Law research in the Faculty

Ecological Jurisprudence is driven by an ethos, a culture, that places the Earth at the heart of the law. In understanding the interconnectedness of law, place and life, as well as the urgency of de-centering the abstract and embracing the contextual, our scholars in Ecological Jurisprudence are leaders in their (green) fields.

Whether it’s the study of environmental justice; the rights of nature; the ontologies of legal personhood; the narratives of climate change, climate protest and activism; or climate change law and policy, our scholars push the boundaries of critical theory and eco-legal practice.

Members of our Ecological Jurisprudence research node include:

• Associate Professor Nicole Rogers, founder and co-leader of the internationally-recognised Wild Law Judgment project.
• Dr Alessandro Pelizzon, one of the founding members of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature and an UN-recognised leader in Earth Jurisprudence
• Dr Evgeny Guglyuvatyy, a specialist in climate change law and policy, including taxation and forest policy
• Mr Aidan Ricketts, a prominent activism academic and embedded social movement action researcher.

In our Law and Humanities research node, the zeitgeist, the cultural spirit of our (disruptive) times, finds its intellectual home. Our scholars explore the rich cultural intersections of law and literature, law and film, law and popular culture, critical and cultural legal history, the narratives of decolonisation, literary theory, and the philosophies of jurisprudence.

Our Law and Humanities cluster includes:

• Professor William MacNeil esteemed jurisprude and cultural legal scholar
• Professor Bee Chen Goh, a noted mediation expert and scholar of Sino-legal studies
• Dr Rohan Price, the leading legal historian of the colonial Far East.
• Associate Professor Nicole Rogers, pioneer of interdisciplinary climate studies encompassing law, fiction and the performance of protest.

Polemos, Journal of Law, Literature and Culture is the journal of record of our Law and Humanities cluster. An exciting collaboration between the Faculty, the Dipartimento di Lingue e Letterature Straniere at the University of Verona, and the Berlin-based publishing house, De Gruyter, Polemos is an internationally peer-refereed journal devoted to the interdisciplinary study of law and culture. A journal with its antipodean home in the cultural milieu of Southern Cross University, the Managing Editors of Polemos are Professor William MacNeil (SCU) and Professor Daniela Carpi (Verona).

In the Critical Legalities research node, our scholars are theorists and practitioners of the critical, the radical and the subversive other. Re-conceptualising property, place, race, whiteness, the colony, the corporation, the constitution, the workplace and more, our legal and societal institutions, indeed our understandings of law, are forged anew in the crucible of Critical Legalities. 

Our distinguished personnel includes:

• Professor John Page, diverse property theorist and scholar of public property/space
• Associate Professor Jennifer Nielsen, a leading scholar of social justice, inclusion and critical race theory
• Dr Tom Round, noted constitutionalist
• Dr John Orr, an expert in the university corporation.

Aligning with the Critical Legalities research node, Legalities, the Journal of the Law and Society of Australia and New Zealand is the flagship law journal of the Faculty. As the official house organ of the Law and Society Association of Australia and New Zealand (LSAANZ), and published by Edinburgh University Press, Legalities is the only dedicated socio-legal journal in Australasia and the Pacific. Managing Editors are Dr Trish Luker (LSAANZ President and Senior Lecturer at UTS), Ahonuku-Associate Professor Carwyn Jones (Victoria University Wellington), and Professor John Page (SCU).