Faculty of Law

Transcript for video "UTS Vice-Chancellor's Research Awards 2015 - Andrew Mowbray"

AUSTLII produces the Australian legal database. This is used by everyone from lawyers through to members of the public. It receives approximately 650,000 hits a day, which constitutes about 30 per cent of legal internet traffic in Australia.

AUSTLII tries to have impact both in a policy sense and in a sense of providing just general access to legal materials. From a policy point of view, we feel very strongly that the public has a right to be able to access legal information, but we also have impact in terms of the detail as to how that happens. We do this both in Australia and we try to help international. You know, AUSTLII has helped to establish an organisation called the Free Access to Law movement, which has 50 organisations as members around the world.

One of the fundamental things about AUSTLII is that we believe strongly that the public ought to have free access to legal information. We believe that ignorance of the law is no excuse, so it’s a good idea that the public can genuinely access what the law is. We also attempt to have impact in terms of the detail of how that happens – citation issues, issues as to how you can reliably prove that something’s correct and the like. 

Transcript for video "UTS Vice-Chancellor's Research Awards 2015 - Thalia Anthony"

A strong aspect of my research is how we can enhance legal education to promote cultural competencies among our students, and I’ve held a number of conferences and published in this area to identify ways in which we can communicate Indigenous experiences through our teaching in the same way that I do it through my research. And I’ve been doing this in criminal law, but also through the design of new subjects like a Jumbunna editorial role, where students are actively involved in editing a Jumbunna law journal and being part of its production and communicating with stakeholders to enhance their professional capacity for working with Indigenous communities.

Students from these subjects, both the core subject of criminal law as well as the elective subjects of the Jumbunna journal and Indigenous People and the Law, which I teach and design, have gone on to work in Aboriginal legal services, native title services, as well as gone on to contribute to their Indigenous communities, not only in leadership roles, which they have contributed to, but also in very different ways, like artistic roles. So I think the function of the subjects and the way in which I’ve tried to incorporate Indigenous world views has had a profound effect on empowering Indigenous students as well as opening up non-Indigenous students to possibilities to contribute to Indigenous justice.