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The next Kirby Seminar, titled ‘Capital Punishment and Diplomatic Protection: Australia s Experience in Responding to its Citizens in Peril‘ will be delivered by Professor Don Rothwell (ANU) on Tuesday 14 July at 12 noon in the Lewis Seminar Room in the Law School.
Throughout the past decade Australia has been confronted with a number of challenges arising from its citizens being sentenced to death in overseas countries. In some instances, as with a number of Australians held in Vietnam, the Australian government has been successful in requesting that clemency be applied and the death sentence has been commuted. In other instances, such as the case of Van Nguyen in Singapore in 2005, the government’s diplomatic efforts have failed. Currently, there are three Australians on death row in Indonesia; all members of the so-called Bali Nine who were arrested for drug trafficking offences in Bali in 2005. Whilst the Australians held in Bali had yet to exhaust their local judicial remedies, there is growing concern as to their plight and what options may ultimately be open to the Australian government to ensure the death penalty is not applied. This seminar will explore these issues, especially the rights and obligations the Australian government may have towards its citizens who are being detained overseas and in circumstances of peril. It will also review the position of successive Australian governments towards the death penalty.

When: 12 noon, Tuesday 14th July 2009

Where: Lewis Seminar Room, W38 Law School Building

In the next instalment of the Kirby Seminar Series, coordinated by the UNE School of Law Research Committee, Associate Professor Angus Corbett of the University of Technology Sydney will speak on the topic of “The Missing Dimension of Safety: The Liability of Statutory Authorities for Failing to Prevent Harm Associated with the use of Roads”. The seminar will take place at noon on 25 June 2009 in the Lewis Seminar Room (W38, Law School Building).
Associate Professor Corbett’s paper is concerned with the missing dimension of safety in the regulation of the use of roads. It investigates a number of well known cases that deal with the application of principles determining when statutory authorities will be liable for failing to prevent harm associated with the use of roads. This analysis reveals that it is often rational to limit liability of statutory authorities for failing to prevent harms associated with the use of roads. But it also reveals evidence that these authorities lack the capacity to develop safety systems that are needed to prevent many harms that are associated with the use of roads. The argument developed in this paper is that it is important for courts to acknowledge both the failure of statutory authorities to develop safety systems and the complexity of the task of establishing these safety systems. Acknowledging the complexity of the problem of improving safety will assist in creating a context in which governments, statutory authorities, community organisations and members of the public are able to probe our ’social structure and culture to see how these promote’ our vulnerability to damage associated with complex systems such as roads.
For further details please contact Julia Werren (or phone 02 6773 2098)

In the next installment of the Kirby Seminar Series, coordinated by the UNE School of Law Research Committee, Dr Jonathan Crowe, Senior Lecturer at the University of Queensland, will speak on the topic of “The Priority Of Contextual Meaning: A Theory of Judicial Interpretation”. The seminar will take place at noon on 19 May 2009 in the Lewis Seminar Room (W38, Law School building).

In his paper, Dr Crowe argues that, in interpreting legal texts, judges should seek to give effect to their contextual meaning: the meaning they hold when considered in the full light of their broader social and moral context. He will argue first that, as a descriptive matter, contextual meaning is necessarily prior to any more restricted form of textual interpretation; that is, the contextual meaning of a legal text is its ordinary meaning. He will then advance two arguments for the proposition that, other things being equal, judicial interpretation of legal texts ought to follow their ordinary (or contextual) meaning. The final parts of his paper explore the nature and limitations of the contextualist model of judicial practice. The possibility of conflicts between contextual factors at different levels of abstraction makes it necessary to distinguish between narrow and wide versions of the contextualist methodology. He argues that wide contextualism offers the best overall account of judicial practice.