Mark Shepheard’s moot experiment has received attention from the widely-read US magazine “Conservation“.

It’s an old story: environmental protections laws enacted with the highest hopes end up entangled in lawsuits for years or even decades due to vague wording. But there may be a way to avoid the legal gridlock, argue two Australian scholars: Road test proposed rules in mock trials in “moot courts” before they get chiseled into the lawbooks.

Australia has seen its share of frustrating legal wrangles over environmental laws, Mark L. Shepheard and Paul V. Martin of the University of New England in Armidale note in an article in press at Land Use Policy. Courts have largely rejected government efforts to enforce a native plant conservation law passed in the 1990s, for instance, in part due to vague requirements. Efforts to enshrine the do-no-harm “precautionary principle” into law have also been bedeviled by disagreements over definitions.

Read more of the article at http://www.conservationmagazine.org/2010/09/trial-run/.

Congratulations to Michelle Lim for having her paper selected as one of the two PhD papers to be presented in the final Plenary session at the forthcoming IUCN Academy of Environmental Law Colloquium in Ghent.

This was a highly competitive selection, with only 2 papers being selected from 25 PhD students from around the world.

Many of you would have had the opportunity to hear her paper at a recent Kirby, so will be aware of the quality and potential impact of her work.

Congratulations Michelle!

Professor Stephen Colbran was recently appointed to the AUQA Register of Auditors until 30 September 2011. AUQA is the principal national quality assurance agency in higher education with the responsibility of providing public assurance of the quality of Australia’s universities and other institutions of higher education, and assisting in enhancing the academic quality of these institutions and accreditation authorities, reporting on performance and outcomes, assisting in quality enhancement, advising on quality assurance; and liaising internationally with quality agencies in other jurisdictions, for the benefit of Australian higher education.

Professor Stephen Colbran has also recently returned from Turkey where, upon the request of the Turkish judiciary and with funding from the British government, he was a keynote speaker at a conference on judicial performance evaluation. Professor Colbran has now been engaged by the Turkish judiciary to prepare a report on how to improve the objective measures of judicial performance evaluation used in Turkey for both judges and prosecutors. Turkey has a Civil Law system in which judges and prosecutors are trained once they leave university. It is anticipated that the Turkish Ministry of Justice together with the British Government will apply for European Union funding to implement the recommendations of the report currently being prepared.

ReMarks, the feedback management system, devised by Professor Stephen Colbran, with support from external funding, is now proceeding to trials at CDU, Flinders, UWS, University of Canberra, and University of Auckland. Numerous other universities are currently evaluating the product. ReMarks can be downloaded and used by Australian Academics free of charge from www.remarkspdf.com.

The Australian Centre for Agriculture and Law (AgLaw Centre) at the University of New England has been recognised at a national irrigation conference for its significant contribution to research on water law and water institutions.

The AgLaw Centre has been pivotal to a number of studies of laws and institutions impacting on water markets conducted through the Cooperative Research Centre for Irrigation Futures over the past five years. Staff members of the AgLaw Centre were presented with three awards earlier this month at the Australian Irrigation Conference & Exhibition 2010. The conference, held in Sydney, was organised by the CRC for Irrigation Futures and Irrigation Australia.

Professor Paul Martin, the Director of the AgLaw Centre, received the “CRC Values Award for Excellence” for his leadership and for his contribution to the work of the CRC.

Dr Jacqueline Williams, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the AgLaw Centre, received the “Board Award for the Quiet Achiever / Trans-discipline”. This was particularly in recognition of Dr Williams’s achievement in integrating the work of other science and policy teams with that of the AgLaw Centre, and her commitment to engagement with communities. This has resulted in tangible applications of the research work of the AgLaw Centre and the CRC.

Professor Martin, Dr Williams, and Christopher Stone won the “2010 Science Award” for their technical report Transaction Costs and Water Reform: the devils hiding in the details. This report, published in 2008, is a cornerstone of recently-commissioned studies for both Federal and State agencies on the effectiveness of environmental laws and markets, and has resulted in a number of peer-reviewed publications. Further development of the approach is occurring with colleagues at Penn State University in the United States, and in the EEC. The report has been the most-downloaded report from the CRC Web site since 2003.

The AgLaw Centre is working closely with colleagues from across UNE in developing new approaches to the integration of science, law and institutional research relating to water. The researchers expect that two more studies will be published before the end of the term of this CRC for Irrigation Futures in August 2010.

Please see the below link for information about the Inaugral edition of the IUCN Academy of Environmental Law journal has just been launched.

http://www.iucnael.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=94&Itemid=71〈=en

Professor Paul Martin from our School of Law is one of the founding editorial members of this Journal. Congratulations to Paul and we look forward to hearing about the success of this important academic project.

The Journal aims to provide:
* a valuable resource for IUCN Academy members, other institutions and scholars interested in keeping abreast of environmental law developments worldwide
* a forum for facilitating the participation and engagement of a broader array of scholars in the IUCN Academy’s network, especially younger and emerging academics.
* a platform for promoting global information exchange and debate amongst environmental law scholars.
* a tangible “Academy product” which will raise the profile of the IUCN Academy and grow its membership.

The question, ‘What if I were the Australian Minister for Agriculture?’, has also been posited to four authors with expertise in farm policy and knowledge of Australian agriculture:
Professor Paul Martin (AgLaw, UNE), Professor David Pannell (School of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Western Australia), Dr Alistair Watson (a freelance agricultural economist) and Professor Margaret Alston, (Department of Social Work at the Faculty Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, Monash University).

The May 2010 Farm Policy Journal will include the winning two papers from AFI’s recent Writers Competition asking entrants to imagine themselves in the Minister’s shoes.

If you were the Australian Minister for Agriculture, what would be your aims for the future of agriculture, and what measures or programs would you implement to make that happen? This was a challenge given to both professional and amateur agricultural policy-makers, with the added incentive of a prize for the two best ‘amateur’ efforts.

The May 2010 Farm Policy Journal will be released in early June.