Faculty of Law research profile

This team aims to develop, enhance and promote the Faculty’s research strengths in Canadian law by facilitating scholarly collaboration, research presentations and publication outcomes among researchers in this area. The Faculty is home to a specialised concentration of researchers in the field of Canadian law. These researchers fall outside the ambit of other Faculty and University centres. The CLPP legal research team would align itself with the Faculty’s emphasis on our Canadian law program for Canadian students and encourage interest in the pursuit of HDR and honours research by Canadian students.

Dispute resolution has been a signature area of research, scholarship and professional legal training in the Bond Law Faculty since the Bond Dispute Resolution Centre was established in 1989. Through their research, presentation and publication efforts, the Dispute Resolution Legal Research Team makes critical contributions to Bond’s sustained reputation for excellence in this field. 

This is further supported by Bond Law’s hosting of the open-access Dispute Resolution Review and the Centre for Dispute Resolution, which offers quality dispute resolution training through the Graduate Certificate in Family Dispute Resolution and the Master of Laws in Family Dispute Resolution. 

Together these areas of dispute resolution activity and focus demonstrate the Faculty’s ongoing commitment to continuing to grow and extend its position of prominence in the dispute resolution field in Australia and internationally. 

The Team addresses multiple facets of climate action research, and is focused upon just outcomes for human and more-than-human current and future generations and the long-term climate sustainability of Earth’s life systems.

The significance of climate action research has been acknowledged by governments, business and civil society. The international community through the United Nations has recognised climate action as one of the key Sustainable Development Goals. 198 nations, including Australia, have ratified the 1992 UnitedNations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is designed to prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. There is an urgent need for critical reflection on points of intersection between climate activism, law and legal systems, and on the adequacy of varying legal responses to the climate crisis. 

Members of the Team contribute to discussion around, and resolution of, the vast array of climate related legal and extra-legal issues associated with climate mitigation and climate adaptation. These issues include: climate judging, climate and the corporation, climate legal education, climate law and First Nations people, climate dispute resolution, food security, climate violence, climate activism and climate displacement.

This team is engaged in a broad range of what is traditionally considered to be ‘public law’ scholarship.  It considers the relation between the government and its people, and our governance structure itself.  This incorporates areas of law such as constitutional law, administrative law and criminal law, three of the so-called Priestley 11 areas of core study within any law degree. It houses research concerning legal issues pertaining to Indigenous Australians.  It includes broader human rights issues, including equality and non-discrimination, many health law issues, refugee/immigration issues and climate change law issues.

These are fundamentally important legal areas, with public law comprising approximately 25% of the core content in any Australian law degree.  There has been a much greater focus in recent years on the broad topic of Human Rights.  Human rights are a fundamental part of Public Law.  The question of the position of Indigenous Australians in today’s Australia is extremely important, and many legal issues in that area are worthy of deep study and reflection.  Climate change, and the legal response to it, has also assumed greater importance in recent times.  Australia is a signatory to several international conventions in these areas, a testament to the importance of these issues at a global and local level. This also suggests the value of comparative law analysis in this context, in which many members of the team are engaged.  Public law regulates all aspects of how government interacts with people.  As the scope and role of government has increased, so too has the extent to which government activity impinges on an individual’s rights and liberties.  The way in which we are governed also assumes greater importance.  These are appropriate areas for deep study and reflection.