Call for Submissions to the University of New South Wales Law Journal Issue 47(2)

‘Developments in Rights, Freedoms and Accountability’

The UNSW Law Journal is currently welcoming submissions for the thematic component of Issue 47(2). The topic for this thematic is ‘Developments in Rights, Freedoms and Accountability’.

Australia’s public law sphere is currently undergoing a period of significant change, emanating from legislative and judicial bodies. For example, for the first time since Federation, Indigenous Australians may be formally recognised as the ‘First Peoples of Australia’ in the Constitution. Simultaneously, the metes and bounds of common law rights and protections to citizens, such as natural justice, continue to be defined via judicial interpretation. As the rights and freedoms of Australia’s citizens continue to develop, so too do government accountability mechanisms that can safeguard people’s liberties, evidenced by the introduction of the federal National Anti-Corruption Commission.

With these changes come questions about their (positive and negative) implications for people’s rights and freedoms, as well as their efficacy in ensuring governmental accountability. The implementation of these changes also raises questions about what developments in the public law sphere may be upon us in the future: for example, could Australia finally see the enactment of a national Human Rights Act? Could a treaty between Indigenous Australians and the Australian Government come to fruition? Notwithstanding these questions, given the infancy of these changes in the public law sphere, their consequences remain predominantly unexplored in Australian legal scholarship. As such, there is no time like the present to explore them.

In writing submissions, authors may wish to explore the following issues. However, authors are not limited to these areas of law and are encouraged to draw upon their own areas of expertise.

Implications on Rights, Freedoms and Accountability

  • The impact of SDCV v Director-General of Security (2022) 405 ALR 209 on individuals’ rights and freedoms.
  • The role of the judiciary, particularly the High Court, in securing individuals’ rights and freedoms, as well as ensuring government accountability.
  • Comparative analysis between Australia and other jurisdictions on rights, freedoms and/or government accountability.

Future Developments in Rights, Freedoms and Accountability

  • The need for a federal Human Rights Act in light of recent developments in Australia.
  • The strengths and weaknesses of the Australian Human Rights Commission’s proposed Human Rights Framework and whether such a framework should be adopted.
  • The relationship between a federal Human Rights Act and constitutional law.
  • Discussion of any other developments in the near future which may impact rights, freedoms and/or government accountability.

The Indigenous Voice to Parliament

  • How the Voice will hold Parliament and the executive government accountable.
  • The relationship between the availability of judicial review and the Voice.
  • Design proposals for legislation which the Parliament may enact relating to the Voice’s composition, functions, powers and procedures.
  • Consideration of the 2023 Referendum results.

Administrative Appeals Tribunal

  • The abolition of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal and what this means for the future of Australian administrative law.
  • The future of Australia’s merits review and judicial review system in light of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal’s abolition.
  • The enhancement of government accountability and individuals’ rights to merits review in light of the replacement of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.

National Anti-Corruption Commission

  • The significance of the National Anti-Corruption Commission in safeguarding rights and freedoms of Australian citizens.
  • Barriers to the National Anti-Corruption Commission’s success in ensuring government accountability.
  • The potential role of the National Anti-Corruption Commission as a ‘fourth branch of government’.

Secret Ministries

  • The impact of the Scott Morrison ministerial positions controversy on government accountability.
  • The implications of the Bell Inquiry in ensuring future government accountability and the potential legislative responses required to ensure this.

The submission deadline for the thematic Issue 47(2) is 17 November 2023, with publication set for late July 2024. Any changes to these deadlines will be updated on the Journal’s website.

Submissions should be between 7,000 and 13,000 words in length, excluding footnotes. The style guide for the Journal is the fourth edition of the Australian Guide to Legal Citation, as supplemented by the latest edition of the Journal’s ‘Additions’, which is available on our website.

The Journal is an independent, peer-reviewed publication. While publication is subject to peer review, publication decisions remain at the Editor’s discretion, in counsel with the Executive Committee of the Journal. The Journal does not publish articles that have been, or will be, published elsewhere, either in identical or substantially similar form. Please contact the Journal at law.journal@unsw.edu.au if you are interested or have queries about submitting for Issue 47(2).

If you intend to submit an article, it would be greatly appreciated if you could please provide some early indication of your proposed topic or area of research. We strongly encourage you to pass this call for submissions to any colleagues, research networks or organisations who may be interested in making a submission.

Yours sincerely

Brad Marzol
Editor, Issue 47(2)

Issue 46(2) to Launch on 18 July 2023

The University of New South Wales Law Journal eagerly announces the launch of Issue 46(2) on 18 July 2023, where the Hon Justice Robert Beech-Jones will deliver a keynote address on the thematic topic: ‘Life Sciences: Ethics, Innovation and the Future of Law’. Justice Beech-Jones is the Chief Judge of the Common Law Division of the Supreme Court of New South Wales and a Judge on the New South Wales Court of Appeal. During his time on the Bench, his Honour has presided over a number of landmark cases where the intersection of law and science has become contentious, including those concerning vaccine mandates, DNA evidence and climatic events.

The thematic component of Issue 46(2) contains a total of five articles, each touching upon the ethical and legal challenges arising out of the interplay between law and the life sciences. The articles within the Issue’s thematic component explore a vast array of themes, including: the human rights implications stemming from the imposition of vaccine mandates, and whether state coercion is legally and morally justified; the recognition of legal personhood for the protection of animals; the sociocultural problems arising from the use of genetic searching in criminal investigations; the evolving regulatory landscape of nanotechnologies; and the increasingly blurred grounds on which waivers of consent are authorised in medical research. Together, these articles provide a timely analysis of the future of Australian legal development.

Issue 46(2) also contains five general articles addressing a number of fascinating legal issues, including: constructions of Aboriginal identity in the sentencing of Indigenous offenders, the varied ways in which inequality against the queer community persists in Australian law; the admission of intoxication evidence in rape trials; understandings of governance duties in the Australian charities sector; and whether a right to disconnect can be recognised in Australian employment law. 

The launch event for Issue 46(2) will take place at 6pm on Tuesday 18 July 2023 at the Sydney office of Corrs Chambers Westgarth.

Please RSVP via this link by 5pm on Tuesday 11 July 2023: https://unswlj46-2.eventbrite.com.au/

Guests will receive name tags upon arrival, so please register each attendee’s details individually.

Issue 46(1) to Launch on 18 April 2023

The University of New South Wales is excited to announce the launch of Issue 46(1) on 18 April 2023.

We are delighted to welcome Rachel Davis, Vice-President and Co-Founder of Shift, to deliver the keynote address on the Issue 46(1) launch topic: ‘Human Rights, Corporations and Communities’. Shift is a non-profit organisation regarded as the leading centre of expertise on the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Over the last decade, Rachel has led work at Shift on standard-setting, human rights and sports, financial institutions, conflict and international law. Rachel is a graduate of Harvard University and the University of New South Wales, and a former Issue Editor of the University of New South Wales Law Journal.

The theme of the launch is inspired by several articles exploring rights protections for a wide range of communities – most particularly, Alan Zheng and Beth Goldblatt’s respective articles discussing state-inflicted violence on Palm Island, Queensland, and links between climate and racial harms in Moree, New South Wales. A second set of articles discusses subjects such as corporate social licence, crowd-sourced equity funding, and philanthropy’s relationship with justice. The launch topic seeks to put human rights protections in touch with concerns about corporate wealth, economic inequity and distributive justice.

The other articles in Issue 46(1) address a variety of relevant legal topics, including: emissions reduction, religious and testamentary freedoms, planning and development, intelligence law, and family violence.

The launch event for Issue 46(1) will take place at 6pm on Tuesday 18 April 2023 at the Sydney Office of Premier Sponsor Allens.

Please RSVP by 12pm on Tuesday 11 April 2023 via this link: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/unsw-law-journal-issue-461-launch-tickets-596473687857

Guests will receive name tags upon arrival, so please register each attendee’s details individually.

Call for Submissions to the University of New South Wales Law Journal Issue 46(4)

‘Power, Workers and the Law’

The UNSW Law Journal is currently welcoming submissions for the thematic component of Issue 46(4), which is ‘Power, Workers and the Law’.

Australian workers’ collective power has dwindled over the past few decades. Union density in Australia decreased from 40% of employees to 14% from 1992 to 2020, despite workers facing increasing precarity due to factors including stagnating wages, job instability in casualised work, and the gig economy’s expansion. Workers and unions are regulated by an industrial relations legal regime which has been criticised by the International Labour Organization for falling short of international labour rights standards.

However, union activity has recently attracted media attention. Internationally, unionisation efforts at Amazon warehouses and Starbucks workplaces have been successful; while in New South Wales, public sector unions like the Rail, Tram and Bus Union, the Nurses and Midwives Association, and the Teachers Federation have taken disruptive industrial action in 2022. Furthermore, the Albanese Labor Government announced ‘immediate’ reforms to the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) (‘FW Act’)at its Jobs and Skills Summit in September 2022, including the introduction of multi-employer agreements and the modification of the Better Off Overall Test during enterprise bargaining.

In light of the recent surge of union activity and federal proposals to reform the FW Act, Issue 46(4) intends to publish submissions demonstrating a substantial connection to Australian labour, employment, and industrial relations law. While the Journal particularly encourages submissions examining collective labour law (eg, concerning trade unions, collective bargaining, industrial action), it also invites contributions which generally examine the law’s influence upon workers’ collective and individual power, agency, and vulnerability, as well as the future of work in Australia in light of increasing automation and gigification.

In writing submissions, authors may wish to explore the following issues. However, authors are not limited to these areas of law and are encouraged to draw upon their own areas of expertise.

Industrial Relations Law

  • The Albanese Labor Government’s proposed reforms to the FW Act, and their likely impact upon enterprise bargaining.
  • Provisions in the FW Act which regulate industrial action (eg, pre-strike ballots, good faith bargaining requirements).
  • The extent to which legislative reform can strengthen bargaining power, considering the overall decline in union membership density.
  • Legislative reform proposals which confer or strengthen collective bargaining rights for vulnerable workers, including independent contractors, gig workers, temporary migrant workers etc.

Trade Union Regulation

  • Long-term impacts of the 2015 Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption.
  • The Albanese Labor Government’s plans to shut the Australian Building and Construction Commission, and the appropriateness of the Fair Work Ombudsman to take over its role.

Legal Profession and Industry

  • Comparative studies between unionisation in Australian legal workplaces, and international legal workplaces. For example, the Aotearoa Legal Workers’ Union formed in New Zealand in February 2019, and legal aid criminal barristers in England and Wales voted to escalate industrial action to an indefinite strike in August 2022.
  • Barriers or enablers to unionisation in Australian legal workplaces.
  • The effectiveness of professional associations (eg, NSW Law Society) in addressing lawyers’ working conditions.

Criminalisation

  • Sex worker agency between jurisdictions which criminalise sex work (Tasmania, South Australia, Western Australia), license sex work (Queensland, Tasmania, Australian Capital Territory), decriminalise sex work (New South Wales and Northern Territory), or decriminalised work and introduced anti-discrimination protections to protect people from discrimination on the basis of their profession (Victoria).
  • Criminalisation of wage theft, and the efficacy of such laws.

Contract Law

  • The use of strict contractual interpretation to determine employment status, as adopted by the High Court in Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union v Personnel Contracting Pty Ltd (‘CFMEU’) and ZG Operations Australia Pty Ltd v Jamsek (‘Jamsek’), and how an employment relationship may be correctly interpreted where the contract is unclear.
  • The impact of CFMEU and Jamsek upon the power dynamic between employers and employees, particularly vulnerable workers like gig workers.

Social Theory

  • The role of unions as an exemplar of social movements, and the position of social movements and civil society actors in our legal system.

The submission deadline for the thematic Issue 46(4) is 31 March 2023, with publication set for late November 2023. Any changes to these deadlines will be updated on the Journal’s website.

Submissions should be between 7,000 and 13,000 words in length, excluding footnotes. The style guide for the Journal is the fourth edition of the Australian Guide to Legal Citation, as supplemented by the latest edition of the Journal’s ‘Additions’, which is available on our website.

The Journal is an independent, peer-reviewed publication. While publication is subject to peer review, publication decisions remain at the Editor’s discretion, in counsel with the Executive Committee of the Journal. The Journal does not publish articles that have been, or will be, published elsewhere, either in identical or substantially similar form. Please contact the Journal at law.journal@unsw.edu.au if you are interested or have queries about submitting for Issue 46(4).

If you intend to submit an article, it would be greatly appreciated if you could please provide some early indication of your proposed topic or area of research. We strongly encourage you to pass this call for submissions to any colleagues, research networks or organisations who may be interested in making a submission.

Yours sincerely,

Anna Ho
Editor, Issue 46(4)

Call for Submissions to the University of New South Wales Law Journal Issue 46(2)

Life Sciences: Ethics, Innovation and the Future of Law

 

The University of New South Wales Law Journal (‘Journal’) is currently welcoming submissions for Issue 46(2). The Issue will comprise both a thematic component and general component. The thematic component will address the topic of Life Sciences: Ethics, Innovation and the Future of Law’.

At no other time in history has the intersection of life sciences and the law been so patently observable, yet complex. Life sciences concern the study of ‘living organisms, their life processes, and their relationships to each other and their environment’.[1]They encompass a substantial scope of biological inquiry, including, ecology, reproductive technologies, neuroscience, immunology and genetics, among many others.

The life sciences, as both an industry and area of research, is anticipated to experience significant growth in the coming years, fuelled by digital transformation, collaboration and heavy investment in the context of the COVID19 pandemic.[2]These factors place the law’s approach to the growing life sciences industry at the forefront of its trajectory. Science’s impact on law, however, is not unilateral; the ‘constant, mutually constitutive interplay of biological and legal conceptions of life’ also define our social norms.[3]The onus then falls upon the law to navigate the morally, ethically and culturally turbulent waters of society’s response to developments in the life sciences.[4]The close integration of life sciences and the law will continue to be of significance in the coming years, as the interaction between the two fields will be responsible for crafting ‘desirable futures’ through the creation of new technologies.[5]The importance of publishing highquality Australian scholarship in this area cannot be overstated.

Issue 46(2) seeks to explore the challenges and opportunities presented by legal responses to developments in the life sciences and how these futures reflect or obscure accepted ethical norms. By providing a scholarly platform to these issues, Issue 46(2) intends to amplify Australian voices within an increasingly topical legal domain and generate academic debate on the future of Australian legal development.

Noting these intentions, the Journal welcomes contributions that examine the relationship between the law and life sciences, and the implications of this interaction within a wider construct of ethical considerations. In writing submissions, authors may wish to explore the following issues. However, authors are not limited to these areas of law and are strongly encouraged to draw on their own areas of expertise.

Health Law
• The complicated regulatory environment of xenotransplantation in Australia;

• The legal and ethical implications of the recently passed Mitochondrial Donation Law Reform (Maeve’s Law) Act 2022 (Cth); and

• The legality and ethicality of genomic testing in life insurance.

Tort Law
• Scope for the possibility of new causes of action unique to situations concerning assisted reproductive technologies, including ‘wrongful genetic connection’ and ‘wrongful disturbance of reproductive planning’; and

• In-vitro fertilisation and wrongful life claims.

Criminal Law
• The legal and ethical concerns pertaining to the advent of novel forensic methodologies, such as investigative genetic genealogy;

• Reliance on genetic markers to predict patterns of criminality and the legal implications of shifting criminal liability onto an offender’s biological identity;

• The possible creation of a new category of international crime for the irresponsible manipulation of gene editing technology; and

• The use of neuropsychological indicators as mitigating factors in sentencing.

Intellectual Property Law
• The difficulties in reconciling the legal, scientific and ethical interests associated with section 18(2) of the Patents Act 1990 (Cth), particularly in relation to human embryonic stem cells, detached human body parts and artificially grown organs;

• The increasing prevalence of biopiracy;

• The prospect of safeguarding genetic privacy rights (and the associated biosecurity concerns) in the selling of genetic information by large genealogical corporations, such as AncestryDNA and 23andMe; and

• Intellectual property rights concerning plants and animals.

Human Rights
• The inadequacy of current human rights protections against emerging
neuropsychological practices, such as the potential use of brain printers as biometric authentication devices, and the need to introduce new human rights including the right to mental privacy;

• Whether the genome editing of human embryos violates a fundamental human right to inherit a genome without deliberate manipulation; and

• The role of life sciences in understanding the development (and continuing evolution) of human rights within the broader scope of human behaviour.

Environmental Law
• Evolving conceptions of legal personhood following the granting of personhood status to natural environments such as the Whanganui River in New Zealand, and the granting of similar protections to Victoria’s Yarra River, and subsequently the possibility of granting legal personhood to the Great Barrier Reef.

The submission deadline for the thematic Issue 46(2) is 18 November 2022, with publication of Issue 46(2) set for late July 2023. Articles must be between 7,000 and 13,000 words in length (excluding footnotes). The style guide for the Journal is the current edition of the Australian Guide to Legal Citation, as supplemented by the latest edition of the Journal’s Additions’. Please visit our submissions page here for further submissions guidelines and to submit.

The Journal is an independent, peerreviewed publication. Although all submissions received are subject to peer review, decisions as to publication remain at the discretion of the Editor, in counsel with the Executive Committee of the Journal. The Journal does not publish articles that have been, or will be, published elsewhere, either in identical or substantially similar form.

If you are interested in, or have any queries about, submitting for Issue 46(2), please contact the Journal at law.journal@unsw.edu.au. If you intend to submit an article, it would be greatly appreciated if you could please provide some early indication of your proposed topic or area of research. We strongly encourage you to pass on this call for submissions to any colleagues, research networks or organisations who may be interested in making a submission.

 

[1] ‘Life Sciences’, SSRN (Web Page) <https://www.ssrn.com/index.cfm/en/life-sciences/>.
[2] Deloitte, Global Life Sciences Outlook: Digitalization at Scale (Report, 2022) 3.
[3] Sheila Jasanoff, ‘Introduction: Rewriting Life, Reframing Rights’ in Sheila Jasanoff (ed), Reframing Rights: Bioconstitutionalism in the Genetic Age (MIT Press, 2011) 1, 3.
[4] Ibid 4.
[5] J Benjamin Hurlbut, Sheila Jasanoff, and Krishanu Saha, ‘Constitutionalism at the Nexus of Life and Law’ (2020) 45(6) Science, Technology and Human Values 979, 981.