Public Law Events Roundup February 2021
Welcome to the February edition of the AUSPUBLAW Australian Public Law Events Roundup. The events in this roundup were compiled in late January.
Before we get to the events roundup, we would like to draw your attention to the following opportunity:
2021 ALAA Conference
Sydney Law School, UTS Law, Australasian Law Academics’ Association
Date: 4 - 6 July 2021
Deadline for submissions: 7 March 2021
Conference theme: Boldly Academic: Defining, Supporting and Celebrating Legal Scholarship
The ALAA conference will be jointly hosted by The University of Sydney Law School and University of Technology Sydney Law Faculty. The conference will be a hybrid model, with all conference sessions being accessible for in-person attendance or Zoom attendance. Speakers may elect to present either in-person or via Zoom. In-person attendance will depend on state and federal government health guidelines in place at the time of the conference.
The theme of the Conference has been chosen to enable exploration and celebration of legal scholarship and the role of the academic.
"Legal academics are not failed practitioners or wannabe sociologists. Law schools are not adjuncts to the profession. Legal teachers and researchers have made and continue to make significant contributions to the law, the legal profession, the community and society at large. The 2021 ALAA conference will celebrate these contributions. We will explore the role of legal scholars and the legal academy in the 21st century; identify and commemorate the heroes of legal scholarship; examine ways to better define, measure and support legal research; celebrate innovation within Australasian law teaching and scholarship; and identify strategies for supporting academic wellness, professional development and career success."
The conference theme is a broad one, but sub-theme areas may include:
• Why legal scholarship matters
• The future of legal scholarship in a neoliberal higher education environment
• Problematising Western hegemony in contemporary legal scholarship
• Indigenous perspectives on legal scholarship
• The relationship between legal scholarship and impact
• The role of the law school in the 21st century
• Teaching and scholarship in a post-COVID world
• The relationship between scholarship and legal education and the tension between knowledge and skills
• Legal scholars we admire and their influence
• The contemporary relevance of the ‘great man’ approach to legal scholarship
ALAA interest groups are encouraged to propose sub-themes relating to their interest group focus.
For further information, click here.
Remember, if you have an AUSPUBLAW opportunity, conference or significant public lecture that you would like included in this roundup, please contact us at auspublaw@unsw.edu.au. The roundup is published once a month on the first business day of the month, so please let us know in time for that deadline.
AUSPUBLAW also maintains a a regularly updated (at least once a month) page outlining recent key Australian High Court public law decisions, with links to summaries of these decisions. Also included on this page will be any significant international and foreign decisions in public law that we believe will be of interest to our readers. You can find this page here.
SA Chapter Rescheduled AGM and the role of Counsel Assisting in the Royal Commission into National Natural Disasters - some reflections
Australian Institute of Administrative Law
Date: 8 February 2021
Time: 5:15 pm
Location: Norman Waterhouse, Level 11, 431 King William Street, Adelaide SA 5000
The Australian Institute of Administrative Law SA Chapter invites you to the rescheduled 2021 Annual General Meeting with guest speaker Andrew Tokley QC.
Andrew Tokley is a barrister specialising in appellate advocacy and advising on complex matters. He has chambers in Sydney (5 Wentworth) and Adelaide (Anthony Mason). He has written and delivered papers on a number of areas of the law and given guest lectures at the University of Adelaide and Flinders University and to CLEs in Sydney. Andrew also taught part time at the University of Adelaide. He is a former Chair of the Administrative Law Committee of the Law Society and former council member of the Australian Association of Constitutional Law. Most recently, he was one of two Senior Counsel assisting the Royal Commission into National Natural Disasters (often known as the Bushfires Royal Commission). The Commission presented its report on 28 October 2020.
The Guest Speaker will be followed by the 2020 SA Chapter Annual General Meeting, which guests are welcome to attend, after which both members and guests are invited to stay for refreshments. Due to COVID 19 restrictions, places are limited and priority will be given to current AIAL members. For catering purposes please advise if your intention is to stay after the AGM when registering. If you previously registered for this event in November 2020, you will need to send a new RSVP.
For further information, and to register, click here.
Public Law in the Classroom Workshop 2021
Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law at the Faculty of Law, UNSW
Date: 11 February 2021
Time: 11:00 am – 2:30 pm (AEDT)
Location: Online
We invite you to register for the seventh annual Public Law in the Classroom workshop to be held via Zoom on Thursday, 11 February 2021, organised by the Gilbert and Tobin Centre of Public Law at UNSW, the Public Law and Policy Research Unit at the University of Adelaide and the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law at Monash University. The past six workshops have been a great success, each attracting around 70 public law teachers from across the country and internationally.
The first session will be on the theme of ‘Public Law and Remote Learning: Past. Present. Future’, commencing at 11:00am and concluding at 12:30pm AEDT.
The second session will be centred around the theme of ‘Teaching Public Law in Times of Public Emergency’, commencing at 1:00pm and concluding at 2:30pm AEDT.
The workshop will be concluded with the book launch of ‘The Originalist’, a novel co-written by members of the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law at UNSW and others (see next event).
For further information, and to register, click here.
‘The Originalist’ – Gilbert + Tobin Centre Book Launch
Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law at the Faculty of Law, UNSW
Date: 11 February 2021
Time: 3:00 – 4:00 pm (AEDT)
Location: Online
‘The Originalist’ is a novel co-written by members of the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law at UNSW and others. It was the result of a creative project conceived of during the initial lockdowns implemented in response to COVID-19 in March 2020.
All proceeds from the sale of ‘The Originalist’ will go to the UNSW Student Emergency Response Fund.
For further information, and to register, click here.
2021 Constitutional Law Online Conference
Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law at the Faculty of Law, UNSW, Australian Association of Constitutional Law
Date: 12 February 2021
Location: Online
We invite you to register for a major conference on constitutional law to be held via Zoom on Friday 12 February 2021, organised by the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law at the Faculty of Law, UNSW, with the support of the Australian Association of Constitutional Law.
The virtual conference will feature discussions of recent important developments in the High Court, Federal Court and State Courts and provide an overview of the key public law debates in 2020. The conference will also consider current debates on constitutional reform sparked by the High Court’s decisions in Love v Commonwealth and the Palace Papers Case, and the public law challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The conference will be addressed by leading practitioners, academics and judges, and feature opportunities for informal virtual exchange via zoom lunch and morning tea ‘break-out’ rooms. It will also mark the 20th anniversary of the conference, and the Centre’s institutional life, and we will mark that anniversary with a short video presentation at the opening of the conference. We regret that we cannot meet in person, but believe that proceeding with a virtual conference is the safest and most appropriate course given current circumstances. We also hope it will offer new opportunities for an even broader range of practitioners, judges and scholars across Australia to join the event. To that end, we are working closely with UNSW Edge to offer registration for single-sessions as well as for the entire day, and offering a substantially discounted registration price. And we are committed to ensuring that all colleagues who wish to can attend, and thus anyone who does not have funds to pay for registration due to the COVID-19 pandemic can do so free of charge.
For further information, and to register, click here.
Castan Centre Report Launch: Migrant Precariousness in the Time of COVID-19
Castan Centre for Human Rights Law, Monash Migrant and Inclusion Centre, Monash Law
Date: 16 February 2021
Time: 5:00 – 6:15 pm (AEDT)
Location: Online
Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, many migrants have been particularly vulnerable to economic and social hardship, given their concentration in deeply affected sectors of the economy, such as hospitality, and their exclusion from welfare payments.
During this launch, the authors of the report will discuss the significance of the sudden economic and social crisis, the vulnerabilities of migrants in the labour market and the need for policy responses that both recognise Australia’s human rights obligations and target the intersecting causes of migrants’ precariousness. The discussion is followed by a Q&A session.
For further information, and to register, click here.
ANU Law & Philosophy Forum: Freedom of Expression as Self-Restraint
ANU College of Law
Date: 3 March 2021
Time: 7:30 – 8:30 pm (AEDT)
Location: Online
Matthew Kramer is Professor of Legal and Political Philosophy at the University of Cambridge, a Fellow of the British Academy, and Fellow of Churchill College. He is a leading international scholar on legal and political philosophy and has published several books and scholarly works on various topics in legal and political philosophy. His most recent book is Freedom of Expression as Self-Restraint, published by Oxford University Press in 2021.
He will talk to the ANU Law & Philosophy Forum about the connection between the moral principle of freedom of expression and the principle of self-restraint. Professor Kramer has a brief outline for his presentation, which you can access here.
We look forward to hosting Professor Kramer at the Forum, and hope you will be able to attend.
For further information, and to register, click here.
US Presidential Impeachment: the Process, the Outcome, the Lessons
WA Bar Association
Date: 9 March 2021
Time: 5:00 – 6:00 pm (AWST)
Location: Level 25, Francis Burt Chambers, Perth WA 6000
In December 2019, a President of the United States was impeached for just the 3rd time in history. In February 2020, the United States Senate acquitted the Forty Fifth President of the charges laid by the Congress, having resolved against calling any witnesses. What happened? Why did the Congress and the Senate make the decisions they did? What implications does this have for the impeachment process more generally, which is the exclusive means of removing Federal Judges, amongst others, in the United States? To the extent that the Australian Constitution draws, often heavily, from the United States Constitution, what may we learn? Jason MacLaurin SC and Richard Douglas propose answers to these questions.
For further information, and to register, click here.
Global Public Law Virtual Book Seminar Series 2021
Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law at the Faculty of Law, UNSW
Date: from 19 March 2021 to 22 October 2021
Location: Online
The aim of this series is to invite leading scholars in public law around the globe to share ideas from a recent book with an Australian audience. The Series will be hosted by the G+T Centre and feature Australian-based commentators from both within and outside the Centre to discuss the book with the authors. It will also involve a collaboration with AUSPUBLAW, to develop a special blog series featuring commentary on the book for an Australian audience. The first seminar will be held on 19 March.
1pm - Friday 19 March
Julie Suk, We the Women: The Unstoppable Mothers of the Equal Rights Amendment (Simon & Schuster, 2020)
Commentators: Helen Irving, Kim Rubenstein
Chair: Rosalind Dixon
For further information on later sessions, and to register, click here.