Dr Coel Kirkby
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Dr Coel Kirkby

BA (Hons) LLB (Queen's) LLM (McGill) PhD (Cambridge)
Phone
+61 2 8627 7328
Fax
+61 2 9351 0200
Dr Coel Kirkby

Coel Kirkby joined the Law School in 2018. He was elected the Smuts Research Fellow in Commonwealth Studies at the University of Cambridge for 2017-8. Before that he was a McKenzie Fellow at Melbourne Law School, an Endeavour Fellow at UNSW and a researcher at the Dullah Omar Institute. He has also worked on contemporary constitutional reform projects from Fiji and Tuvalu to Victoria and South Africa.

Coel is both a historian of the legal thought and practice of British imperialism, and a comparative constitutional scholar concerned with its legacies in postcolonial states. He has published a number of articles and chapters in the Modern Law Review, University of Toronto Law Journal, Osgoode Hall Law Journal and elsewhere. Coel is currently completing two books on the birth of liberal democracy in the British Empire over the nineteenth century. He is also working on a new book on law and revolution during the Cold War.

  • Legal theory
  • Legal history
  • Democracy
  • Comparative constitutional law
  • Foundations of Law
  • Torts
  • The History of Legal Thought (jurisrpudence elective)
  • Law and Economics(jurisrpudence elective)
  • The Commonwealth and the Common Law (jurisrpudence elective)

Publications

Edited Books

  • Murray, C., Kirkby, C. (2014). International encyclopaedia for constitutional law: South Africa. Netherlands: Kluwer Law International.

Book Chapters

  • Kirkby, C. (2023). The Making of Empire. In Peter Cane and Harshan Kumarasingham (Eds.), The Cambridge Constitutional History of the United Kingdom: The Changing Constitution, (pp. 468-495). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [More Information]
  • Kirkby, C. (2022). Australia and the World. In Peter Cane, Lisa Ford and Mark McMillan (Eds.), The Cambridge Legal History of Australia, (pp. 281-302). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [More Information]
  • Kirkby, C. (2020). Commonwealth Constitution-Maker: The Life of Yash Ghai. In Saul Dubow, Richard Drayton (Eds.), Commonwealth History in the Twenty-First Century, (pp. 61-80). London: Springer Nature Switzerland. [More Information]

Journals

  • Kirkby, C. (2024). Abysmal jurisprudence: On the genesis of John Finnis's practical guide to statesmen. University of Toronto Law Journal, 74(2), 119-135. [More Information]
  • Regan, A., Kirkby, C., Kant, R. (2024). ‘Between Two Worlds’: The Origins, Operation, and Future of the 2013 Fiji Constitution. The Journal of Pacific History, 59(2), 165-185. [More Information]
  • Kirkby, C. (2022). How to do things with legal theory. International Journal of Law in Context, 18(4), 373-382. [More Information]

Report

  • Stone, A., Quinn-Watson, J., Saunders, A., Kirkby, C. (2016). Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies: Submission to Inquiry into Freedom of Speech in Australia.
  • Maddison, S., Gover, K., Kirkby, C. (2016). Treaty fact sheet.
  • Kirkby, C. (2014). Separation of Powers in the 2013 Constitution.

2024

  • Kirkby, C. (2024). Abysmal jurisprudence: On the genesis of John Finnis's practical guide to statesmen. University of Toronto Law Journal, 74(2), 119-135. [More Information]
  • Regan, A., Kirkby, C., Kant, R. (2024). ‘Between Two Worlds’: The Origins, Operation, and Future of the 2013 Fiji Constitution. The Journal of Pacific History, 59(2), 165-185. [More Information]

2023

  • Kirkby, C. (2023). The Making of Empire. In Peter Cane and Harshan Kumarasingham (Eds.), The Cambridge Constitutional History of the United Kingdom: The Changing Constitution, (pp. 468-495). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [More Information]

2022

  • Kirkby, C. (2022). Australia and the World. In Peter Cane, Lisa Ford and Mark McMillan (Eds.), The Cambridge Legal History of Australia, (pp. 281-302). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [More Information]
  • Kirkby, C. (2022). How to do things with legal theory. International Journal of Law in Context, 18(4), 373-382. [More Information]

2020

  • Kirkby, C. (2020). CODA. Crime, Media, Culture: An International Journal, 16(1), 161. [More Information]
  • Kirkby, C. (2020). Commonwealth Constitution-Maker: The Life of Yash Ghai. In Saul Dubow, Richard Drayton (Eds.), Commonwealth History in the Twenty-First Century, (pp. 61-80). London: Springer Nature Switzerland. [More Information]
  • Kirkby, C. (2020). Paradises Lost? The Constitutional Politics of "Indian" Enfranchisement in Canada, 1857-1900. Osgoode Hall Law Journal, 56(3), 606-658.

2019

  • Kirkby, C. (2019). Reconstituting Canada: The Enfranchisement and Disenfranchisement of 'Indians', c. 1837-1900. University of Toronto Law Journal, 69(4), 497-539. [More Information]

2018

  • Kirkby, C. (2018). A cure for coups: The South African influence on Fijian constitutionalism. In Rosalind Dixon, Theunis Roux (Eds.), Constitutional Triumphs, Constitutional Disappointments: A Critical Assessment of the 1996 South African Constitution's Local and International Influence, (pp. 312-340). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. [More Information]
  • Kirkby, C. (2018). Law Evolves: The Uses of Primitive Law in Anglo-American Concepts of Modern Law, 1861-1961. American Journal of Legal History, 58(4), 535-563. [More Information]

2016

  • Kirkby, C. (2016). Book review: Theophilus Shepstone and the forging of Natal: African autonomy and settler colonialism in the making of traditional authority by Jeff Guy, Scottsville, University of ZwaZulu-Natal Press, 2013, ISBN 1869142497. Settler Colonial Studies, 6(1), 105-107. [More Information]
  • Stone, A., Quinn-Watson, J., Saunders, A., Kirkby, C. (2016). Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies: Submission to Inquiry into Freedom of Speech in Australia.
  • Kirkby, C., Murray, C. (2016). Constitution-making in anglophone Africa: We the people? In Muna Ndulo, Mamoudou Gazibo (Eds.), Growing Democracy in Africa: Elections, Accountable Governance, and Political Economy, (pp. 86-114). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

2014

  • Murray, C., Kirkby, C. (2014). International encyclopaedia for constitutional law: South Africa. Netherlands: Kluwer Law International.
  • Kirkby, C. (2014). Separation of Powers in the 2013 Constitution.
  • Kirkby, C. (2014). The Bill of Rights in the 2013 Constitution.

2012

  • Kirkby, C. (2012). Henry Maine and the re-constitution of the British Empire. The Modern Law Review, 75(4), 655-673.
  • Kirkby, C. (2012). Subjects to citizens: 'Native' enfranchisement in reconstituting the imperial public of the British Empire, c. 1887-1914. In Michelon, C., Clunie, G., McCorkindale, C., Psarras, H. (Eds.), The public in law: Representations of the political in legal discourse, (pp. 161-173). UK: Ashgate Publishing Ltd.

2010

  • Kirkby, C. (2010). Book Review: 'Hamar Foster, Benjamin L. Berger & A. R. Buck (eds ),The Grand Experiment: Law & Legal Culture in British Settler Societies', Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. The Modern Law Review, 73(2), 335-338.
  • Kirkby, C., Murray, C. (2010). Elusive autonomy in sub-Saharan Africa. In Katherine Nobbs, Marc Weller (Eds.), Asymmetric Autonomy and the Settlement of Ethnic Conflicts, (pp. 97-120). Philadelphia, USA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

2009

  • Antali, M., Kirkby, C. (2009). The lethality of the Canadian state's (Re)cognition of indigenous peoples. In Austin Sarat, Jennifer L. Culbert (Eds.), States of Violence: War, Capital Punishment, and Letting Die, (pp. 192-228). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. [More Information]

2008

  • Fessha, Y., Kirkby, C. (2008). A critical survey of subnational autonomy in African states. Publius: The Journal of Federalism, 38(2), 248-271. [More Information]
  • Kirkby, C. (2008). Bibliographie sur la decentralisation [A bibliography of decentralization].

2007

  • Kirkby, C., Steytler, N., Jordan, J. (2007). Towards a more cooperative local government: The challenge of district intergovernmental forums. Southern African Public Law, 22(1), 143-165.

2006

  • Kirkby, C. (2006). Pamela A. Jordan, 'Defending rights in Russia: Lawyers, the state, and legal reform in the post-Soviet era' (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2005). Quebec Journal of International Law (revue quebecoise de droit international), 19(1), 361-363.
  • Kirkby, C. (2006). Rwanda's gacaca courts: A preliminary critique. Journal of African Law, 50(2), 94-117. [More Information]

Selected Grants

2020

  • Treaty Talk and Treaty People in the Commonwealth , Johnson M, Klassen P, Lui-Chivizhe L, Kirkby C, Watson N, McKenna M, Kluge E, Barclay K, Hill S, Bohaker H, Turner D, Carter J, Rowse T, Norman H, Harris A, Hayward J, Office of Global Engagement/Partnership Collaboration Awards