treaty

Dr Brian Rappert, University of Exeter and Expert Representatives from Austcare

Tuesday 9 September, 5.30 – 6.45pm

Minter Ellison Room, Level 13, Law School

173-175 Phillip St, Sydney (crn King & Elizabeth Sts)

About the seminar: On 30 May 2008, over 100 states adopted the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM).  The treaty was the outcome of the “Oslo Process” which began at a conference in Norway in February 2007.  This presentation examines the prohibition agreed in the CCM in terms of the precedents it sets for the regulation of armed conflict.  Focus here is given to the definition set for ‘cluster munitions’.  This is both central to the scope of the treaty as well as its future implementation.  In making no exceptions for what counts as an appropriate type of ‘cluster munition’, this weapon now joins a relatively small group of others subject to a wide ranging prohibition by major formal international treaties. 

Brian Rappert is an Associate Professor of Science, Technology and Public Affairs in the Department of Sociology and Philosophy at the University of Exeter. His long term interest has been the examination of how choices can and are made about the adoption and regulation of security-related technologies; this particularly in conditions of uncertainty and disagreement.  His book Controlling the Weapons of War: Politics, Persuasion, and the Prohibition of Inhumanity (Routledge, 2006) is an attempt to ask how humanitarian limits are set war.  Biotechnology, Security and the Search for Limits:An Inquiry into Research and Methods (Palgrave, 2007) considers the prospects and problems with introducing security-inspired controls to prevent the destructive use of biotechnology research. 

The Responsibilities of States under Human Rights Optional Protocols: Are the Views of Rights Bodies Binding?

Emeritus Professor Ivan Shearer, Member, United Nations Human Rights Committee

Tuesday 16 September, 5.30 – 6.45pm

Minter Ellison Room, Level 13, Law School

173-175 Phillip St, Sydney (crn King & Elizabeth Sts)

About the seminar: The lecture will focus on the experience of the Human Rights Committee, of which the presenter is a member. What is true of that body is applicable to the others. Neither the constitutive instrument (the ICCPR) nor the Optional Protocol itself expresses any legal status to be given to the Views of the Committee. However, the Committee has always regarded its Views as binding on the parties to the communication, and especially on the government of the relevant State where the Committee has issued interim orders of protection (e.g. calling for a delay in the execution of the death penalty pending its consideration of the case.) The Committee takes this position on the two-fold legal basis of the general duty of States to carry out their obligations in good faith and on the specific treaty obligation under the Covenant (article 3) to provide a remedy to those whose rights under the Covenant have been infringed. The Committee is currently preparing a General Comment which will expand on these reasons.

Professor Ivan Shearer is Emeritus Professor of Law at the University of Sydney and was Challis Professor of International Law from 1993 to 2003. From 1975 to 1991 he was a professor of law at the University of New South Wales. He was elected a member of the (UN) Human Rights Committee on the nomination of Australia in 2000 and was re-elected to a second 4 year term in 2004. He is currently a Vice-Chair of the Committee and also serves as the Committee member charged with responsibility for the Follow-Up of Views.

Slavery in the High Court of Australia

Reg Graycar, Barrister, St James Hall Chambers

Thursday, 25 September 2008 (Lunchtime seminar)

Minter Ellison Room, Level 13, Law School

173-175 Phillip St, Sydney (crn King & Elizabeth Sts)

About the seminar: In 2008, the High Court heard an appeal from the Victorian Court of Appeal that required it to consider the meaning of  'slavery' in the Commonwealth Criminal Code in the context of a prosecution of a Melbourne brothel owner.  The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (now the Australian Human Rights Commission) intervened and argued that the Court should approach the concept of slavery (the subject of 1926 and 1956 treaties that have been ratified by Australia) by reference to contemporary international law understandings.  In its August judgment, the Court held (6:1- Kirby J dissenting) that there were sufficient indicia of slavery for the conviction to be upheld.  In doing so, the Court relied on the jurisprudence of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).  A significant part of HREOC's submission  was directed at persuading the Court that in determining the meaning of domestic statutory references to crimes against humanity, the jurisprudence of international tribunals such as the ICTY was indicative of customary international law. 

Click here for HREOC's submission...

Click here for the High Court's judgment...

The Making of General International Law

Professor Campbell McLachlan QC, Victoria University of Wellington & Hague Academy Lecturer

Thursday 25 September, 6.00–7.00pm

GPR6, Level 6, Sydney Law School

 173-175 Phillip St, Sydney (crn King & Elizabeth Sts)

About the seminar: We are living in an era of resurgent imperialism and of unprecedented economic globalisation. On the 60 th Anniversary of the United Nations International Law Commission, it is timely to ask, then, what do we still mean by General International Law, and why do we need it? Drawing upon his recent work on responses to the fragmentation of international law (for the ILC) and on fragmentation of judicial decision-making (for his 2008 Hague Lectures), Campbell McLachlan QC argues that the very pluralism and complexity of the modern world has given General International Law a new function of wide-ranging importance in the international community.

 Campbell McLachlan QC (LL B (Hons) (Well), Ph D (Lon.), Dip (c l) (Hag Acad Int’l Law))is Professor of Law at Victoria University of Wellington. He is President of the Australian and New Zealand Society of International Law. His latest book (with Weiniger and Shore) International Investment Arbitration: Substantive Principles (OUP, 2007) is the first modern treatise on investment treaty law as applied by arbitral tribunals, and won the J F Northey Book Prize in 2008. He is a Specialist Editor of the 14 th edition of Dicey, Morris & Collins on the Conflict of Laws, responsible for the arbitration section. In July 2008, he became the first New Zealand-based academic to deliver a Special Course at The Hague Academy of International Law. His Lectures, on ‘Lis Pendens in International Litigation,’ will be published in 2009. He is a Barrister (NZ, call 1984, Silk 2007), with chambers in New Zealand (Bankside Chambers, Auckland) and London (Essex Court Chambers). He took Silk in 2007, only the second academic lawyer in New Zealand to be recognised in this way. He is appointed as an arbitrator for the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes in Washington; and is a member of the ICC Court of Arbitration in Paris.

The Crisis of Human Rights in Sri Lanka

Professor Ivan Shearer, Shiva Pasupati, Mr HLD Mahindapala & Dr Brian Seniveratne

Friday 10 October, 3.00–5.00pm

Professorial Board Room, Main Quad, Sydney University Campus, Broadway
Co-hosted with the Sydney Democracy Forum

About the seminar: With the resumption of hostilities in Sri Lanka, there have been increasing allegations of frequent human rights violations by both government forces and the Tamil Tigers (LTTE). Violations of human rights and humanitarian law against civilians have escalated, including indiscriminate killings, forced displacement, use of human shields, abductions and disappearances, forced recruitment of children, arbitrary arrests and detentions, increasing restrictions on political rights and expression, and impunity for security forces. H uman rights monitors, lawyers and journalists in Sri Lanka have come under increasing pressure, including threats of violence or legal proceedings. The speakers in this seminar will discuss the human rights problems in Sri Lanka and consider how a culture of respect for law and human rights can be resurrected.

Climate Change:  Aspects of the International and Constitutional Framework for Reform

Dr Melissa Perry QC, Selbourne Chambers

Tuesday 14 October, 5.30–6.45pm

Minter Ellison Room, Level 13, Law School

173-175 Phillip St, Sydney (crn King & Elizabeth Sts)

About the seminar: The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol to that convention envisage that parties will take steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in accordance with their obligations through a variety of measures at the domestic, as well as the international, level. The establishment of a national emissions trading scheme is only one such means. This seminar focuses upon aspects of the international and constitutional framework within which Australia may address and respond to climate change by other means, consistently with its role under international arrangements as a developed country to lead the way for developing nations. In particular, the seminar will consider:

• the nature and extent of relevant legislative powers available to the Commonwealth, with particular emphasis upon the external affairs power (both from the perspective of legislating to implement Australia’s obligations domestically and legislating with respect to offshore areas, matters and things external to Australia);
• legislative mechanisms that might be employed to overcome some of the challenges that the federal system of government in Australia poses to a nationally consistent, effective and timely response in accordance with Australia’s international obligations; and
• the function that the law can perform, among others, as a catalyst for changing values, expectations, and behaviour (including the way in which decisions are made).

Melissa Perry has a national practice primarily in the federal sphere specialising in public international law, constitutional law, administrative law, native title and, more recently, environmental law. She has practiced at the bar since 1992, moving to New South Wales from South Australia in late 2004. She graduated in law with first class honours from the University of Adelaide. Her doctorate from the University of Cambridge was in public international law and was awarded the Yorke Prize.

She frequently presents papers at local and national seminars and conferences on a diversity of topics within her areas of expertise, and her publications include a major textbook on Australian Native Title Law co-authored with Stephen Lloyd of the Sydney bar. She has also held part-time visiting fellowships with the University of Adelaide, the Australian National University and the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law at the University of Cambridge.

She has pursued an interest in law reform through her membership of the Administrative Review Council which has responsibility for oversight of federal administrative law, as well as (among other things) through her involvement in the preparation of submissions to government on particular constitutional issues for various law bodies. In addition, she is Secretary of the Australian Association of Constitutional Law and a foundation fellow of the Australian Academy of Law established in 2007. She is also a member of various committees including the Administrative Law Committee and the Resources, Energy and Environmental Law Committee of the Law Council of Australia, and the New South Wales Branch Committee of the Australian Mining and Petroleum Law Association.

Restoration of Law and Order in the North and East Provinces of Sri Lanka - The Humanitarian Aspect

The Honourable Rohitha Bogollagama MP, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sri Lanka

Wednesday 15 October, 5.30 – 6.45 pm

Minter Ellison Room, Level 13, Law School

173-175 Phillip St , Sydney (crn King & Elizabeth Sts)

Hon. Rohitha Bogollagama, MP was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs of Sri Lanka in January 2007. He was the Minister of Enterprise Development and Investment Promotion from 2005, until January 2007. He also held positions of both Minister of Advanced Technology and National Enterprise Development and Minister of Industries previously. Prior to this, he was enrolled as an Attorney-at-Law of the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka in 1976.

He entered Parliament in 2000 and during this period, has served in many Parliamentary Consultative Committees and in 2005, he served as the Chairman of the Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE) in Parliament, an Oversight Committee of the legislature responsible for accountability of Public Enterprises to Parliament.

Minister Bogollagama represented the Sri Lankan Government at the two rounds of peace talks held in Geneva with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2006. He also functioned as the Spokesman of the Government delegation.

The United Nations Declaration on Indigenous People

Megan Davis, Director, Indigenous Law Centre, UNSW

Tuesday 21 October, 5.30 – 6.45pm

Minter Ellison Room, Level 13, Law School

173-175 Phillip St, Sydney (crn King & Elizabeth Sts)

Megan Davis is the Director of the Indigenous Law Centre and a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Law, UNSW. Megan’s scholarship involves critical analysis of Indigenous public law issues in particular constitutional reform and democratic theory and governance. Megan’s research also includes Indigenous peoples’ rights in international law, in particular UN treaty body jurisprudence and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and she is also an Australian member of the International Law Association’s Indigenous Rights Committee. Megan has held a UN Indigenous Fellowship, UNOHCHR, Geneva and has participated for a decade in UN expert seminars and working groups as an Indigenous lawyer.

About the seminar: After more than 20 years of negotiations between States and indigenous peoples, the UN General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples by an overwhelming majority in September 2007. The Declaration stipulates the individual and collective rights of the world’s 370 million native peoples, calls for the maintenance and strengthening of cultural identities and emphasises the right to development in accordance with their needs and aspirations. Efforts to draft a specific instrument concerning the protection of indigenous peoples on a global scale moved slowly due to concerns expressed by States in relation to some of the core provisions of the draft declaration, for example the right to self-determination and control over natural resources existing on traditional lands. The Declaration is a comprehensive statement addressing issues such as collective rights, cultural rights and identity as well as rights to education, health, employment and language. Megan Davis will reflect on her involvement in the drafting of the Declaration and on its successes and failures.

Challenges Facing the International Criminal Court

Mark Ierace SC, Senior NSW Public Defender and former ICTY counsel

Associate Professor Steven Freeland, University of Western Sydney

Tuesday 28 October, 5.30 – 6.45pm

Minter Ellison Room, Level 13, Sydney Law School

173-175 Phillip St, Sydney (crn King & Elizabeth Sts)

Steven Freeland is Associate Professor in International Law at the University of Western Sydney, a Visiting Professor in International Law at the University of Copenhagen and a Visiting Professional within the Appeals Chamber at the International Criminal Court. He has also been a Special Advisor to the Danish Foreign Ministry in matters related to the International Criminal Court.

About the seminar: This year marks the 10 th anniversary of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Despite the undoubted progress throughout all levels of the Court in clarifying various aspects of the Statute, the Court still faces many challenges, of a structural, political, legal and/or financial nature. These challenges represent obstacles that must be overcome over time if the Court is to more effectively fulfil the broad mandate that it has been given under the terms of the Rome Statute.

Click here for Power Point slides...

Mark Ierace SC was a Senior Trial Attorney for the Office of the Prosecutor in the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (2000-2004). In that capacity, he led the prosecution team against the Bosnian Serb General (General Galic) who from 1992 perpetrated the Siege of Sarajevo for two years. Mark Ierace SC was admitted to the Bar in 1981. He is currently the Senior Public Defender of NSW.

About the seminar: Prior to the commencement of the first trial in the ICC (Prosecutor v Dyilo), the Trial Chamber imposed a complete stay of proceedings, citing as its reasons that the Office of the Prosecutor (“the OTP”) had engaged in “a wholesale and serious abuse” of the Rome Statute’s provisions as to disclosure. Mark Ierace SC will discuss what can be gleaned from this case and the OTP’s investigations generally in preparing cases for trial and what lessons should be learned from the Trial Chamber’s decision, and Appeals Chamber’s response

Prospects for Global Nuclear Disarmament

Martine Letts, Deputy Director, Lowy Institute

Tuesday 4 November, 5.30 – 6.45pm

Minter Ellison Room, Level 13, Law School

173-175 Phillip St, Sydney (crn King & Elizabeth Sts)

About the seminar: Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s June 2008 announcement for the establishment of an International Commission on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament was initially greeted with some scepticism.  It seemed to come out of the blue with little consultation with key players and with little apparent thought as to how it might be resourced.  At a time when the existing proliferation architecture seems to be crumbling and prospects for nuclear disarmament are more elusive than ever has Australia had bitten off more than it can chew?

And yet the time is ripe for a new initiative. The global nuclear order is undergoing some significant changes.  Questions about nuclear disarmament, nuclear proliferation and growing demand for nuclear energy are all on the table while profound shifts are unfolding in the distribution of power and influence among major states.  Both US Presidential candidates have acknowledged that nuclear disarmament is a serious policy question for them.  There is also more at stake now than simply rescuing the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty: there are significant other players who need to be coopted to realise a vision free of nuclear weapons.  Global pessimism about the growing nuclear dangers may in fact help get us closer to crafting a global consensus towards the realisation of the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons.

Martine Letts, Deputy Director of the Lowy Institute for International Policy, will discuss the prospects for nuclear disarmament and the contribution the International Commission might play in getting us closer to zero.  Prior to coming to the Lowy Institute Martine was Secretary-General (CEO) of the Australian Red Cross.  A former Ambassador to Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, and adviser to former Foreign Minister to Gareth Evans, she also spent almost a decade in Geneva and Vienna as an arms control and disarmament diplomat.

Excavating Mass Graves: The Evidentiary Importance of Human Bodies in International Criminal Tribunals

Professor Richard Wright, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of Sydney, former Chief Archaeologist for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

Tuesday, 11 November 2008, 5.30 – 6.45pm

Minter Ellison Room, Level 13, Sydney Law School

173-175 Phillip St , Sydney (crn King & Elizabeth Sts)

Richard Wright has specialised in applying archaeological methods to the discovery and excavation of mass graves and execution sites in Ukraine and Bosnia-Herzogovinasince1990. From 1990 to 1991 he worked on mass graves in the former Soviet Union ( Ukraine). A major assignment was from 1997 to 2000, when for those four years he was Chief Archaeologist for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. In that role he led an international team of archaeologists and human biologists whose job was to locate clandestine mass graves and examine the evidence contained in them. He has given expert testimony at two trials in The Hague.

About the seminar: The subject of this talk is the judicial context of bodies from mass graves. I shall discuss topics that exemplify the power that flows from being able to display bodies to courts. By contrast, and where there are no bodies to show, a lazy prosecution case can be weakened by the unnecessary lack of material evidence. Particularly vulnerable are cases that depend on the statements of eye-witnesses. I shall discuss efforts by revisionists to protect their positions. These efforts include denying that there are any bodies, that the number is less than expected, and that the bodies are attributable to unrelated events. These discussions will be illustrated with critical evidentiary photos.

The Global Financial Crisis and Human Rights: Opportunity or Catastrophe?

Professor David Kinley, Chair in Human Rights Law, University of Sydney

Tuesday, 18 November 2008, 5.30 – 6.45pm

Minter Ellison Room, Level 13, Sydney Law School

173-175 Phillip St , Sydney (crn King & Elizabeth Sts)

About the seminar: For the poor, finance is always about much more than economics.  It is a matter of basic human rights.  As the dust begins to settle on the global financial crisis it is certain that all economies will suffer, but it is in the poorest states that will suffer the most, simply because they have less to lose. On top of the sharp price increases in staple foods and fuel, least developed countries are especially vulnerable to reductions in foreign direct investment, export trade, remittances, and economic aid. Thoughts are now starting to move beyond the immediate crisis to questions of how to repair the system for the long-term, including under a Bretton Woods II. In these deliberations, considerations of how best to protect human rights – especially of the poor - must be central. This paper argues why and how this can be done, with particular emphasis on the responsibilities of states, the international financial institutions and business.

David Kinley holds the inaugural chair in human rights at the University of Sydney. His has previously held positions at Cambridge University, The Australian National University, the University of New South Wales, Washington College of Law, American University, and most recently was the founding Director of the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law at Monash University (2000-2005). He was a Senior Fulbright Scholar in 2004, based in Washington DC, and Herbert Smith Visiting Fellow at the Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge during the first half of 2008. He has written and edited eight books and more than 60 articles, book chapters, reports and papers.

Click here to access the full text of Professor David Kinley's speech...

Trade Commitments In Services: The Interplay between WTO/GATS and Investment Treaties

Rolf Adlung, Senior Economist, Trade in Services Division, World Trade Organisation

Wednesday, 19 November 2008, 12.30- 2.00 pm (Lunchtime seminar)

Minter Ellison Room, Level 13, Sydney Law School

173-175 Phillip St , Sydney (crn King & Elizabeth Sts)

About the seminar: This presentation is based on an article (co-authored with Molinuevo) in 2008 Journal of International Economic Law entitled "Bilateralism in Services trade: Is there Fire behind the (BIT) smoke?". It considers the reality that Members currently face several operating systems governing trade in services, including in the WTO (under the GATS) and bilateral investment or trade agreements. This paper considers some of the interactions between the GATS and bilateral agreements and generally considers the impact of the drift towards liberalizing trade in services under bilateral treaties.

Rolf Adlung is a Senior Economist, in the Trade in Services Division of the World Trade Organization secretariat.  He is a leading specialist in the General Agreement on Trade in Services, has published widely in that field and taught in many WTO technical assistance missions on the GATS. His publications include: “Public Services and the GATS” in 2006 9(2) Journal of International Economic Law; “Negotiations on Safeguards and subsidies in Services: A Never Ending Story?” in (2007) 10(2) Journal of International Economic Law; and “The Contribution of Services Liberalization to Poverty Reduction: What role for the GATS” (2007) 8(4) Journal of World Investment & Trade.  

WTO Dispute Settlement: A Practitioner's Perspective

Amanda Gorely, WTO Trade Law Branch, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

Thursday, 4 December 2008, 5.30 – 6.45pm

Minter Ellison Room, Level 13, Sydney Law School

173-175 Phillip St , Sydney (crn King & Elizabeth Sts)

About the seminar: Drawing on some recent examples, Amanda will discuss some of the substantive and procedural challenges that can come into play when Australia participates in WTO dispute settlement.  This will include the practical implications of WTO timeframes, coordinating a whole of government approach, presentation of complex information, open versus closed hearings and the use of previous WTO “jurisprudence”.

Amanda Gorely has headed the WTO Trade Law Branch in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade since 2005.  In this role, she has responsibility for representing Australia in WTO disputes and providing legal advice on Australia's WTO obligations. She joined DFAT as a legal specialist in 1993 and has had postings to Geneva and Stockholm.  

2008 Public Seminar Series: Semester 1

Treading on Egg Shells: Challenges in Applying International Law in Uganda and Sudan

Paul White, Senior United Nations Protection Officer
Wednesday 19 March, 5.30 – 6.45pm
Minter Ellison Room, Level 13, Law School
Co-hosted with the International Law Association (Australian Branch) & the UNSW International Law & Policy Group

About the Seminar: Based on his last three field assignments in Northern Uganda and Sudan (Kassala & Darfur) Paul White will deliberate on the whether the ICC has been isolated as a result of the Ugandan governments decision to establish a special division of the Ugandan High Court to deal with serious crimes of the LRA who have murdered, abducted and mutilated thousands of people over twenty years.  He will also discuss whether using traditional justice is appropriate for 'lesser' offences.  He will discuss the likely effect and chances of success of the recent commitment to the elimination of female genital mutilation/cutting recently made by the 10 United Nations agencies who pledged to support governments, communities, and women and girls to abandon the practice within a generation.  Paul will assess whether this is realistic in places where this ancient practice is still well entrenched. Finally, he will discuss some impediments to the practice of law for Darfur lawyers and why they are particularly vulnerable if they associate themselves with international agencies.

Paul White has a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Adelaide and a Master of Laws from the London School of Economics and Political Science.  He spent 10 years working in Community and Aboriginal Legal Services in South Australia before going to Hong Kong to establish the Jesuit Refugee Service’s Australian Lawyer’s Project.  He has experience as an adjudicator of Refugee Status in both Hong Kong and Australia.  Most recently Paul has worked on protection and human rights issues with refugees and internally displaced persons.   He is currently working as one of 15 Senior Protection Officers in a project developed to enhance the protection capacity (ProCap) of the UN. ProCap is administered by the Norwegian Refugee Council and UN Office of the Coordinator of Humanitarian Affairs.  It is a resource that provides senior-level expertise and leadership in protection and is used primarily to support priority countries and/or operations as identified by the Global Protection Cluster Working Group.  These include both existing, protracted or neglected crises, as well as new, emerging or rapidly changing humanitarian emergencies, particularly, but not exclusively, involving situations of internal displacement. Through ProCap or otherwise Paul has worked with UNICEF, UNHCR and UN OHCHR.  Amongst other places Paul has worked with in Sudan both in the East and Darfur, Northern Uganda where the Lord’s Resistance Army caused havoc, Malaysia, Afghanistan and Kenya.  He has also worked as a consultant for UNHCR in Geneva on both IDPs issues and Child Protection.  As well as general protection experience in refugee and IDP settings he has experience with the demobilisation of child soldiers,  reintegrating former camel jockeys, establishing projects aimed to prevent female genital cutting and establishing legal aid networks. 

“Back to the Future” for Investor-State Arbitrations: Revising Rules to Meet Public Interests

Associate Professor Luke Nottage and Kate Miles
Associates, Sydney Centre for International Law
Wednesday 2 April, 5.30 – 6.45pm
Minter Ellison Room, Level 13, Law School

Click here for paper...

About the Seminar: The more things change, the more some stay the same. Our paper first highlights renewed concerns about delays and, especially, costs in international commercial arbitration ( ICA). Many now urge quite radical solutions to make ICA more efficient, including allowing parties to authorise arbitrators to facilitate settlement (Arb-Med). At the same time, there are growing calls for more transparency, third-party participation, and other rule changes to maintain the legitimacy of the burgeoning field of investor-state arbitrations (ISA). Such reforms are justified by the greater variety of public interests involved in ISA, despite some possible losses in efficiency (Part 2). We should resist a certain tendency simply to extend the solutions devised or proposed for ICA, particularly in the form of Rules of arbitral institutions, to contemporary ISA. However, some reforms incorporating proper safeguards may also be advisable in both fields, such as Arb-Med processes, or arbitrator remuneration providing better incentives to streamline proceedings. Most reforms are best implemented by institutions devising tailored ISA Rules, to be added as options for investors in bilateral or regional investment treaties or Free Trade Agreements (FTAs: Part 3).

Our paper therefore proposes a variety of improvements (Part 4). These are based on comparisons of the main Rules adopted for ISA (ICSID and the UNCITRAL Rules), the Arbitration Rules of institutions like the Australian Centre for International Commercial Arbitration (ACICA) and the Japan Commercial Arbitration Association (JCAA), and some of the provisions already found in Australia’s FTAs or governing trade disputes under the World Trade Organisation (WTO) system. Hopefully, these improvements will enable ISA to keep developing through bilateral initiatives like the proposed Australia-Japan FTA, emerging regional initiatives, and ultimately a multilateral framework for investment (Part 5). Although reforms are currently needed to bolster the legitimacy of ISA, longer-term reforms may instead re-emphasise efficiency, rather like ICA has done after decades spent achieving global acceptance.

Luke Nottage is Associate Professor at Sydney Law School, Director of the Australian Network for Japanese Law and of Japanese Law Links Pty Ltd. He specialises in comparative and transnational commercial and consumer law, and is a Special Associate of the Australian Centre for International Commercial Arbitration.

Kate Miles is a lecturer at the Faculty of Law, University of Sydney, specialising in international investment law and international environmental law.  She has published work on issues relating to international investment law, sustainable finance, ecosystem services, and voluntary codes of corporate conduct.  She has an LL.M. in Environmental Law (Hons I) from the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and an LL.M. in International Legal Studies from New York University School of Law.  She has also lectured at King’s College, University of London, and studied at University College London.  She is currently researching the interrelationship between international investment law and principles of environmental protection, as well as the way in which public interest issues are addressed in investment treaty arbitration.  She has also practiced as a solicitor in commercial litigation in Auckland and at Allens Arthur Robinson in Sydney.

The Fight against Racism and for the Rights of Minorities in the 21st Century

Gay McDougall, UN Independent Expert on Minority Rights & Distinguished Scholar, Washington College of Law
Tuesday 8 April, 5.30 – 7pm
Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission
Level 8, Piccadilly Tower, 133 Castlereagh St, Sydney
Co-hosted with HREOC and Amnesty International

Click for more details...

Click here for audio of speech...

The European Union’s Common Foreign and Security Policy: Threads and Prospects

Professor Panos Koutrakos, Professor of European Union Law, University of Bristol
Wednesday 9 April, 5.30 – 6.45pm
Minter Ellison Room, Level 13, Law School

About the Seminar: The process of drafting, signing, debating and, ultimately, rejecting the Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe has made the European Union undergo a considerably long process of group therapy. This appears to have settled with the adoption of the Lisbon Treaty which is likely to enter into force in the early months of 2009. The role of the European Union as a global player has been at the very core of all these debates about the Union’s reform in the last five years.

This lecture will focus on a specific aspect of the EU’s international relations, namely its Common Foreign and Security Policy. It will chart its development by reference to its main characteristics, namely its incremental development, its focus on procedures and its dynamic and sui generis character, and will discuss how these have shaped its reform.

The lecture will then assess the current state of affairs through the lens of three themes: the coherence and consistency between different EU external policies, the focus on the development of the European Security and Defence Policy and the need for, and pitfalls of, flexibility.

Panos Koutrakos is Professor of European Union Law at the University of Bristol. In September 2007, he was also awarded a Jean Monnet Chair in European Law by the European Commission. He is Visiting Professor at University of Antwerp, Belgium. He has held teaching posts at the Universities of Durham and Birmingham. He was a Jean Monnet Research Fellow at the University of Michigan and Visiting Professor at the University of Iowa.

He has written widely in European law in general and EU external relations in particular on which he published EU International Relations Law (2007 Hart Publishing) and Trade, Foreign Policy and Defence in EU Constitutional Law (2001, Hart Publishing). In the context of the recent two enlargements, he contributed to training programmes for judges and civil servants from central and eastern Europe. He is the joint editor of European Law Review.

The Bali Summit on Climate Change: An Insider’s View & Launch of Model Climate Law

Richard Merzian, Australian Delegate to the Bali Summit

Rachael Walmsley, Environmental Defenders Office

Wednesday 16 April, 6 – 7.30pm
Minter Ellison Room, Level 13, Law School
Co-hosted with the Australian Centre for Environmental Law
and the Environmental Defender’s Office NSW

Click here for more details...

About the Seminar: Richard will be discussing his experience on the Government Delegation at the UN Conference in Bali, and how the slow grind of diplomacy contrasts to the increasing urgency of scientific findings and grassroots demand for strong climate laws. Rachel will be talking about her Bali UNFCCC experience, and discussing the current climate change law reform projects being undertaken by the EDO.

Richard Merzian has recently joined the Environmental Defenders Office as an Assistant Policy Officer on Climate Change. He has just completed a Bachelor of Economics and a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Sydney. Previously Richard was an Advisor on the Australian Government Delegation to the UN Conference on Climate Change in Bali.

In late 2006 Richard helped establish and has since been on the Steering Committee of the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, an umbrella group of concerned and proactive youth organizations around the nation. Richard was selected for Al Gore's Climate Change Leadership Program in September 2007 and volunteers Inconvenient Truth presentations in the greater Sydney region.  He also train’s students under the AYCC youth climate messenger program.

Outside of the office Richard can be found watching undervalued reality TV shows in an attempt to relive his 15 minutes of fame as the Eco-Nerd on the cult show Nerds FC.

Richard will be discussing his experience on the Government Delegation at the UN Conference in Bali, and how the slow grind of diplomacy contrasts to the increasing urgency of scientific findings and grassroots demand for strong climate laws.

Rachel Walmsley is the Policy Director at the Environmental Defender's Office, and works on environmental policy and legislative reform. Rachel holds a Bachelor of Laws with Honours in international environmental law, and a Bachelor of Arts from ANU and is currently completing a Masters in Environmental Science and Law.

Rachel is currently a Member of the Ministerial Reference Group on Biodiversity Banking, does guest lecturing on native vegetation law at UNSW Law School, and was a member of the CANA delegation to the Bali Climate Change Conference. Rachel was recently on the Australian delegation for meetings of parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity.

Previously Rachel has worked for the peak environment groups of New South Wales, the Australian Centre for Environmental Law (ACEL) at ANU in Canberra, and British conservation organisations in London and Tanzania.

Rachel will be talking about her Bali UNFCCC experience, and discussing the current climate change law reform projects being undertaken by the EDO.

The United Nations Human Rights Council

Chris Sidoti, Immediate Past Director, International Federation for Human Rights Service, Geneva
Tuesday 22 April, 5.30 – 6.45pm
Minter Ellison Room, Level 13, Law School

Click here for PowerPoint slides...

About the Seminar: Over the past two years the international human rights system has undergone its most sweeping reform in decades. The UN Commission on Human Rights was abolished exactly 60 years after its establishment. It was replaced by the new Human Rights Council. The Council met for the first time in June 2006 and immediately commenced an "institution building" process that is still not complete. After two years, however, it is possible to start making some judgments about the significance of the reform and whether in fact anything has changed at all. Just as significantly, if there has been change, has it been for the better or the worse? Chris Sidoti returned to Australia at the end of 2007 after four years heading the International Service for Human Rights, the pre-eminent human rights non-government organisation in Geneva. In that role he participated in all the reform discussions and closely followed the process of the end of the Commission and the beginning of the Council. He'll tell some stories, share some reflections and make some provisional assessments of the reform.

Chris Sidoti is a human rights lawyer, activist and teacher. He currently works from Sydney, Australia, as an international human rights consultant, specialising in the international human rights system and in national human rights institutions. He is also the independent chair of the United Kingdom Government’s Northern Ireland Bill of Rights Forum and chair of the NSW Casino Control Authority, a quasi-judicial appointment. He was director of the International Service for Human Rights, based in Geneva, Switzerland, from 2003 to 2007. He has been Australian Human Rights Commissioner (1995-2000), Australian Law Reform Commissioner (1992-1995) and Foundation Director of the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (1987-1992). He has also worked in non-government organisations, including for the Human Rights Council of Australia and the Australian Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace. He is an adjunct professor at the University of Western Sydney, Griffith University ( Queensland) and the Australian Catholic University and a Fellow of the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law at Monash University.

Punishing Assassins: The UN Security Council’s Criminal Tribunal in Lebanon

Sarah Williams, former Legal Officer, British Foreign Office & Sydney Centre Affiliate
Wednesday 30 April, 5.30 – 6.45pm
Minter Ellison Room, Level 13, Law School

Click here for PowerPoint slides...

About the Seminar: In May 2007, the UN Security Council authorized the establishment of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. The tribunal has jurisdiction to prosecute the individuals responsible for the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in February 2005, and other connected attacks. The hybrid tribunal was originally envisaged as a treaty-based court. However, due to disagreement within Lebanon that precluded ratification of the required treaty, the Security Council intervened, ultimately establishing the tribunal by means of a binding resolution pursuant to its Chapter VII powers. Resolution 1757 was controversial, with several members of the Council expressing concern that it represented an unwarranted interference in the domestic affairs of a member state. It also raised questions as to the correct legal basis of the tribunal.

This seminar will provide a background to the establishment of the tribunal and an examination of its key features. It will then discuss the powers of the Security Council in this area, the correct legal basis for the tribunal and any implications for issues such as immunity and state cooperation.

Sarah Williams has been a Lecturer in Public International Law at Durham University since 2003. In 2006, Sarah was the Senior Legal Researcher at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office of the United Kingdom. In this role Sarah appeared before various United Nations committees and commissions, and advised the British Government on issues of international, foreign and domestic law.

Sarah’s main research areas are in general public international law, international humanitarian law and international criminal law. She is currently completing a book on internationalized criminal tribunals for publication in late 2008.

Sarah has recently been appointed as the Dorset Fellow in Public International Law at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law, a role which she will undertake from July 2008.

Protecting Civilians: Lessons from the Field in Iraq and Lebanon

John Pace, Senior United Nations Human Rights
Official & Sydney Centre Associate
Wednesday 7 May, 5.30 – 6.45pm
Minter Ellison Room, Level 13, Law School

About the seminar:

 “… the State should be the best guarantor of human rights. It is the State that the international community should principally entrust with ensuring the protection of individuals. However, the issue of international action must be raised when States prove unworthy of this task, when they violate the fundamental principles laid down in the Charter of the United Nations, and when - far from being protectors of individuals - they become tormentors.”

(Secretary-General Butros Butros Ghali at the opening of the World Conference on Human Rights, Vienna, 14 June 1993)

Armed conflicts that have occurred since the Second World War have shown that, in spite of efforts by the United Nations, the Red Cross movement and other international organisations, civilians have not been spared. In several conflicts they are the targets. It has been said that this is due to the change in the nature of conflict and that it is no longer possible to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants. On the other hand, the resort to the use of force has also been questioned.

The invasion of Iraq in 2003, albeit illegal, rid the country of a regime that had persecuted large segments of its own people for decades, but protection of civilians has not improved; it is arguably worse. Around 1m Iraqi civilians are reported to have been killed since the invasion. When Israel attacked Lebanon in July-August 2006 over one thousand Lebanese civilians were killed; over forty Israeli civilians were killed.

The Security Council in recent years has underlined the need to enhance the protection of civilians in peace-keeping operations by enabling peace-keeping operations, under certain conditions, to “protect civilians in imminent danger of physical violence”. The use of cluster bombs by Israel in this conflict added further emphasis on the need to protect civilians.

The case made by Butros Ghali in 1993 has since been re-vitalised in the shape of the responsibility to protect (R2P) and the consequent application of the use of force as one of the means of realising this protection. In spite of the shock and horror that follows such occurrences, efforts to strengthen the protection of civilians have not been successful. This seminar will share experiences from these two conflicts as well as several others in the recent past, in an effort to identify the reasons for the gap between the theory and the practice ….

John Pace is an international human rights specialist with over forty years experience at the front line of the development of the international human rights programme. As a United Nations official, he combined conference room with field experience, serving as Secretary of the UN Commission on Human Rights, Coordinator of the Vienna World Conference on Human Rights and several other UN bodies, as well as seeing action in several countries, in different capacities, ranging from leading several fact-finding missions, to ‘good offices’ assignments. Most recently he has served as the Chief of the United Nations Human Rights Office in Iraq and as Senior Advisor to the Humanitarian Coordinator in Lebanon. He is currently engaged in human rights work in Nepal and Indonesia, among others.

Crimes against Humanity in International Law

Dr Robert Dubler SC, Barrister & Centre Associate
Wednesday 14 May, 5.30 – 6.45pm
Minter Ellison Room, Level 13, Law School

Click here for Robert Dubler's paper....

About the Seminar : The term ‘crimes against humanity’ as defined in Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC Statute) contains loose concepts, such as a ‘widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population’ and a ‘State or organizational policy to commit such attack’. 20 years after States adopted this definition, there is not yet any authoritative case law from the ICC assigning the offence a clear technical meaning. In addition the notion of ‘universal jurisdiction’ over crimes against humanity remains controversial. The concept of ‘crimes against humanity’, however, cannot be reduced just to a topic of international law. There is a yearning to uncover the essence of the idea, to state why it is that ‘crimes against humanity’ are important and what the concept aims to protect. But is there some overarching theory of crimes against humanity? W hat is distinctive about crimes against humanity and how is it different from other kinds of evil conduct – such as ordinary domestic crimes or human rights abuses? Based upon his recent PhD thesis, Robert Dubler looks at these issues in this seminar.

Dr Robert Dubler is a Senior Counsel at the New South Wales Bar with an interest in international criminal law and human rights law. He is a Vice President of the International Commission of Jurists (New South Wales Branch) and a member of Amnesty International. He has appeared in a number of cases including acting as amicus curiae on behalf of the International Commission of Jurists in the High Court in the Aboriginal stolen generation case and in the Full Federal Court in respect of the claims of East Timorese to refugee status. He recently was one of the Counsel acting for the relatives of Mr Brian Peters at the coronial inquest into the killing of the Balibo five in East Timor in 1975. He has recently completed a PhD at Sydney University on crimes against humanity in international law.

Producing Whales, Performing Power: A Study of Discourse in International Relations

Dr Charlotte Epstein, Department of International Relations, University of Sydney & Centre Affiliate
Wednesday 21 May, 5.30 – 6.45pm
Minter Ellison Room, Level 13, Law School

About the Seminar: In the second half of the 20th century, worldwide attitudes toward whaling shifted from widespread acceptance to moral censure. Why? Whaling, once as important to the global economy as oil is now, had long been uneconomical. Major species were long known to be endangered. Yet nations had continued to support whaling. In my forthcoming book, The Power of Words in International Relations: Birth of an Anti-Whaling Discourse (2008, MIT Press), I argue the change was brought about not by changing material interests but by a powerful anti-whaling discourse that successfully recast whales as extraordinary mammals that needed to be saved from the whalers. The whaling issue draws out the importance of discursive power, a form of power that plays a key role an 'anarchic' international system and yet one that has been largely overlooked in the study of international politics. I consider various factors that enabled this dramatic shift from a whaling to an anti-whaling world, such as the changing role of science, the rise of global environmental activism, and evolving structures of economic production. I show how our changing relationship with the whales had much less to do with our concern for the whales themselves (or how endangered they really were) than with our relationships to one another - and thus with politics.

Dr Charlotte Epstein is a lecturer in International Relations at Sydney University. She read first in Philosophy and Literature at La Sorbonne and then in International Relations at Cambridge University, where she did her PhD. Before coming to Sydney she was a George Lurcy visiting scholar at UC Berkeley. She has written on the nature of power in the international system, questions of sovereignty and the changing nature of the modern state, and global environmental politics.

International Law and Rights to Oil and Gas Resources of the Timor Gap: Trick or Treat?

Professor Gillian Triggs, Dean, Sydney Law School
Wednesday 28 May, 5.30 – 6.45pm
Minter Ellison Room, Level 13, Law School

Gillian Triggs, Dean of the Faculty of Law of the University of Sydney, is an expert in international law and a barrister in the Victorian Supreme Court. Formerly the Director of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law, Professor Triggs is an international lawyer with publications on World Trade Organisation dispute resolution, energy and resources law, law of the sea, territorial sovereignty, jurisdiction and immunity, international criminal law, international environmental law and human rights.

Professor Triggs has previously held academic positions in Melbourne, where she graduated in law in 1968 and gained a PhD in 1982. Until 2005 she was the Director of the Institute for Comparative and International Law at the University of Melbourne, where she also held a Professorial Chair in Law.

Professor Triggs has maintained an international commercial practice as a consultant in international law to Mallesons Stephen Jaques and has advised governments in the Asia Pacific region on questions relating to sovereignty and jurisdiction. She has also directed several projects for the Asian Development Bank on legal capacity building in Vietnam, Mongolia and Indonesia and has been the Australian Representative on the Council of Jurists for the Asia Pacific Forum for National Human Rights Institutions, and is currently the joint general editor of the International and Comparative Law Quarterly and a member of the editorial boards of the Melbourne Journal of International Law and the International Journal of Energy & Natural Resources Law. Her most recent publication is a general text, International Law: Contemporary Principles and Practices, published in 2006.

The Japanese Whale Case: Implications for Australia and beyond

Thursday, 5 June, 3.30 – 7.00 pm

Assembly Hall, Level 4, Law School

Click here for Rob Nicoll's PowerPoint slides...

Click here for Professor Trigg's PowerPoint slides...

Click here for Dr Edgar's PowerPoint slides...

‘Strategic Policy Implications’
Dr Anthony Bergin, Director of Research, Australian Strategic Policy Institute
‘Public Interest Environmental Litigation - Trends in the Law of Standing’
Dr Andrew Edgar, Faculty of Law, University of Sydney
‘Campaigning in Japan - Whaling, Must End Where it Starts’
Rob Nicoll, Whales Campaigner, Greenpeace Australia Pacific
‘IWC Reform: Is This the Way to Resolve the 'Scientific' Whaling Impasse?’
Professor Don Rothwell, ANU College of Law, Australian National University
‘The Japanese Whaling Case in Context’
Dr Tim Stephens, Faculty of Law, University of Sydney
‘The Sovereignty Puzzle: Antarctic Territorial and Maritime Claims’
Professor Gillian Triggs, Dean, Faculty of Law, University of Sydney

Minter Ellison Room, Level 13, Law School

About the seminar: In January 2008 the Federal Court declared whaling operations by a Japanese company in the Australian Whale Sanctuary near the Australian Antarctic Territory had violated Australian law. The Sydney Centre for International Law and Australian Centre for Climate and Environmental Law have brought together leading commentators to examine this landmark ruling and its ramifications for Australia’s stance in the International Whaling Commission, for Australia’s place in the Antarctic Treaty System, and for Australian environmental law.

Click here for details...

Property Rights, Dispossession and Compensation

Professor John Sheehan, Property Rights Reasearch Group. Faculty of Design Architecture and Building, UTS

Wednesday 11 June, 6.00-7.30pm

Minter Ellison Room, Level 13, Law School

Click here for details...

About the seminar: The assessment of compensation has always exposed the multifarious issues which can emerge as the heads of compensation arising from acquisition or impairment of a property right by the State, notably land property. With separate property rights now extending to not only land and minerals, but also water and biota, carbon credits, saline credits, transferable development rights, and even electro magnetic spectrum, settled compensation law and practice are revealing their shortcomings. The recognition of ancient indigenous property rights in 1992 by the High Court of Australia has raised questions about the ability of compensation law and practice to adequately deal with issues such as spiritual and cultural attachment which are an integral part of Aboriginal rights and interests, and also the propriety of land use regulations in this context.

The methodological discourse between property, law and expectations of the community is examined in the light of the aims of compensation. The ability of current practice and theory to achieve just goals of compensation is reviewed. While many in the Australian community are calling for a transparent set of outcomes to provide precedents for the future, the likelihood of current attempts at compensation to achieve robust justice is found questionable. Directions for future efforts towards resolution of this problem are suggested including issues at the heart of property, legal theory and land use regulation. To attempt a solution without dealing with all of these is argued to risk perpetuating the problem.

Professor John Sheehan is an expert in land economics (valuation), land use planning and environmental law. Between March 2001 and 2004 he was President of the NSW Division of the Australian Property Institute. He has published extensively on Indigenous property rights and regularly lectures in Australia and overseas. As a recognised authority on compensation for native title in Australia, John Sheehan has been briefed to undertake some of the earliest work of assessing compensation for the extinguishment of native title in this country. In January 2007, he was appointed as Acting Commissioner in the Land and Environment Court of NSW with notable expertise in valuation appeals, compensation, and also the Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1983 (NSW). Most recently, John was appointed Adjunct Professor with the Property Rights Research Group at the University of Technology Sydney, having also been appointed in November 2006 as Visiting Professor with the Faculty of Law, University of Haifa, Israel. Clearly, his work is internationally recognised and makes an important contribution to policy developments.

Taking your beefs to the WTO: the continuing hormones dispute and issues in WTO dispute settlement

Victoria Donaldson , Institute of International Trade, University of Adelaide (on leave from WTO Appellate Body Secretariat

 Thursday 12 June, 5.30 – 6.45pm

Minter Ellison Room, Level 13, Law School

Click here for details...

About the seminar: In 1998, Canada and the United States succeeded before the World Trade Organization in their legal challenge to an EC ban on the import of hormone-treated beef.  However, the ban remains in place today.  The multiple proceedings relating to this dispute that have taken place over more than 10 years illustrate both the strengths and weaknesses of WTO dispute settlement.  Drawing in particular on the ongoing hormones dispute, Victoria Donaldson will discuss the mechanics and evolution of the WTO dispute settlement system, including certain recent developments.  She will cover issues such as transparency and public hearings at the WTO, evidence in WTO dispute settlement, the use of retaliatory trade sanctions, and discussions amongst WTO Member states as to how to improve their dispute settlement system in the future.

Victoria Donaldson is the current Visiting WTO Fellow at the Institute for International Trade of the University of Adelaide.  She is on a temporary leave of absence from her position as a Counsellor at the WTO’s Appellate Body Secretariat, where she has worked since 1999.  From 1996-1999 she practiced law with the Brussels office of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen and Hamilton, and from 1995-1996 with Russell & DuMoulin in Vancouver.  She served as a law clerk to Mr. Justice Peter de Carteret Cory at the Supreme Court of Canada in 1993-94.  Ms. Donaldson has contributed to books on WTO dispute settlement, writing in particular on dispute settlement procedures in international trade.

The Practice of International Law

Professor James Crawford, University of Cambridge

Tuesday 24 June, 5.30-6.45 pm, Lecture Theatre 9, Level 2, Sydney Law School

About the seminar: As one of the world’s most sought-after international law practitioners, arbitrators and scholars, Professor Crawford will discuss some of the trends in international law practice: the proliferation of forums and sources of law, issues of specialization, the role of practitioners and academics, and the realm of the "political" and the "legal" in international affairs.

Professor James Crawford is Whewell Professor of International Law at the University of Cambridge and Director of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law. He was previously the Challis Professor of International Law at Sydney Law School and is a current member of the Advisory Board of the Sydney Centre for International Law. He was previously a member of the International Law Commission and is well known for his leading work on the ILC Articles on State Responsibility. Professor Crawford has appeared before the International Court of Justice, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, and the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes, among others. His cases include the Israeli Wall Advisory Opinion, the Nuclear Weapons Advisory Opinion, the Nauru Case, the East Timor Case, the Oil Platforms Case, the Danube Dam Case, and the Genocide Case, among many others.

 

 

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