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Current Research Projects
International Law
Climate Change & Environmental Law
This project, funded by a three-year Australian Research Council Discovery Grant, critically examines the extent to which States have obligations to ‘protect’ people displaced by climate change under international refugee law, international human rights law, and international law on statelessness. Significantly, the project will evaluate whether flight from habitat destruction should be viewed as another facet of traditional international protection, or as a new challenge requiring new legal solutions. By developing an international law framework for understanding climate-induced displacement, it will enable international and regional policymakers to devise sustainable, principled and practical solutions for so-called climate change ‘refugees’.
This project aims to delineate the key environmental challenges for international and Australian law associated with the emergence of a new generation of ocean energy technologies as a source of renewable energy. Specific research questions to be addressed in this project include: How can ocean energy contribute to future energy needs and to addressing climate change? What gaps and weaknesses exist in the existing international and Australian legal and regulatory frameworks with respect to ocean energy?
Nanotechnology, or the manipulation of matter at the atomic level, is a new field of science and technology that offers potential for exciting developments in a wide range of climate change mitigation technologies. However, nanotechnology presents new risks to humans and the environment. This research is examining legal issues relating to the development and use of nanotechnology in climate change mitigation technologies. It will delineate the key elements of an Australian regulatory regime to facilitate nanotechnology innovation and precautionary science based management of risks posed by nanotechnology as well as examine the implications for International law of nanotechnology relevant to climate change.
While the first generation of international environmental law paid lip service to the clear link between human well being and the environment, (most notably in the repeated articulation of concepts such as the right to development), the second generation of international environmental law has increasingly become fragmented and disconnected from the human dimension. International environmental law is often viewed as something very separate from international human rights law and international trade law. But the reality is that the issues touched upon by all these bodies of law are very much interlinked. Failure to see these interlinkages has arguably undermined the effectiveness of international environmental law. Also while there is considerable information and understanding amongst States and other actors of the nature of these legal obligations and key principles of environmental management more generally and their nexus to development, there has been little debate on how international environmental law should respond to a range of new and emerging issues. This project examines the future of international environmental law and brings together academics and policy makers from a number of countries to produce a peer reviewed book to consider what emerging issues international environmental law may need to tackle and the relationship of those issues to development, human rights and other areas of international law such as trade law. This will be important for assessing what needs to be done in terms of improving the effectiveness of existing law, but also importantly how international environmental law should respond to new emerging challenges.
Law of the Sea
Human Rights / Bill of Rights
ARC Linkage project with Professor Hilary Charlesworth, Regnet, ANU) in collaboration with the ACT Department of Justice and Community Safety (LP0989167)
ARC Linkage Project (with Andrea Durbach and Catherine Renshaw), in collaboration with the Asia Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions, entitled “Building Human Rights in the Region through Horizontal Transnational Networks: the. Role of the Asia Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions” (LP0776639), details at http://www.ahrcentre.org/content/Activites/APFproject.html
ARC Linkage Project (with Hilary Charlesworth, Regnet, ANU), in collaboration with the ACT Department of Justice and Community Safety) (LP0455490), details at http://acthra.anu.edu.au/index.html
The project is examining the effectiveness of codes of conduct in protecting against corporate human rights violations. In particular 3 codes in the apparel, extractive and internet industries and draws on the lessons learned from each process including their effectiveness in providing substantive protection for human rights.
Immigration and Refugees
This is a four-year Australian Research Council Discovery Grant which examines the history of medico-legal border control in the Asia-Pacific region. This grant is held in conjunction with two historians, Associate Professor Alison Bashford at Sydney University and Dr Sunil Amrith at the University of London.
This is a collaborative international project funded by the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council International Opportunities Fund. It involves researchers from four countries: Professor Guy Goodwin-Gill (University of Oxford), Professor Geoff Gilbert (University of Essex), Professor Kate Jastram (Berkeley), Assistant Professor James Simeon (York University, Toronto), and Associate Professor Jane McAdam (UNSW). Through a comparative analysis of case law in the five jurisdictions mentioned above, the aims of the project are to:
‘Complementary protection’ describes the obligations States have under international human rights and humanitarian law towards people who are at risk of serious human rights violations in their country of origin, but who do not qualify as ‘refugees’ under the 1951 Refugee Convention. The Australian government is currently developing a system of complementary protection, which will bring Australia into line with the practices of countries like Canada, the Member States of the European Union, the United States, and (shortly) New Zealand. Drawing on her extensive work in this area, Jane has been consulted by the Australian and New Zealand authorities with respect to their complementary protection models. Terrorism / Counter-terrorism
This project comprises of a number of sub-projects that analyse recent developments in public policy and international and domestic jurisprudence in relation to international law and human rights in the area of counter-terrorism. They include:
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