Upcoming events and opportunities
Read our monthly round up of upcoming public law events and opportunities, including conferences, seminars and calls for papers
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 by the first business day of the month, so please let us know in time for that deadline.
Competitions, calls for papers and scholarships
4 April 2025
Call for Papers - 2025 Australasian Law Academics Association Conference
Australasian Law Academics Association
CfP closes: 4 April 2025
Navigating Tradition and Change: How can we incorporate contemporary challenges into legal education and scholarship?
We invite legal academics, practitioners, and policymakers to engage in discussions on the evolving landscape of legal education and research. This year’s theme highlights the practical, intellectual, and emotional aspects of balancing contemporary values, priorities, and imperatives in our work.
We encourage submissions that explore:
Incorporating First Nations perspectives into legal curricula and research: best practices and challenges;
Pacific perspectives on law, justice, and legal education;
Climate change and environmental justice: integrating discussions of the climate crisis into legal education and scholarship, particularly into the core curriculum;
Artificial intelligence (AI) and digital technologies: their impact on legal research, assessment, and professional roles and competencies;
Legal pedagogy and curriculum design: navigating innovation within regulatory constraints;
Equity, diversity, and inclusion: embedding these considerations meaningfully into the legal curriculum; and
Fostering ethical and social justice-oriented legal education: how can we instil these values in students?
We invite submissions of papers, workshop and panel proposals addressing the conference themes by 4 April 2025. For more information, and to make a submission, click here.
15 April 2025
Call for Proposals - International Access to Justice Forum 2025
Fordham University School of Law; New York University School of Law
CfP closes: 15 April 2025
The International Access to Justice Forum 2025 will take place this year on September 26-27 in New York. Participation can be as an in-person presenter or attendee, or as a member of the online audience.
Presentations on topics include:
racial, gender, ethnic, religious and other forms of discrimination in the design and operation of civil justice systems
gaps in access to justice
impacts of new technologies
legal professional regulatory reform
legal needs studies climate change and civil justice
civil justice in democratic governance.
Submissions for inclusion in the program are due by April 15, noting that presentations must be in person.
To support attendance, Victoria Law Foundation is offering up to $5,000 for several organisations who have been accepted to present at the conference.
For more information, click here.
28 April 2025
The Sir Samuel Griffith Prize in Australian Constitutional Law Essay Competition
The Samuel Griffith Society
Competition closes: 5.00pm (AEST), 28 April 2025
This essay competition offers young lawyers and students an exceptional opportunity to delve into the heart of Australian constitutional law while developing their writing skills, explore new ideas and delve into a topic that may not necessarily be covered in their curriculum.
The winner of this year’s essay competition will be presented at the Society’s 2025 Conference in Perth. First prize also includes paid flights, accommodation and admission to the conference, as well as a $500 cash prize. Shortlisted runners-up will also be recognised at the conference, and all eligible entrants will automatically be considered for scholarships to attend.
This year, the Society invites prospective entrants to submit an essay of no more than 1,500 words (excluding citations) responding to one of the following questions:
“Should the Constitution be amended to define the scope of and limitations upon the Governor-General’s reserve powers?”
“In what circumstances should the Chief Justice of Australia provide advice to the Executive Government in relation to questions of constitutional interpretation?”
In your answer, please refer to the 1975 dismissal of the Whitlam Government.
The competition is open to:
all Australian residents aged 35 years and under, and
all students enrolled in an undergraduate degree course at an Australian university (regardless of age).
Submissions are due by email to contact@samuelgriffith.org.au no later than 5.00 pm (AEST) on Monday 28 April 2025. For more information, click here.
1 May 2025
Call for Papers - Judicial Independence in Australia: Looking Forward, Ten Years On
T. C. Beirne School of Law, University of Queensland
CfP closes: 1 May 2025
Ten years after the publication of Judicial Independence in Australia: Contemporary Challenges, Future Directions (Federation Press, 2016), the landscape of judicial independence has radically changed. The time is ripe for a new edited collection taking stock of these changes and looking to the future.
We invite submissions for an in-person symposium at the University of Queensland on 6 December 2025. The symposium will bring together leading scholars, judges and lawyers to discuss the nature and importance of judicial independence in Australia, and to debate current and future challenges. Written papers will be circulated to other presenters in the lead-up to the symposium. Selected papers will then be featured in an edited collection to be published by Federation Press in 2026.
Submissions are sought on any topic relating to judicial independence in Australia, including but not limited to the following:
Judicial workload and wellbeing
Indigenous and pluralist justice
The judicial role and independence in the context of democratic backsliding
Media and political pressure on the courts
Technology and the courts
Judicial appointments, diversity and education
Judicial immunity and complaints
Pensions and resourcing
Abstracts of around 200 words should be submitted by email to the symposium organisers, Rebecca Ananian-Welsh (rebecca.aw@law.uq.edu.au), Jonathan Crowe and Jessica Kerr (jessica.kerr@uwa.edu.au), no later than 1 May 2025.
Successful applicants will be notified by mid-May with full draft papers due by 1 November 2025. There will also be an informal Zoom session in July for presenters to share preliminary outlines.
1 June 2025
Call for Entries: 2025 Law and Religion Essay Competition
The University of Southern Queensland School of Law and Justice
Entries close: 1 June 2025, midnight AEST
Students currently enrolled in an LLB or JD university law program in Australia are invited to enter the 2025 Law and Religion Essay Competition.
The University of Southern Queensland School of Law and Justice invites submissions for the 2025 Law and Religion Essay Competition. All entries will be evaluated by a panel comprising two UniSQ academics and one external expert using standardised assessment criteria.
Prize information:
1st place – $500 and a publication opportunity with the Australian Journal of Law and Religion (AJLR). AJLR is co-edited by Dr Alex Deagon (Associate Professor in the QUT School of Law).
2nd place – $250
3rd place – $100
Entries must be submitted by 1 June 2025.
For more information, click here.
30 June 2025
Call for Submissions: Fencott v Muller Prize
The University of Western Australia
Submissions close: 30 June 2025
Just over 40 years have passed since the landmark, finely balanced decision in Fencott v Muller [1983] HCA 12. Not only did the decision relate to a Western Australian business, but it featured a number of notable UWA alumni as counsel on both sides, including Hon Robert French AC. The decision continues to reverberate to this day.
To celebrate the decision and the activities of UWA alumni in helping shape the law, the UWA Law Review is pleased to announce a $1,000 prize, kindly provided by the Hon Robert French AC, for the best article submitted to the Review on any topic related to federal jurisdiction, the corporations power or trade practices law.
Eligible articles must be submitted for publication in the Review by the end of June 2025, and the winning article will feature in a special supplement to the Review. Students, recent graduates, and practitioners are all welcome and encouraged to apply.
For more information, and to make a submission, click here.
31 August 2025
The Australian Academy of Law Annual Essay Prize 2025
Australian Academy of Law
Entries close: 31 August 2025
The Australian Academy of Law is pleased to announce the offering of its Annual Essay Prize for 2025.
The Prize is open to anyone, wherever resident, who is studying or has studied legal subjects at a tertiary level, or who is working or has worked in a law-based occupation. There is no limit by reference to the age or seniority or experience of, or position held by, a person who may submit an entry. Accordingly, judicial officers, legal practitioners, legal academics and law students are all eligible to submit an essay.
The amount of the Prize is $10,000.
The essay topic for the Prize in 2025 is as follows:
Where has Bird v DP [2024] HCA 41 (‘Bird’) left the law of vicarious liability in Australia? How does it differ from the law in other common law jurisdictions? Should there be a legislative response to Bird and, if so, what should be its scope?
The length of the essay to be submitted is a maximum of 8,000 words (excluding the abstract).
For more information, and to submit an entry, click here.
Conferences and seminars
1 April 2025
Book Launch: The Right to Legal Personhood of Marginalised Groups
Institute for International Law and the Humanities, Melbourne Law School
Date: 1 April 2025
Time: 1.00-2.00pm (AEDT)
Location: Room 223, Level 2, Melbourne Law School
The Institute for International Law and the Humanities is pleased to celebrate the publication of Associate Professor Anna Arstein-Kerslake’s book, The Right to Legal Personhood of Marginalised Groups. Anna will be joined in conversation with Dr Erin O’Donnell and Associate Professor Olivia Barr.
The right to legal personhood has been enshrined in human rights law since its inception with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. However, the right has been largely overlooked. This book explores the marginalisation occurring as a result of barriers to the right to legal personhood and how this can be rectified. It analyses the right in relation to disability, gender, indigenous people, racial minorities, migrant groups, and stateless people. It presents a legal argument for the protection of the right and a normative analysis of the importance of the right in achieving equality in socio-legal systems.
For more information, and to register, click here.
1 April 2025
The Macrossan Lecture Series: What is missing from modern legal education?
T. C. Beirne School of Law, University of Queensland
Date: 1 April 2025
Time: 5.30pm for 5.45-8.00pm (AEDT)
Location: The Banco Court, Supreme and District Courts Brisbane, 415 George Street
The modern paradigm of legal education in Australia involves providing school-leavers with a general overview of the main areas of doctrinal law, with access to a limited selection of elective subjects. After a short period of practical legal training and work experience, our graduates are then deemed fit for admission as legal practitioners.
But are they? In an increasingly complex legal system, most practitioners are now specialists. Their expertise is in criminal law, administrative law, construction law, tax law, or another similar specialty. At present, however, our system of legal education does little to assist graduates to acquire specialised knowledge and skills of this kind. This lecture by Adjunct Professor John McKenna KC explores how this gap can be filled by a Master of Laws course, which is designed to meet the needs of early career practitioners.
For more information, and to register, click here.
2 April 2025
Climate Justice and Insurgent Lawyering in the ICJ and Beyond
Institute for International Law and the Humanities, Melbourne Law School
Date: 2 April 2025
Time: 1.00-2.00pm (AEDT)
Location: Meeting Room (0920), Law Building (106), Melbourne University
Please join IILAH for this lunchtime seminar presented by Alofipo So’oalo Fleur Ramsay and Professor Stewart Motha and chaired by Mr Dylan Asafo.
Climate destruction and dispossession is having its greatest impact on small island communities and nations. In December 2024 the ICJ held oral hearings in its Advisory Opinion on Climate Change. Drawing on experiences in Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Vanuatu and beyond – this seminar will examine the strategies and techniques of insurgent lawyering deployed in the ICJ process and in other courts and tribunals. While the dominant emitters of GHGs have sought to narrow the ambit of applicable international law to the United Nations Framework Agreement on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement – island states have pushed for the application of the full corpus of international law. The nature of loss, damage, and harm; the historical and future obligations of states, and the status of indigenous cosmologies are what is at stake in climate litigation. What legal strategies redeem marginalised peoples and their knowledges?
For more information, and to register, click here.
2 April 2025
Whistleblower Protection in Australia
Australian Academy of Law
Date: 2 April 2025
Time: 5.00-6.15pm (AEDT)
Location: Online and In-person at Court No 1, Old High Court, Supreme Court of Victoria, 450 Little Bourke Street, Melbourne
What does effective protection for whistleblowers look like? Is there a need for an independent Whistleblower Protection Authority to independently investigate claims of harm against those who speak up about wrongdoing in the public and private sectors? What are the gaps in the existing protections for whistleblowers under federal laws and what investigative and enforcement powers could an independent authority exercise?
The event will be chaired by the Hon Pamela Tate AM KC. The speakers will be Professor A J Brown AM (professor of public policy and law, School of Government and International Relations, Griffith University) and Ms Kylie Kilgour (Deputy Commissioner, National Anti-Corruption Commission).
For more information, and to register, click here.
2 April 2025
Beyond Borders: A Dialogue About LGBTIQA+ Human Rights Around the Globe
Castan Centre for Human Rights Law, Monash University
Date: 2 April 2025
Time: 5.30-7.00pm (AEDT)
Location: 555 Lonsdale Street, Monash Law Chambers, Melbourne
The Castan Centre for Human Rights Law is pleased to collaborate with Human Rights Watch to host a seminar featuring Rasha Younes, HRW's Interim Director of the LGBT Division at Human Rights Watch, in conversation with Professor Paula Gerber of the Monash Law Faculty. This event will involve Rasha and Paula analysing the global picture for rights protection for LGBTIQA+ communities around the world.
Rasha will highlight her recent reporting in the Middle East, North Africa and the US, including about efforts to keep social media companies accountable for the safety of their users, the gender-affirming care bans in the United States and new laws criminalising same-sex relations and trans identities in Iraq.
For more information, and to register, click here.
2 April 2025
Changing attitudes to independence of Australian tribunals: Melbourne University Law Review Annual Lecture
Melbourne Law School
Date: 2 April 2025
Time: 5.30-7.00pm (AEDT)
Location: Law G08, Law Building (106), Melbourne University
Under Australia’s separation of powers doctrine, administrative tribunals are part of the executive branch in Chapter II of the Constitution. They are statutory bodies whose independence can vary according to the Act establishing them. Today, the importance of independence for administrative tribunals is generally accepted by Australian legislatures. However, that was not always the case. There has been a gradual attitudinal change regarding the need for administrative tribunals to be, and be seen to be, independent.
The establishment of the Administrative Review Tribunal on 14 October 2024 to replace the Administrative Appeals Tribunal provides an ideal opportunity to consider the evolution of administrative tribunals in Australia and how legislative and judicial attitudes concerning their independence have evolved with them.
Please join Melbourne Law School and Melbourne University Law Review from 5.30pm with welcome drinks and light refreshments provided in the Melbourne Law School Building Ground Floor Foyer. The lecture will start promptly at 6:00pm in the Ground Floor G08 Theatre.
Presenter: The Hon Emilios Kyrou AO, President, Administrative Review Tribunal
For more information, and to register, click here.
3 April 2025
JSI Seminar: On the nature of legal reasoning: Rules, knowledge and concepts
Julius Stone Institute of Jurisprudence, University of Sydney Law School
Date: 3 April 2025
Time: 1.00-2.00pm (AEDT)
Location: Common Room, Level 4, New Law Building (F10), Eastern Avenue, Camperdown campus, New Law Building
This seminar is part of a larger work on legal reasoning. The seminar focuses on three aspects of our reasoning capabilities, to provide a sense of the intellectual territory we inhabit when we engage in legal reasoning. The seminar presents a broadly Wittgensteinian approach to rules and rule-following and the nature of knowledge, in particular the distinction between ‘knowing how’ and ‘knowing that’ and the relationship between the two. Lastly, it considers the ‘concept’ of concepts and of legal concepts in particular, and the vexed question of whether ‘conceptual analysis’ has any role to play in legal reasoning.
Speaker: James Penner, Kwa Geok Choo Professor of Property Law, University of Singapore
For more information, and to register, click here.
7 April 2025
Can we protect our children from artificial intelligence?
Australian Human Rights Institute, University of New South Wales; Human Rights Watch; Human Technology Institute, University of Technology Sydney
Date: 7 April 2025
Time: 6.00-7.30pm (AEST)
Location: Wallace King Room, Sydney Grammar School, 10 College Street, Darlinghurst, NSW
Join UNSW's Australian Human Rights Institute, Human Rights Watch, and the Human Technology Institute at UTS for a panel discussion about children's rights and artificial intelligence.
Moderated by Human Rights Watch Australia Director Daniela Gavshon, the panel will feature leading global experts on technology, privacy and children's rights, including Australian Privacy Commissioner Carly Kind, UNSW Associate Professor Noam Peleg, UTS Human Technology Institute co-director Professor Edward Santow and Human Rights Watch researcher Hye Jung Han.
For more information, and to register, click here.
8 April 2025
Reparations as justice: provocations for policy, regulation and law
ANU College of Law, Governance & Policy
Date: 8 April 2025
Time: 12.30-1.30pm (AEST)
Location: Online and In-person at Seminar Room 1.04, Coombs Extension Building, Acton, ACT, 2600
Drawing on long-standing work around reparations for colonisation by Indigenous peoples in Australia, and the limited compensatory responses the state and judiciary have offered, Dr Elise Klein (Associate Professor of Public Policy, Crawford School, Australian National University) considers reparations as the critical domain of transformation that aim less to offset damage and reconcile suffering, but rather to comprehensively transform colonial relations in Australia.
Ultimately, her paper returns to the vast community and activist scholarship on reparations for colonisation, genocide and slavery in Australia and beyond, which offers ways of thinking, being and doing towards justice.
For more information, and to register, click here.
9 April 2025
ACJI Annual Lecture: Access to Justice in a Digital World
Australian Centre for Justice Innovation (ACJI)
Date: 9 April 2025
Time: 5.00-6.30pm (AEST)
Location: Monash Law Chambers, 555 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne
In this talk Professor Naomi Creutzfeldt will examine the concept of ‘digital justice journeys’ and identify common barriers to participation in legal processes. She argues that we need to find new ways to theoretically understand the digital dimension to access as well as collecting empirical evidence to build theory in this area.
This discussion begins by bringing together theories of access to justice, participation and digital legal consciousness. Access to justice explores the challenges individuals face in navigating legal systems and accessing the resources needed to resolve disputes. Within this, the role of participation is discussed in ensuring justice, including how individuals' engagement with digital processes shapes their digital legal consciousness and experiences of the justice system.
To tease out further the interplay of the digital and legal dimension, Professor Naomi Creutzfeldt will draw insights from social psychology, addressing the dynamics of insider and outsider perspectives within legal systems and their influence on individuals’ ability to participate effectively are included in the theoretical framework.
Finally, she asks: what makes a digital system legitimate in the eyes of its users?.
For more information, and to register, click here.
9 April 2025
Climate protest, political dissent and the criminal law: The rise and fall (and rise again) of conspiracy
Melbourne Law School
Date: 9 April 2025
Time: 6.00-7.00pm (AEST)
Location: Woodward Conference Centre, Law Building (106), University of Melbourne
2025 Peter Brett Memorial Lecture
A notable feature in the prosecutions of climate protesters across many common law jurisdictions is use of charges of conspiracy. These charges are used in conjunction with other offences, such as public nuisance or blocking critical infrastructure, and expose those convicted to severe penalties.
In this lecture, Professor Lindsay Farmer will raise questions about the contemporary use of conspiracy law. First, he will look at the history of conspiracy, as English laws were routinely deployed to outlaw political dissent across the British empire. As the empire broke up, conspiracy laws survived almost untouched into the penal codes of the post-colonies, including Australia, to be used against new generations of radicals and dissenters. Second, Professor Farmer will look at how conspiracy law is being used now to see how this alternative genealogy can help us to understand contemporary developments. Finally, we will return to the use of conspiracy law against climate protestors to ask how we should respond to the deployment of conspiracy laws in legal or political terms.
Please join us after the lecture for canapes and refreshments from 7pm - 8pm.
For more information, and to register, click here.
9 April 2025
Julius Stone Address: Legal practice and the responsibility of individuals
Julius Stone Institute of Jurisprudence, University of Sydney Law School
Date: 9 April 2025
Time: 6.00-7.30pm (AEST)
Location: Law Foyer, Level 2, New Law Building (F10), University of Sydney, Camperdown Campus
Some legal practices, such as the private law of obligations and property, are justified by the good that general compliance with their rules bring about. It cannot be said, however, that each particular act of compliance by individuals itself contributes to that good outcome. And yet there is clearly an ethical tie between individuals and the rules of the practices. Leaving aside cases where the law simply protects independent moral rights, the same points can be made about compliance with law generally. This lecture explores the question of how we should understand the ethical tie between individuals and legal practices that are justified in terms of the social good produced by general compliance. An imperfect duty of impartial beneficence will play a central role in the account.
Speaker: Liam Murphy, former vice dean of NYU School of Law.
For more information, and to register, click here.
30 April 2025
Lessons from the Independent Review of the Human Rights Act
Human Rights Law Association
Date: 30 April 2025
Time: 12.00-1.00pm (AEST)
Location: Online
The first independent review of the Human Rights Act 2019 (Qld) will soon be tabled in Parliament. Join us for this lunchtime seminar to find out from the Independent Reviewer—Professor Susan Harris Rimmer—about the lessons that have been learned from the first three years of the Act's operation and where human rights may be headed in the future. Has the Act been working? Has it met its objective of building a culture of human rights across the public sector? Should additional human rights be protected? These were just some of the questions the Independent Reviewer was tasked with answering and that we will be exploring in this seminar.
This event will be chaired by Brenna Booth-Marxson, Acting Deputy Commissioner, Public Policy and Prevention, Queensland Human Rights Commission.
For more information, and to register, click here.
30 April 2025
Natural Law and Climate Change
University of New England School of Law
Date: 30 April 2025
Time: 12.00pm (AEST)
Location: Online and In-person at Lewis Seminar Room, Room 30, Building WO38, UNE School of Law
Climate change is a defining moral challenge of our time. Moral traditions must respond to this challenge to remain relevant. Professor Jonathan Crowe (Head of School and Dean, School of Law and Justice at the University of Southern Queensland) considers how the natural law tradition might do so.
He argues that natural law ethics and political theory affords a rich and versatile framework for responding to social challenges such as climate change. It provides a robust explanation for why we have a duty to combat climate change in our individual lives and through our communities.
For more information, and to register, click here.
7 May 2025
Compulsory Voting in Australia: History and Purpose
Australian Academy of Law
Date: 7 May 2025
Time: 5.15-6.45pm (AEST)
Location: Online and In-person at Court 1 - Federal Court of Australia, Courts Building, Queens Square, Sydney
In this free public event, Her Excellency the Hon Margaret Beazley AC KC will speak on Compulsory voting in Australia: its history and purpose. The Hon Arthur Emmett AO KC will provide a commentary.
The event will be chaired by the Hon Alan Robertson AM SC, President of the Australian Academy of Law.
Queensland introduced compulsory voting in 1915. The Commonwealth followed in 1924. Victoria introduced compulsory voting in 1926, New South Wales and Tasmania in 1928, Western Australia in 1936 and South Australia in 1942.
For more information, and to register, click here.
8 May 2025
2025 Margaret Stone Lecture
Faculty of Law & Justice, UNSW Sydney
Date: 8 May 2025
Time: 6.30-7.30pm (AEST)
Location: Court 1, Federal Court of Australia, Courts Building, Queens Square, Sydney
In the second Margaret Stone Lecture, The Hon Justice Nye Perram will consider Private Property and Public Rights: a new phenomenon?
The Anglo-American legal tradition has long encumbered some private property rights with burdens in favour of the public or the State. These have ranged from uses of commons through to legislative enlistment or appropriation and, in certain circumstances, exercises of executive power to similar effect. Modern statutes create whole classes of regulated assets which may be used against the wishes of their owners but the mingling of private property and State utilisation of that property is not new and the practice can be discerned both with tangible assets, such a railways, wharves and toll roads, as well as many species of intellectual property. The paper explores whether there is any unifying theme underpinning these inroads into private ownership of property.
For more information, and to register, click here.
23 May 2025
Luke McNamara on Hate Speech and the Law
Sydney Writers’ Festival; UNSW Sydney
Date: 23 May 2025
Time: 12.00-12.30pm (AEST)
Location: Bay 24, Carriageworks, 245 Wilson Street, Eveleigh
The Curiosity Lecture series returns to the Festival with a line-up of our most thought-provoking speakers delivering one-time talks on topics of intrigue, interest and importance.
As state and federal governments move to criminalise forms of hate speech, its time to look at what evidence shows about the effect that laws can have on hate speech and its victims, with legal expert Luke McNamara.
For more information, and to register, click here.
29 May 2025
Prerogative pardons and the rule of law
Melbourne Law School
Date: 29 May 2025
Time: 6.00-7.00pm (AEST)
Location: Law G08, Law Building (106), Melbourne University
2025 Jim Carlton Integrity Lecture
In light of recent exercises of the power to pardon by outgoing US president Biden and recently inaugurated President Trump, this issue is topical once more.
The rough equivalent in Australia to the power to pardon is the prerogative of mercy which is used in exceptional circumstances to temper the law by providing clemency. The prerogative, seldom used and conventionally said to protect the law’s reputation, was recently used to pardon Kathleen Folbigg after she was convicted of killing her four children, and after 20 years in gaol. In that matter, the Governor of New South Wales exercised the prerogative of mercy to grant clemency to Ms Folbigg, a person convicted of crime. This followed the recommendation by the NSW Attorney General of a pardon and the NSW Governor, Her Excellency the Hon Margaret Beazley AC KC, accepting the recommendation.
The Hon Justice Dr Sarah Pritchard will review the history of each of the power to pardon and the prerogative of mercy (Locke, Blackstone etc), more recent practice in relation to the exercise of each, the relationship of each to the rule of law (including the immunity of the prerogative from judicial review), and more generally political theory and executive or prerogative pardons.
For more information, and to register, click here.
6 June 2025
The 2025 AIJA Oration
The Australasian Institute of Judicial Administration Limited (AIJA)
Date: 6 June 2025
Time: 5.30pm (NZST) arrival/registration for 5.50pm oration
Location: Online and In-person at Sir Owen G Glenn Building (Room no. 260-092), University of Auckland, 12 Grafton Road, Auckland Central
The 2025 AIJA Oration will be delivered by The Right Hon Dame Helen Winkelmann GNZM, Chief Justice of New Zealand on the subject of:
“It’s complicated”: Judicial leadership in the 21st Century
Guests can join us either in person at the University of Auckland or online via Zoom. For more information, and to register, click here.
16 June 2025
The Right to a Healthy Environment
James Cook University
Date: 16 June 2025
Time: 1.00-2.00pm (AEST)
Location: James Cook University Cairns, Nguma-bada Campus, Smithfield
The first independent review of Queensland’s Human Rights Act was completed in September 2024, with the release of the report hotly anticipated. The expansion of human rights including the recognition of the right to a healthy environment is one aspect of the review. This could mean legal protections for clean air, safe water and thriving ecosystems. ACT has already led the way, and Qld has the opportunity to follow. Join Naim Santoso-Miller from the Environmental Defenders Office who will delve into how this change could impact Queensland’s legal and environmental landscape.
For more information, and to register, click here.
2-4 July 2025
32nd ANZSIL Annual Conference 2025
Australian and New Zealand Society of International Law
Date: 2-4 July 2025
Location: Australian National University, Canberra
The 2025 ANZSIL Conference will be in person, at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia on Wednesday, 2 July–Friday, 4 July 2025. The Conference theme is ‘International Law: Silence, Forgetting and Remembrance’.
What is unknown to, or excluded from, international law? What doctrinal fields, subject matters, actors and objects, and approaches are we at risk of forgetting or ‘un-knowing’? Once, universal disarmament, or at least arms limitation, was seen as a core goal of international law. Now, in a period of major international conflicts such goals once again appear to have a contemporary flavour and relevance. What can other forgotten or neglected histories of international law teach us about our present circumstances? What do we most need to remember?
On the question of silence we may ask: Who is given a voice in international law? What subjects are marginalised as irrelevant by international law? Why are some subjects easier to speak about than others? Papers could explore the perception of the Global South finding its voice in international courts and tribunals in matters ranging from climate change to the Genocide Convention, the involvement of international courts in ongoing conflicts, and the continued failure of international law to give adequate protection to the natural environment in the Anthropocene.
For more information, click here.
2-4 July 2025
2025 Australasian Law Academics Association Conference
Australasian Law Academics Association
Date: 2-4 July 2025
Location: University of Queensland, Queensland
Navigating Tradition and Change: How can we incorporate contemporary challenges into legal education and scholarship?
Legal educators and scholars today are juggling competing demands. Traditional constraints on legal education (regulatory, economic, structural) often exist in tension with the urgent need to incorporate contemporary issues, such as First Nations truth-telling, climate justice, technological transformation, and global debates on equity and inclusion. The evolving legal profession is requiring us to rethink how we teach, research, and prepare students for practice. Legal scholars experiencing increasing resourcing constrains need to rapidly respond to the changing local and global political climate.
The ALAA 2025 Conference seeks to foster dialogue and innovative solutions for these dynamic challenges across all areas of law.
For more information, click here.
17-18 July 2025
2025 Australasian Society of Legal Philosophy Annual Conference
Australasian Society of Legal Philosophy
Date: 17-18 July 2025
Location: University of Melbourne
The 2025 ASLP conference will take place at the University of Melbourne on Thursday 17 July 2025 and Friday 18 July 2025 (with an informal workshop for PhD candidates on Wednesday 16 July 2025). Keynotes will be delivered by Grant Lamond (University of Oxford) and Margaret Davies (Flinders University). The subject of the book symposium will be Liberalism as a Way of Life by Alexandre Lefebvre (University of Sydney).
The aim of the ASLP Conference is to provide a forum for the discussion and debate of a range of issues in legal theory, broadly defined.
For more information, click here.
25 July 2025
The Annual Castan Centre for Human Rights Law Conference 2025
Castan Centre for Human Rights Law, Monash University
Date: 25 July 2025
Location: Conversation Quarter and Theatrette, Conference Centre, State Library Victoria, 179 La Trobe Street, Melbourne
The highly anticipated Annual Castan Centre for Human Rights Law Conference will take place on Friday 25 July 2025, in person at the Conference Centre of the State Library Victoria. Whether you're a practitioner or student, the Conference offers an invaluable opportunity to deepen your understanding of human rights, and network with fellow practitioners, academics, advocates and activists. Join us for a day of insightful discussions, and thought-provoking panels on critical issues surrounding human rights law. Be sure to mark your calendars and stay tuned for ticket information, which will be available on our website and social media channels, using the hashtag #HumanRights25.
The Conference brings together leading experts, practitioners, and advocates from around the world. Covering a wide array of critical topics, our presenters will provide participants with an opportunity to engage in meaningful discussions and deepen their understanding of human rights challenges and solutions. We are excited to announce our Keynote Speaker for 2025 in due course, and will continue to unveil the full program of participants in the coming weeks.
For more information, click here.
28-30 July 2025
ICON•S Annual Conference
ICON•S
Date: 28-30 July 2025
Location: University of Brasília, Brasilia, Brazil
Our 2025 Annual Conference titled “At the Crossroads of Public Law: Equality, Climate Emergency, and Democracy in the Digital Era” will take place on July 28-30, 2025, in person in Brasília, Brazil, hosted by the University of Brasília and jointly organized by the Center for Comparative Constitutional Studies and the Constituições: Centro de Constitucionalismo e Comparativismo.
There is a fee for this event. For more information, and to register, click here.
31 July-1 August 2025
AIAL 2025 National Administrative Law Conference
Australian Institute of Administrative Law
Date: 31 July-1 August 2025
Location: University Club of Western Australia, Hackett Drive, Crawley, Perth, Western Australia
The overarching theme for the 2025 AIAL National Administrative Law Conference is Perspectives in Administrative Law. Within this topic, the 2025 Conference aims to explore and present various viewpoints and voices in administrative law, whilst also trying to understand the impact of administrative decisions on the individual.
The aim of the Conference is to provide those involved or interested in Australian administrative law with the opportunity to discuss contemporary issues, share practical experiences and consider future developments. The 2025 Conference will be hosted by the Western Australian Chapter of the Institute.
For more information, click here.
21 August 2025
Frail Lawyers and Their Fearless Logics: What Drives Ethical Error?
University of Queensland Law School
Date: 21 August 2025
Location: TBA
As the Robodebt scandal has illustrated, lawyers’ ethics are important. This paper will show why it is not just bad apples or overweening clients that mean all lawyers are at risk of ethical blunders. Traditional notions of lawyers’ ethics - ideas such as fearlessness, zeal and cab rank neutrality - will be examined, as will the human frailties that all humans, even (perhaps especially) lawyers face. We will consider how such ideas can drive lawyers towards disaster. Examples will be taken from the United Kingdom Post Office private prosecution scandal, but also elsewhere. I will suggest that traditional notions of ethics are flawed; that rather than protecting the rule of law, they render it vulnerable.
Chair: Mr Graham Gibson KC
Commentator: Mr Richard Douglas KC
Speaker: Professor Richard Moorhead, University of Exeter
For more information, and to register, click here.
22-24 August 2025
2025 Samuel Griffith Society Conference
Samuel Griffith Society
Date: 22-24 August 2025
Location: Ritz-Carlton Perth
The 35th annual national conference of The Samuel Griffith Society will be held at the Ritz-Carlton in Perth over the weekend of Friday 22 August to Sunday 24 August, 2025.
The conference will feature:
The Fifteenth Sir Harry Gibbs Memorial Oration, delivered by The Hon Simon Steward, Justice of the High Court of Australia
The Third Sir David Smith Memorial Oration, delivered by The Hon Tony Abbott AC, 28th Prime Minister of Australia
Other announced speakers include:
The Hon Richard Court AC, 26th Premier of Western Australia
There is a fee for this event. For more information, and to register, click here.