Monash University Faculty of Law
Monash University Faculty of Law, or Monash Law School, is the law school of Monash University. Founded in 1963, it is based in Melbourne, Victoria and has campuses in Australia, Malaysia and Italy.
The Faculty of Law is consistently ranked in the top 30 law schools in the world and is among the highest ranked law schools in Australia. In 2014, it was ranked 16th in the world in the QS World University Rankings. In 2018, it was ranked first in Australia in the Academic Ranking of World Universities. Entry to the Bachelor of Laws is highly competitive, with an ATAR score of approximately 98 required for guaranteed entry in 2017.
The Faculty of Law offers a wide variety of degrees, including the Bachelor of Laws, with which students may combine other degrees as part of a double degree, the Juris Doctor, Master of Laws, the Doctor of Juridical Science and the Doctor of Philosophy. It currently has approximately 3,500 undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate students and over 100 professors, lecturers and teaching associates.
The Faculty of Law's alumni include two Chief Justices of the Supreme Court of Victoria, current and former judges of the Federal Court of Australia, Supreme Court of Victoria, Supreme Court of New South Wales, County Court of Victoria and High Court of Hong Kong, distinguished academics and legal scholars, federal and state politicians including two Treasurers of Australia, prominent businesspersons, artists and media personalities. Currently, a number of senior judicial positions in Victoria, including Chief Justice of Victoria, are occupied by alumni of the Faculty of Law.
The Monash University Law Review is the Faculty of Law's flagship academic journal. It is managed by students and supervised by faculty advisors.
History
Foundation
In the 1950s, it had become clear that Melbourne's only law school at the time, Melbourne Law School, would soon be unable to meet the rising demand for legal education. Although Monash University was founded to focus primarily on science and technology, it would inevitably establish a law school. The need was not considered pressing enough to make a law school a foundation faculty of the new university; however, when Melbourne Law School imposed quotas on law school candidates due to a lack of resources, a new law school was immediately needed to cater for the extra students. The Victorian Council of Legal Education, the Chief Justice of Victoria and the Victorian Government pushed for the overnight establishment of a law school at Monash University, but this was resisted by the University's Vice-Chancellor, Sir Louis Matheson, who wanted a high quality, well-planned, original faculty of law. In the end, it was over a relatively short period of time – 5 months from October 1963 to March 1964 – that a first-year law school curriculum was established and two teaching staff were appointed. However, when students first arrived in 1964, they did so with the knowledge that the curriculum for their later years was still being written. A law library was established with impressive speed, after substantial book donations from two former justices of the Supreme Court of Victoria. Appropriately for a law school, the Faculty's establishment was delayed by a dispute over the interpretation of the Monash University Act, concerning when and how the University Council could set up new faculties. Following debate between Monash University, the Crown Solicitor and the Parliamentary Draftsmen, the Act was eventually amended.Early years
was the Faculty of Law's first dean, beginning his term on 29 February 1964 after resigning his post as Professor of Jurisprudence at Melbourne Law School the day before. Derham immediately sought to depart radically from the way that law had been taught previously in Australia. His appointment was announced on a Monday, and he was reportedly outlining detailed proposals for first-year subjects by the following Friday. He drastically reworked the curriculum and teaching style which his faculty had taught at Melbourne Law School. Monash University introduced small-group teaching, interactive lectures and a curriculum which emphasised legal skills in addition to a knowledge of the law itself. According to Derham, the reason behind this move was that the law is "not fixed and static. It moves and grows." This was in contrast to the conventional style of teaching in other Australian law schools, in which part-time staff members would deliver lectures to a hall of students with little or no student-teacher interaction. A similar transformation later took place at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. In later years, Derham also managed to establish strong international links with law schools in North America and Europe, which continue today. The first intake of law school students began in March 1964 with an initial enrollment of 149 students, after a lengthy selection and interview process. The first lecture, for the first year subject "The Legal System", was held by Derham on Monday 9 March 1964, with all staff sitting anxiously in the front row.According to the Faculty of Law's early staff members, the opportunity to develop a new and original law school excited all those involved in Monash Law School's early years. In addition to its teaching reforms, Monash also became the first law school in Australia to establish its own community legal centres, which were and continue to be run by students under the supervision of staff and other lawyers. In 1971, Monash set another precedent for Australian law schools when Enid Campbell became the first female Dean of any Law School in Australia's history.
Recent history
When Monash University expanded in the 1990s, the Faculty of Law chose not to extend itself to other campuses. Instead, it chose selectively to use Monash University's global presence to create new opportunities for international study and research. The result was the establishment and expansion of international collaboration and exchange programs with law schools around the world. Additionally, the Faculty of Law established the Malaysia Program and the Prato Program, allowing its students to complete part of their degrees at the University's campuses in Malaysia and Tuscany. In 2008, the Faculty of Law announced that it would begin offering a dual Master of Laws with the Washington College of Law – the first such program by an Australian law school.The Faculty of Law has made a name for itself as a dynamic and progressive law school, in a field which has been criticised for being overly traditional and out-of-touch. It hosts faculty-run Community Legal Centres, staffed by undergraduate law students who may undertake clinical work as part of their degrees. As a result, by the early 1990s, the Faculty of Law's undergraduate law program was regarded by some in the legal profession as superior to that of its traditional rival, Melbourne Law School.
Today the Law Faculty has over 3,770 undergraduate and postgraduate students, and over one hundred academic staff. Entry to the Bachelor of Laws is highly competitive, with an ATAR score of approximately 98 required for guaranteed entry in 2017.
Deans
- Sir David Plumley Derham
- Louis Waller
- Enid Mona Campbell
- David Ernest Allan
- Patrick Gerard Nash
- Robert Baxt
- Charles Robert Williams
- Stephen John Parker
- Arie Freiberg
- Bryan Horrigan
Admissions
Research
Academic staff at Monash Law School publish books and journal articles across almost all areas of law. Part of this research is organised around specialist centres, including:- The Castan Centre for Human Rights Law
- The Centre for Regulatory Studies
- The Australian Society of Legal Philosophy
- The Australian Centre for Court and Justice System Innovation
- The Centre for the Advancement of Law and Mental Health
- The Australasian Institute of Judicial Administration
- The Commercial Law Group
Monash Centre for Regulatory Studies
The Monash Centre for Regulatory Studies is a teaching and research centre with a multidisciplinary focus, leading studies on the regulation of areas such as business, health sciences and technology. The current Director of the Centre is Graeme Hodge.Publications
The following legal journals are based at Monash Law School:- Monash University Law Review
- Alternative Law Journal
- Australian Journal of Legal Philosophy
Law Library
The Library houses a major collection of printed and electronic material. In addition to the many online databases and e-books, its physical collection contains over 150, 000 items. Most Commonwealth jurisdiction law reports can be found, including non-official and official reports. These include law reports from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United Kingdom, the Pacific Island regions, the United States and Europe. A relatively large staff run the library, helping students, organising books, carrying out repair work and supervision of the law library.
Community Legal Services
Monash was among the first law schools in Australia to incorporate Community Legal Services into its teaching programs. Currently, the Faculty of Law runs two Community Legal Services. The Monash-Oakleigh Legal Service, which includes the Family Law Assistance Program, is located just outside the western border of the University's Clayton Campus. The Springvale Monash Legal Service, including the South East Centre Against Sexual Assault, is located in the South-Eastern Melbourne suburb of Springvale. The Springvale service is now the oldest continually running community legal service in Australia. Among the students who were first to participate in the program in 1973 include the current Chief Justice of Victoria Marilyn Warren and current Chairman of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission Tony D'Aloisio.These centres operate to provide free legal services and education to meet the needs of the community. They are supervised by full-time and part-time qualified legal practitioners, but are essentially run by law students at the Faculty of Law. Working at one of these centres for a semester or a summer is part of the Faculty of Law's Professional Practice units, which are credited towards the Bachelor of Laws. Student volunteers undertake a range of responsibilities, including interviewing clients, negotiating with other parties, letter drafting, preparing wills and court documents, and appearing in court on their client's behalf. Although most tasks are carried out by the students, they are under the supervision of practising solicitors. The Centres provide legal advice in areas such as criminal law, employment law, debt and family law. They also produce publications on law reform.
Since the establishment of Community Legal Services in the early 1970s, similar programs have been introduced at other Australian law schools.
Notable alumni
Notable alumni include:Federal Court of Australia judges
- Mordy Bromberg
- Jennifer Davies
- Raymond Finkelstein AO
- Christopher Jessup
- Shane Marshall
- Debbie Mortimer
- Bernard Murphy
- Tony Pagone
- David Beach
- Anne Ferguson, Chief Justice of Victoria
- Stephen Kaye AM
- Murray Kellam AO, also first President of the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal
- Richard Niall, also former Solicitor-General of Victoria
- Pamela Tate, also former and first female Solicitor-General of Victoria
- Marilyn Warren AC, first female Chief Justice of Victoria and former Lieutenant-Governor of Victoria
- Mark Weinberg AO, also former Chief Justice of Norfolk Island and former Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions
- Kevin Bell, also former President of the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal
- Anthony Cavanough
- Matthew Connock
- Clyde Croft
- Michael Croucher
- Jane Dixon
- James Dudley Elliott
- James Judd
- Maree Kennedy
- Andrew Keogh
- Lex Lasry AM
- Cameron Macaulay
- Steven Moore
- Stuart Morris, also former President of the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal
- Tony Pagone
- Jack Rush
- Andrew Tinney
- Elizabeth Fullerton, Judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales
- Simon Molesworth, AO, QC: Acting Judge of the Land and Environment Court of New South Wales, Vice Chancellor's Professorial Fellow at the Faculty of Law, Adjunct Professor of the La Trobe Institute for Social and Environmental Sustainability and chairman of the Australia Council of National Trusts
- Kevin Zervos, Judge of Court of First Instance
- Diana Bryant: Chief Justice of the Family Court of Australia; former and first Chief Magistrate of the Federal Magistrates' Court of Australia
- Jennifer Coate: Judge of the Family Court of Australia, former State Coroner of Victoria; first President of the Children's Court of Victoria
- Julie Condon: Judge of the County Court of Victoria
- Paul Cronin: Judge of the Family Court of Australia
- Sarah Dawes: Judge of the County Court of Victoria
- Mandy Fox: Judge of the County Court of Victoria
- Ian Gray: current State Coroner of Victoria, first President of the Children's Court of Victoria and former Chief Magistrate of the Magistrates' Court of Victoria
- Felicity Hampel: Judge of the County Court of Victoria
- Scott Johns: Judge of the County Court of Victoria
- Sharon Johns: Judge of the Family Court of Australia
- Graeme Johnstone: former State Coroner of Victoria
- Gregory Lyon: Judge of the County Court of Victoria
- Martine Marich: Judge of the County Court of Victoria
- Patricia Riddell: Judge of the County Court of Victoria
- Michael Rozenes: former Chief Judge of the County Court of Victoria
- David Sexton: Judge of the County Court of Victoria
- Christine Thornton: Judge of the Family Court of Australia
- Andrea Tsalamandris: Judge of the County Court of Victoria
- Peter C. Young: former Judge of the Family Court of Australia
- Julian Burnside AO QC: prominent barrister, human rights advocate and author
- Kristine Hanscombe QC: barrister specialising in public law
- Ross Ray QC: prominent barrister and former President of the Law Council of Australia
- Neil Rees: former Chairman of the Victorian Law Reform Commission, foundation Dean of the University of Newcastle Law Faculty
- Julian McMahon AC: prominent barrister and human rights advocate
- Josh Frydenberg: Treasurer of Australia and Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party of Australia
- Bill Shorten: Leader of the Australian Labor Party and Leader of the Opposition, former National Secretary, Australian Workers' Union and Victorian State ALP President
- Jill Hennessy: Attorney-General of Victoria
- Richard Alston AO: former Australian Senator and Minister, and Australian High Commissioner in London
- Kevin Andrews: former Australian Minister for Immigration and Workplace Relations
- Peter Costello AC: longest-serving Treasurer of Australia and former Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party of Australia
- Simon Crean: former Minister for Trade, former Leader of the Opposition and Australian Labor Party Leader
- Julia Banks: former General Counsel of Kraft Foods Australia and GlaxoSmithKline Australia, current Federal Member for Chisholm in the Parliament of Australia
- Michael Kroger: prominent businessman and former President of the Victorian Liberal Party
- Julian Hill: current Federal Member for Bruce in the Parliament of Australia
- John Lenders: former Victorian Treasurer and longest-serving Finance Minister of Victoria
- Tony Lupton: former Secretary of the Victorian Cabinet
- Brendan O'Connor: current Australian Minister for Home Affairs
- Clare O'Neil: youngest female mayor of a local government area in Australia's history, and now Fulbright Scholar
- Martin Pakula: former Victorian Minister for Public Transport, now Shadow Attorney-General
- Peter Reith: Executive Director of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, former Defence Minister and Minister for Workplace Relations
- John Thwaites: former Deputy Premier of the State of Victoria and Minister for Environment and Water
- Dean Wells: Attorney-General of Queensland in the Goss Government
- Andrew Bassat: CEO and co-founder of Seek Limited
- Mark Birrell: company director and Former Minister for Industry, Science and Technology
- Tony D'Aloisio: former Chairman of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission and former CEO, Australian Securities Exchange
- Will Fowles: Melbourne property investor, youngest ever member of the Melbourne Cricket Club
- Tan Le: Technology entrepreneur, 1998 Young Australian of the Year
- Graeme Samuel AO: former Chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission
- Mark Aronson: Emeritus Professor at Melbourne Law School and public law scholar
- Tim Costello AO: Director of World Vision Australia
- Mick Dodson: 2009 Australian of the Year, Convenor of the ANU Institute for Indigenous Australia
- Hugh Evans: 2004 Young Australian of the Year, Co-Founder of The Oaktree Foundation, Author and Philanthropist
- Arie Freiberg: Emeritus Professor and former Dean of the Faculty of Law
- Peter Hogg QC: leading scholar on Canadian constitutional law
- Sarah Joseph: human rights scholar and Director of the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law
- Ron McCallum: Emeritus Professor at the University of Sydney and foundation Blake Dawson Waldron Professor in Industrial Law at Sydney Law School
- Charles Robert Williams, Emeritus Professor at the Faculty of Law and criminal law scholar
- Beth Wilson: former Victorian Health Services Commissioner and former President of Victoria's Mental Health Review Board
- Jon Faine: prominent Melbourne radio personality
- Campbell McComas : comedian and actor
- Charlie Pickering: comedian
- Elliot Perlman: writer, Three Dollars, The Reasons I Won't Be Coming), AFI Award winner
- Matt Tilley: comedian
- Anna Millward : cyclist, two-time world champion
- Peter Moore: AFL footballer, two-time Brownlow Medallist
- Murray Thompson: Former AFL footballer, now politician
Notable academic staff
- Robert Baxt: scholar and solicitor in commercial law, former Chairman of the Trade Practices Commission, former Dean of the Faculty of Law
- Enid Campbell: scholar in constitutional law and administrative law.
- Stephen Charles: former Justice of the Supreme Court of Victoria, Adjunct Professor at the Faculty of Law
- Sir Daryl Dawson: former Justice of the High Court of Australia
- Mark Davison: intellectual property law expert
- Nadirsyah Hosen: internationally known as an expert on Indonesian law and Shari'a law
- Raymond Finkelstein AO: former Justice of the Federal Court of Australia
- Ian Freckelton: adjunct professor of law
- Robert French AC: former Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia, Adjunct Professor at the Faculty of Law
- Arie Freiberg: Emeritus Professor and former Dean of the Faculty of Law and Chairman of the Victorian Sentencing Advisory Council
- Jeffrey Goldsworthy: Emeritus Professor at the Faculty of Law, legal philosopher and constitutional law scholar
- Peter Gray: former judge of the Federal Court of Australia, Adjunct Professor at the Faculty of Law
- George Hampel, QC: former Justice of the Supreme Court of Victoria; advocacy instructor
- Felicity Hampel: Judge of the County Court of Victoria
- Peter Heerey: former judge of the Federal Court of Australia
- Christopher Jessup: former judge of the Federal Court of Australia and Adjunct Professor at the Faculty of Law
- Sarah Joseph: constitutional law and human rights law scholar, director of the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law
- Hoong Phun Lee: Sir John Latham Professor of Law and former Deputy Dean at the Faculty of Law
- Marcia Neave AO: former judge of the Supreme Court of Victoria
- Jeremy Rapke QC: former Victorian Director of Public Prosecutions
- Louis Waller: Emeritus Professor at the Faculty of Law and criminal law scholar
- Charles Robert Williams, Emeritus Professor at the Faculty of Law and criminal law scholar
- Christopher Weeramantry: Former Judge and Vice-President of the International Court of Justice