School of Law: Welcome

Recent Events Elliott Johnston Tribute Lecture by Solicitor General Martin Hinton QC Thursday 14 May 2009 5.30pm - 7.15pm Victoria Room, Hilton Adelaide The Law School's Annual Prizegiving Ceremony Monday 30 March 2009 5.45pm Matthew Flinders Theatre Guest of Honour was Luke Cornelius, Assistant Police Commissioner, Police Victoria (read the speech)

The Law School at Flinders University houses one of Australia's most acclaimed undergraduate law programmes. it also offers: a programme in Criminal Justice for Law, Bachelors of Arts and Behavioural Science students; law topics for Commerce students, and postgraduate research degrees. There is a strong emphasis on both practical skills and legal theory.

The academic staff are all active researchers, many with national or international reputations in their fields. Each is involved in a range of external activities that regularly bring them into contact with the legal profession and the broader community.

The Law School prides itself on its friendly and relaxed atmosphere, as well as on its commitment to high quality teaching and scholarship.

Legal History Sleuths' Dossier
On the establishment of the Flinders Law Library in 1992 it was found to be impossible to obtain a complete set of sessional volumes of SA Acts from 1837. The Library has provided a very fragile and incomplete set. This  has caused major access issues  for researchers. On discovering that there are only a handful of complete sets of SA Acts still in existence, Professor David Clark of the School of Law and Helen Culshaw explored the possibility of obtaining digital copies of early acts for the use of Flinders staff and students. This coincided with the establishment of Flinders Academic Commons, the University's digital repository, through which research information is made freely available online to the community. The idea was born of extending the availability of the digital versions of the legislation to the legal profession and the wider community.

On receiving approval from the Attorney-General  the Hon  Michael Atkinson, a grant to support a project for this purpose was successfully sought from the Law Foundation of South Australia.

The project commenced in December 2006.

The project team was headed by Professor Clark and Helen Culshaw the Law Librarian and had membership of Rebecca Thomas, John Banbury, Amanda Nixon and Liz Walkley Hall.

Other major contributors to the success of the project include:

 # The staff of the University of Adelaide Law Library, headed by Sue Milne who generously assembled a collection of original acts in good condition and made them available for scanning.

 # Ms Naomi Lucas of the scanning bureau HPA (Australia), whose staff  made the excellent digital images of the legislation.

The database was completed in June 2008 and has since been available for trial purposes. Very positive feedback has been received from lawyers and law librarians.

ARC Discovery Grant
Congratulations Mark Halsey - Mark has been awarded a large ARC Discovery grant ($500,000+) for a five year study of the impact of imprisonment on lives of young male offenders and its relationship with re-imprisonment.  Over one third of prisoners released annually return to prison within 2 years and Mark hopes through it to provide some tools to assist policy makers develop better practice.  Well done Mark and we look forward to hearing more about it as the research gets under way.

International Visiting Scholar Program
Academics from outside Australia who are planning to take sabbatical leave are invited to apply for the honorary position of Visiting Scholar in the School of Law at Flinders University. More information...

Law course reaccredited