JSI Seminar | Democracy’s people
2025-03-06 18:00 - 19:30 (Australia/Sydney) | Common Room, Level 4, New Law Building (F10), Eastern Avenue, Camperdown campus, New Law Building, Camperdown, 2006, Australia
In-person event

In the Voice Referendum, one major reason for voting No was the conviction among some Australians that the Australian people ought to be seen as single and undivided; for these Australians, the recognition of divisions within the polity would be inconsistent with the equal, democratically-grounded citizenship of all Australians.

In this seminar I explore the relationship between democracy and how one defines “the people”. A common approach suggests that “the people” ought to be defined only by the scope of the institutions themselves. On this view, for the purposes of democratic governance, the people are a purely institutional creation, formed by the rules that determine the boundaries of the state (“the institutionalist position”). A second common approach treats “the people” as formed exogenously. Peoples are defined pre-politically, typically in cultural terms. Those peoples possess the right to self-determination; they determine their own political structure (“the culturalist position”).

Each of these positions is over-simplified. I advance a “hybrid position”, which recognizes (in response to the culturalists) that there are often multiple potential definitions of the people, that “the people” is not purely pre-political, and that the value of democratic self-government can help us to weigh those potential definitions; and (in response to the institutionalists), that democratic self-government is inevitably shaped by cultural factors, and thus, for reasons internal to democratic theory, the structure of democratic institutions can legitimately include certain adaptations to those factors.

About the speaker

Jeremy Webber is Professor Emeritus of Law at the University of Victoria (Canada) and Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne. He has written widely in legal theory, constitutional theory, Indigenous rights, federalism, cultural diversity, and constitutional law in Canada and in relation to other countries (especially Australia).

Professor Webber began his career at McGill University (1987-1998), was Dean of Law at the University of Sydney (1998-2002), then Canada Research Chair in Law and Society at the University of Victoria (2002-2014), until he surrendered that chair to become Dean of Law at UVic (2013-2018) and finally Professor Emeritus from 2023 until now. He was appointed a Fellow of the Trudeau Foundation in 2009, Fellow of Royal Society of Canada in 2016, and Honorary Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne in 2023.

Thursday 6 March 2025, 6-7.30pm AEDT

Venue: Level 4, Common Room, New Law Building (F10), Eastern Avenue, Camperdown campus

CPD Points: 1.5

This event is proudly presented by the Julius Stone Institute of Jurisprudence at The University of Sydney Law School.

JSI Seminar | Polyvocal constitutionalism
2025-03-14 13:00 - 14:00 | Common Room, Level 4, New Law Building (F10), Eastern Avenue, Camperdown campus, New Law Building, Camperdown, 2006, Australia
In-person event

Constitutional theory increasingly recognizes that constitutional norms are shaped and implemented by a broad range of actors – at different levels of government, across different institutions, and from the “top down” and “bottom up”. Polyvocal constitutionalism of this kind also has a range of advantages: it has potential epistemic benefits, can enhance the political and sociological legitimacy of the process of constitutional construction, and increase support for core democratic norms. At the same time, there is clear scope for debate about how constitutionalism should work in a polyvocal world: should poly-vocalism, for example, be premised on ongoing constitutional contestation or a preference for the resolution of constitutional controversies? And within this spectrum, what values or ethos should guide courts as they engage with other actors: for example, deference, collaboration or democratic responsiveness? This article explores these questions, and offers a partial defence of responsiveness as the most desirable model of polyvocal constitutionalism, in a world of rich choice.

About the speaker

Rosalind Dixon is a Scientia Professor and Director of the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law Sydney.

Friday 14 March

Time: 1-2pm

Venue: Common Room, Level 4, New Law Building, Eastern Avenue, University of Sydney, Camperdown campus

CPD Points: 1

This event is proudly presented by the Julius Stone Institute of Jurisprudence at The University of Sydney Law School.

Professionalising bank culture
2025-03-18 13:00 - 14:00 | Common Room, Level 4, New Law Building (F10), Eastern Avenue, Camperdown campus, New Law Building, Camperdown, 2006, Australia
In-person event

This talk is a critical examination of the cultural impact of the Senior Managers and Certification Regime (SMCR) in the UK and the Banking Executive Accountability Regime (BEAR), recently expanded into the Financial Accountability Regime (FAR), in Australia. Though various reports in the UK and Australia have determined that these IARs are already starting to have a positive impact on the culture of the financial services sector, there are also some indications to the contrary, which are often minimised.

Drawing on legal and regulatory theory, criminological theory, and behavioural psychology, this talk explores how these IARs can work better in practice, setting out a normative roadmap for both regulators and financial institutions to consider when implementing and executing these regimes. It explores, for example, the case for implementing a “process sandbox” to provide guidance on the operation and implementation of IARs, where there is a lack of clarity as to how provisions of the IAR will be interpreted by regulators. This would provide the opportunity to increase mutual understanding of regulatory expectations thereby enhancing the probability that regulatory objectives will be met.

In addition, the talk explores the case for further professionalising the banking sector, as recommended by the UK Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards in 2013 and the Australian Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry in 2019. In particular, it employs regulatory theory (meta-regulation), behavioural psychology (groups as moral anchors), and criminological theory (stakes in conformity), to explore how increased professionalisation is a form of control and attachment, creating particular group dynamics which can inform individual decision-making processes and help to generate more ethical actions to prevent wrongdoing. It is argued that professionalism can be enhanced by educational requirements that emphasise members’ commitment to serve a positive social purpose, beyond profit-maximisation, and through mechanisms for members to be disciplined by their community for failing to honour their duties.

About the speaker

Joe McGrath is an Irish Research Council Scholar, an Ireland-Canada Scholar, a Fulbright Scholar, and an Associate Professor of Law at the Sutherland School of Law, University College Dublin, Ireland. He researches corporate governance, financial regulation, and white-collar crime. He is the author and editor of several books and publishes in the leading-peer reviewed journals in Ireland, Europe, Australia, and the USA.

Tuesday 18 March

Time: 1-2pm

Venue: Common Room, Level 4, New Law Building, Eastern Avenue, University of Sydney, Camperdown campus

CPD Points: 1

This event is proudly presented by the University of Sydney Law School.

Let’s Talk About Corporations: From Monopoly to Lego: Building a more competitive economy from the ground up
2025-03-19 17:00 - 18:30 | Common Room, Level 4, New Law Building, Eastern Avenue, University of Sydney, Camperdown campus
In-person event

In his 2023 launch of Let’s Talk About Corporations (a series of boardroom conversations organised by the Sydney Law School and the University of Queensland Law School), the former Chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, Professor Rod Sims AO called for a revitalisation and reform of competition law and policy in Australia.Join us for the inaugural Let’s Talk About Corporations event of 2025 with a talk by the The Hon Dr Andrew Leigh MP, Assistant Minister for Charities, Treasury and Competition, Assistant Minister for Employment discussing the recent policy focus on fostering competition across industries.

Presenter

Andrew Leigh is the Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities, Treasury and Employment, and Federal Member for Fenner in the ACT. Prior to being elected in 2010, Andrew was a professor of economics at the Australian National University. He holds a PhD in Public Policy from Harvard, having graduated from the University of Sydney with first class honours in Arts and Law. Andrew is a past recipient of the Economic Society of Australia’s Young Economist Award and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences.

Wednesday 19 March 2025

Time: 5-6.30pm

Venue: Common Room, Level 4, New Law Building, Eastern Avenue, University of Sydney, Camperdown campus

CPD Points: 1.5

The Let’s Talk About Corporations series is a joint project of Sydney Law School and UQ Law School.

Corporate re-domiciliation: a comparative perspective
2025-04-02 17:00 - 18:00 | Common Room, Level 4, Sydney Law School
In-person event

Globally there is a diversity of approaches to corporate re-domiciliation, which involves the transfer of registration of a company from its place of incorporation to another jurisdiction. While some jurisdictions have allowed this, others such as the United Kingdom (UK) are in the process of considering the viability of such a regime. While some allow both inward and outward re-domiciliation, a few jurisdictions allow only the inward variety. This seminar explores the motivating factors surrounding corporate re-domiciliation, the varied regimes among key jurisdictions, the differing roles of corporate regulators, and the policy considerations that deal with possible concerns surrounding the process. It does so with specific focus on the laws or proposals in the UK, Singapore and Hong Kong, among other key jurisdictions.

Presenter

Umakanth Varottil is Vice Dean (Graduate Studies) and Professor at the Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore. He specialises in corporate law and governance, mergers and acquisitions and corporate finance. While his work is generally comparative in nature, his specific focus is on India and Singapore.

Umakanth is a Research Member of the European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI). He is also an editor of the Indian Law Review, Asian Journal of Comparative Law, Singapore Journal of Legal Studies, Oxford Business Law Blog and the ECGI Blog. Prior to his foray into academia, Umakanth was a partner at a pre-eminent law firm in India. During that time, he was also ranked as a leading corporate/mergers & acquisitions lawyer in India by the Chambers Global Guide.

Wednesday 2 April 2025, 5-6pm AEDT

Venue: Level 4, Common Room, New Law Building (F10), Eastern Avenue, Camperdown campus

CPD Points: 1

This event is proudly presented by the Centre for Asian and Pacific Law and the Ross Parsons Centre for Commercial, Corporate and Taxation at the University of Sydney Law School.

JSI Seminar | On the nature of legal reasoning: Rules, knowledge and concepts
2025-04-03 13:00 - 14:00
This seminar is part of a larger work on legal reasoning. The seminar focuses on three aspects of our reasoning capabilities, to provide a sense of the intellectual territory we inhabit when we engage in legal reasoning. The seminar presents a broadly Wittgensteinian approach to rules and rule-following and the nature of knowledge, in particular the distinction between ‘knowing how’ and ‘knowing that’ and the relationship between the two. Lastly, it considers the ‘concept’ of concepts and of legal concepts in particular, and the vexed question of whether ‘conceptual analysis’ has any role to play in legal reasoning.

About the speaker

James Penner (B.Sc (Genetics) University of Western Ontario (1985), LLB University of Toronto (1988), DPhil Oxford (1992)) is Kwa Geok Choo Professor of Property Law at the University of Singapore, which he joined in 2013. He formerly taught at Brunel University, the London School of Economics, King’s College London, and University College London. He is one of the world’s leading scholars in the philosophy of property and the law of trusts, and writes more widely in the areas of private law and the philosophy of law. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Alberta, the University of Queensland, Queen’s University (Canada), Jilin University, the Catholic University of Leuven, the University of Toronto and Harvard University and, most recently, at the Centre for Transnational Legal Studies in London.

Thursday 3 April

Time: 1-2pm

Venue: Common Room, Level 4, New Law Building, Eastern Avenue, University of Sydney, Camperdown campus

CPD Points: 1

This event is proudly presented by the Julius Stone Institute of Jurisprudence at The University of Sydney Law School.

Julius Stone Address: Legal practice and the responsibility of individuals
2025-04-09 18:00 - 19:30 | Law Foyer, Level 2, New Law Building (F10), University of Sydney, Camperdown Campus
In-person event

Some legal practices, such as the private law of obligations and property, are justified by the good that general compliance with their rules bring about. It cannot be said, however, that each particular act of compliance by individuals itself contributes to that good outcome. And yet there is clearly an ethical tie between individuals and the rules of the practices. Leaving aside cases where the law simply protects independent moral rights, the same points can be made about compliance with law generally. This lecture explores the question of how we should understand the ethical tie between individuals and legal practices that are justified in terms of the social good produced by general compliance. An imperfect duty of impartial beneficence will play a central role in the account.

About the speaker

Liam Murphy works in legal, moral, and political philosophy and the application of these inquiries to law, legal institutions, and legal theory. Subjects of his publications range from abstract questions of moral philosophy (for example, “Nonlegislative Justification,” in Jeff McMahan et al., Principles and Persons: The Legacy of Derek Parfit, 2021) to concrete issues of legal and economic policy (for example, The Myth of Ownership: Taxes and Justice, 2002, co-authored with Thomas Nagel). A central theme in all Murphy’s work is that legal, moral, and political theory cannot be pursued independently of one another; they are, in fact, different dimensions of a single subject. This theme is evident in his book What Makes Law (2014), which locates the traditional philosophical issue of the grounds of law (the factors that determine the content of the law in force) within broader issues of political theory.

Much of Murphy’s recent work has been in the field of private law theory, though he has also recently returned to tax policy, writing a new paper with Thomas Nagel on wealth taxation. Going forward, Murphy is working on a book project that concerns the connections and differences among the justifications of practices (including legal practices) and the moral requirements that apply to individuals, collectives of individuals, and states. Murphy has been awarded fellowships at Columbia’s Society of Fellows in the Humanities, Harvard’s Society of Fellows, and the National Humanities Center. He was vice dean of NYU School of Law from 2007 to 2010.

Wednesday 9 April 2025

Time: 6-7.30pmVenue: Law Foyer, Level 2, New Law Building

This event is hosted by the Julius Stone Institute of Jurisprudence at The University of Sydney Law School.

The Julius Stone Address is generously sponsored by the Educational Heritage Foundation. It is named to commemorate the life and work of Professor Julius Stone, Australia’s foremost legal philosopher and for many years Challis Professor of International Law and Jurisprudence at The University of Sydney.
