Management Board

Director

Paul Babie, University of Adelaide, Law School

Paul is an active and widely published researcher, working mainly on law and religion, especially the intersection of private property theory and Christian theology and the nature of religious law. He is currently writing a book for UBC Press in Canada which draws together his research interests entitled Private Property, Climate Change and the Children of Abraham. He is an expert in the history of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Australia and the canon law of the Eparchy for Ukrainian Catholics for Australia, New Zealand and Oceania; he regularly consults on these matters. In 2004, Paul was ordained a Priest of the Ukrainian Catholic Church of Australia, New Zealand and Oceania, in which capacity he currently holds several positions: Chair of the Eparchial Statutes Review and Canon Law Committee and Canon Law Adviser to the Eparch; Consultor and Secretary of the College of Eparchial Consultors and the Eparchial Presbyteral Council; Legal Member of the Eparchial Financial Committee; Canon Law Advisor, Chief Constitutional Draftsperson, and Eparchial Representative to the Eastern Catholic Bishops Forum of Australia; and, Member of the Eparchial Liturgical Committee.

Assistant Director

Nigel Wilson, is a Senior Lecturer at the Adelaide Law School and the Assistant Director of RUSSLR.  Nigel holds degrees in Law (Honours-First Class) and in Economics from the University of Adelaide and a post-graduate Masters degree in Law, the Bachelor of Civil Law degree (BCL), from the University of Oxford.  Nigel is the Course Co-ordinator of the undergraduate subject, Evidence and Proof in Theory and Practice and two post-graduate subjects, Technology, Law and Society and Insurance Law in the Master of Laws programme at the Adelaide Law School.  

Nigel Wilson has practised as a legal practitioner for for nearly twenty years of which 15 years have been as a practising barrister at Bar Chambers in Adelaide, South Australia, where he is now an Associate Member.

Nigel’s research interests relevant to RUSSLR’s activities and about which he has published and spoken at local, national and international conferences and/ or is currently undertaking research, include: 

• Regulating the Information Age - How will we cope with technological change?
• Human Rights and the Right to Privacy
• The Workplace of the Future
• Privacy and the Rise of Confucianism in China
• Digital Forensics and Evidence
• Customs, spirituality and religious communications
• Identity, privacy and data-mining
• Tort Law – The Role of Pragmatism, Policy and Principle in the Duty of Care
• Consumer Protection for Remote and Vulnerable Communities
• Corporate Governance and Corporate Social Responsibility
• Estoppel, Equity and Unconscionability
• Insurance Law, Professional Liability Law and Legal Ethics
• Protecting Trust and Security Technologies
• Principles-based and Risk-based Regulation
• Takaful – Insurance from an Islamic perspective
• The Law of Virtual Worlds and Social Networks
• Digital Divides – Bridging the Gaps and Fostering Digital Opportunity

Members

Neville Rochow SC, Barrister, Howard Zelling Chambers, Adelaide

Mr Rochow practises from Howard Zelling Chambers, which grew from the chambers that he, with Steve Roder, (now Supreme Court Registrar), founded in 1992. He appears at first instance and on appeal in a variety of areas of commercial law, specialising in trade practices and competition matters. Mr Rochow has had broad commercial litigation experience. He has most frequently appeared in the Federal Court of Australia (Adelaide Registry) and the Supreme Court of South Australia. He also appears in other registries of the Federal Court.  Mr Rochow has also appeared in the High Court of Australia, District Court of South Australia, South Australian Industrial Relations Court and other State and Territory jurisdictions. He has appeared before the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, the Australian Securities and Investment Commission, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, Australian Competition Tribunal and the Delegate for the Registrar of Trade Marks.

The range of matters in which he has been and continues to be retained to advise and appear before superior courts include trade practices contraventions, (such as alleged unconscionable conduct, restrictive trade practices and misrepresentation in relation to franchises), interpretation of statues, construction of contractual terms, restraint of trade, failure to use trade marks bona fide, annual valuation of land, negligent misstatement and pure economic loss, caveats over real property titles, indefeasibility of real property title, shareholder disputes, international product liability and sale of goods. Mr Rochow has also had broad experience in the mediation of disputes. 

Carolyn Evans, Associate Professor, University of Melbourne, School of Law

Associate Professor Carolyn Evans is Associate Dean (Research) of the Melbourne Law School and a Deputy Director of the Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies.  Her teaching and research are in the areas of constitutional law, human rights and religious freedom. Carolyn has degrees in Arts and Law from Melbourne University and a doctorate from Oxford University where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar and where she held a stipendiary lectureship for two years. She also qualified to practice law and is a barrister and solicitor of the Supreme Court of Victoria.

Carolyn is the author of Religious Freedom under the European Court of Human Rights (OUP 2001) and co-author of Australian Bills of Rights: The Law of the Victorian Charter and the ACT Human Rights Act (LexisNexis2008). She is co-editor of  Religion and International Law (1999, Kluwer) and Mixed Blessings: Laws, Religions and Women's Rights in the Asia-Pacific Region (2006 Martinus Nijhoff). She is an internationally recognised expert on religious freedom and the relationship between law and religion and has spoken on these topics in the United States, United Kingdom, Russia, China, Greece, Vietnam, India, Hong Kong and Australia. From 2007-2009 she is undertaking a joint ARC Discovery Project with Beth Gaze on the topic of religious freedom and non-discrimination. She also researches on the area of domestic protection of human rights, particularly the role of parliament in the protection of human rights and Commonwealth Bills of Rights.  She is currently completing an ARC Discovery Grant on this topic with Associate Professor Simon Evans. Papers from the project can be found on the website of the Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies.

Peter Burdon, University of Adelaide, School of Law

Dr Burdon is a Lecturer at the Adelaide Law School. He holds a BA (History/Philosophy), LLB (hons) and a PhD from the University of Adelaide. His PhD thesis was on a emerging legal philosophy termed Earth Jurisprudence and focused on legal theory, critical theory, property theory and environmental philosophy.  

Since 2005 Peter has worked with Friends of the Earth Adelaide in the Clean Futures Collective. In this role he has engaged in community advocacy, developed submissions in response to mining projects in South Australia, acted as media spokesperson, organised working trips to aboriginal communities in northern South Australia and organised significant public conferences. Peter also sits on the Ethics Specialist Group of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, the executive committee of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature and on the management committee of the Environmental Defenders Office (SA). From 2007-2011 Peter sat on the executive committee of the Conservation Council South Australia.

Peter lives in the Adelaide plains with his beautiful wife and dancing daughter.

Joshua Neoh, University of Adelaide, Law School

Joshua Neoh received his LLB, with First Class Honours and the University Medal, from the Australian National University in 2010. He received his LLM from Yale Law School in 2011.  He was a summer research scholar at the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian National University (Summer, 2007-08), a research intern at the Centre for International Law at the National University of Singapore (Summer, 2009-10), and an associate member of the Senior Common Room at St Benet’s Hall at the University of Oxford (Michaelmas Term, 2011).  Joshua Neoh has a trinity of interests in legal theory, the common law tradition and religion. He has previously written about law and religion in Malaysia. His current research examines the interplay of text, doctrine and tradition in legal and religious discourses.  

Cornelia Koch, University of Adelaide, Law School

After completing a German undergraduate law degree (First State Law Exam) at the University of Wuerzburg and a period in private legal practice, Cornelia Koch pursued postgraduate studies at the University of Queensland where she obtained a Master of Comparative Law and a Juris Doctor degree. Subsequently, she commenced doctoral studies on the topic 'A Judge-Made Bill of Rights: Can the European Court of Justice Serve as a Model for Australia?'. This project is still ongoing, with completion envisaged in 2010. Cornelia was a part-time Tutorial Fellow at the TC Beirne School of Law at the University of Queensland. She joined the Law School at the University of Adelaide as a full-time academic in 2002. Cornelia is admitted to legal practice in Queenland and the ACT. She is also a Research Scholar of the Centre for Public, International and Comparative Law at the University of Queensland and a member of the Convening Committee of the South Australian Chapter of the Australian Association of Constitutional Law. Cornelia has won a number of research grants and held awards for postgraduate studies from Germany and Australia. Her work has been published in Europe, the USA and Australia.