ARC grant success for Sydney Law School researchers

Associate Professor Nicole Graham and Associate Professor Robyn Bartel (UNE) have been awarded $171,488 for their cross-disciplinary project, Tenants of the soil: adapting agricultural land ownership in Australia.

They will investigate the tension between private land use and public regulation in the context of the environmental degradation of Australia’s agricultural land. Based on case studies of farmers who have excelled in designing and implementing resilient and productive agricultural practices, they will argue that the biophysical realities of the land itself must shape the regulatory frameworks in which landholders operate.

Associate Professor Graham said “our project will identify and analyse innovative models of land use decision-making to deliver better environmental outcomes on private agricultural land, by recognising and leveraging farmers’ knowledge of, and attachment to the geographical particularities of their properties. In doing so, we aim to develop an alternative model of private land ownership beyond the confines of the dominant ‘property rights’ ideology to better inform both farm practice and regulatory frameworks for improved environmental outcomes.”

Associate Professor Yane Svetiev and Associate Professor Andrew Edgar have been awarded $212,000 for their project, Peer Review of Financial Regulatory Agencies.

They will examine the global governance mechanism of peer review of Australian financial regulations and agencies. Transnational peer review, as it is called, tends to operate outside international and domestic law and the project will examine whether it enhances the efficacy and accountability of independent financial regulators or shields them from judicial and democratic controls.

The researchers will also develop a normative model for the interaction of transnational peer review with traditional public law oversight mechanisms of agencies in the Australian context.

Associate Professor Svetiev said they aim “to bring into sharp relief the interaction between global governance mechanisms for regulatory cooperation and the actual practices of Australian financial regulation, as well as the oversight of independent financial supervisory agencies. We also wish to enhance the dialogue between different literatures and methodologies, including global governance, regulatory studies and public law, for studying transnational regulatory phenomena.”

Congratulations are also due to two other Sydney Law School researchers who are chief investigators on successful DP projects run through UNSW. They are:

• Professor Arlie Loughnan - Violence, Risk and Safety: The Changing Face of Australian Criminal Laws.
• Dr Rosemary Grey - Reimagining Judging in International Criminal Courts: A Gendered Approach.

Head of School and Dean, Professor Simon Bronitt, said that “both projects awarded DPs in this round will open new lines of empirical legal and regulatory inquiry. To be effective, law reform requires first and foremost a sound grasp of how the rules operate in practice, and studies that span disciplines and jurisdictions. 

Associate Professor Graham's research focuses on the relationship between law, environment and culture with a particular focus on property rights, natural resource regulation and the concept of place. She is a member of the Australian Centre for Climate and Environmental Law and her most recent publication is, “Sydney's drinking water catchment: A legal geographical analysis of coal mining and water security”, in T. O’Donnell, D.F. Robinson, J. Gillespie (eds.), Legal Geography: Perspectives and Methods, Routledge, 2020.

Associate Professor Svetiev’s research focuses on the intersection between private law and transnational market regulation and employs socio-legal methodologies to study novel regulatory techniques. His 2020 monograph, Experimentalist Competition Law and the Regulation of Markets, is published by Hart.

Associate Professor Edgar specialises in administrative law, particularly review of regulations by courts and parliaments, and administrative implementation of international laws into domestic law. His most recent publication is, “The Authority and Interpretation of Regulation”, Modern Law Review, 82:6, 2019.

A full list of 2021 Discovery Projects grant recipients with project summaries is available on the ARC website.