Thursday, January 28, 2021

Collins on 'Private Military Security Companies: Addressing Accountability – A Suggested Model for Control’

 Professor Pauline Collins of the USQ School of Law and Justice has published a new paper titled 'Private Military Security Companies: Addressing Accountability -- A Suggested Model for Control'.  The paper
appears as Chapter 10 in Cullen, Kastner, and Richmond (eds.), The Politics of International Criminal Law (Brill, 2020).  

Tuesday, January 26, 2021

Gray on 'Corporations and their Contributions to Public Debates'

 Professor Anthony Gray of the USQ School of Law and Justice has published a new article titled 'Corporations and their Contributions to Public Debates'.  The article appears in Volume 36(1) of the Australian Journal of Corporate Law.  Here is the abstract:


"Corporations are increasingly contributing to controversial public debates. This raises important questions regarding the purpose of a corporation, where a range of views have been expressed, including the shareholder primacy theory, stakeholder primacy theory, communitarian notions, and concepts of corporate social responsibility. This article argues that there are real questions surrounding the legitimacy of such contributions. It also considers directors’ legal responsibilities under the Corporations Act, and considers arguments that directors may be in breach of these obligations by devoting company resources in pursuit of social ends. It also considers arguments that corporations have a protected freedom to contribute to political discussion, before concluding that if parliament so wished, it could legislate to make it clear that corporations are, or are not, legally entitled to devote resources towards the pursuit of non-profit objectives, including social causes. In the absence of such clarification, there are significant legal doubts over the efficacy of such behaviour."

Thursday, January 21, 2021

Gray on 'Executive Detention in the Time of a Pandemic'

 Professor Anthony Gray of the USQ School of Law and Justice has published an important new article titled 'Executive Detention in the Time of a Pandemic'.  The article appears in Volume 27(4) of the Australian Journal of Administrative Law.  Here is the abstract:


"The global COVID-19 pandemic has raised many important legal issues in Australia. One was the legality of proposed detention of an individual at the behest of an authorised person, on the basis the person was considered likely to breach the lockdown measures. Though the Victorian Government eventually abandoned this contentious proposal, it raised significant controversy, and is considered worthy of examination in this article."

Tuesday, January 5, 2021

Patrick on "Path Dependency, the High Court, and the Constitution"

 Dr Jeremy Patrick, a Lecturer in the USQ School of Law and Justice, has published a new article titled 'Path Dependency, the High Court, and the Constitution.'  The article appears in Volume 30(2) of the Journal of Judicial Administration.  Here is the abstract:

"Path dependence is a concept that originally arose in the field of economics before gaining currency with political scientists and historians. The essence of path dependency is that temporality matters: once a decision is made, it often becomes “locked-in” and persists despite the existence of more efficient or otherwise better alternatives that could become apparent later. The tentative hypothesis advanced here is that the concept of path dependency is useful for understanding why some doctrines of Australian
constitutional law have changed dramatically since first developed while others remain largely the same. An example of one arguably path-dependent line of doctrine and one arguably non-path-dependent line of doctrine are discussed and analysed to demonstrate the possibilities and limitations of the theory."

Monday, January 4, 2021

Gray on 'Fiscal Arrangements in the Australian Federal System' in Breda's 'La Contrattazione Costituzionale Dei Livelli Di Autonomia'

Professor Anthony Gray of the USQ School of Law and Justice has published a paper titled 'Fiscal Arrangements in the Australian Federal System.'  The paper appears as a chapter in a collection co-edited by Dr Vito Breda, a Senior Lecturer at USQ.  The collection is titled La Contrattazione Costituzionale Dei Livelli Di Autonomia and is published by Editorale Scientifica.