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The Right Honourable Dame Sian Elias
Professor Michael Adams
Professor Laurence Boulle
Professor Douglas Branson
The Hon. John von Doussa QC
Hon. Justice E T Durie
Professor John Farrar
Professor Alexander Gillespie
Associate Professor Jenny Hocking
Justice Sir Kenneth Keith
Cathy Quinn
Professor Avrom Sherr
Professor John Wade
Margret Wilson

Submission Date for Abstracts is 20 May 2005

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KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

The Right Honourable Dame Sian Elias Chief Justice of New Zealand

President of the New Zealand Supreme Court, Chief Justice Elias studied law at the University of Auckland and Stanford University in the United States, before practising as a barrister and solicitor. Dame Sian was appointed a Queen’s Counsel in 1988 and was involved in litigation concerning the Treaty of Waitangi. She was a Law Commissioner from 1986 until 1990. She was appointed as a Judge of the High Court in 1995 and became Chief Justice in 1999. In the same year she was awarded the GNZM. In 2001 she became the first woman to sit on the Privy Council and in 2004, became the first President of the New Zealand Supreme Court.

Professor Laurence Boulle Professor of Law, Bond University, Australia

Laurence Boulle is Professor of Law at Bond University in Australia, where he has been Associate Dean and was Foundation Director of the Dispute Resolution Centre. He is a member of the National Native Title Tribunal and of the Law Council of Australia ADR Committee, is an Adjunct Professor in the University of Queensland, and was chair of the National Alternative Dispute Resolution Advisory Council for six years.

Professor Boulle has published extensively in constitutional and administrative law, employment law, and mediation and ADR. His Australian text Mediation: Principles, Process, Practice has been published in separate local editions in New Zealand, Singapore, Canada, South Africa and the United Kingdom. He is editor of the ADR Bulletin and of chapter 13, ‘Dispute Resolution’, of The Laws of Australia and practices as a mediator and dispute resolution consultant and trainer throughout Australia. He has been a visiting professor at universities in Africa, Europe and New Zealand.

Professor Douglas Branson W. Edward Sell Professor of Business Law, University of Pittsburgh School of Law

Professor Branson has the following degrees: BA, University of Notre Dame; JD, Northwestern University; Master of Laws (LL.M), University of Virginia.

Douglas M. Branson, one of the top corporate law experts in the country, is a prolific writer whose work has been described as the best "traditional" corporate scholarship currently being done. The most recent book on his impressive bibliography is the widely and favorably reviewed 1993 treatise, Corporate Governance (Michie & Co.).

Branson, a professor at Seattle University School of Law for more than 20 years, joined the Pitt Law faculty in the fall of 1996. He has been a visiting profesor or lecturer at several law schools, including: the University of Alabama, as Charles Tweedy Distinguished Visiting Professor; the University of Oregon; Cornell University; Arizona State University; and universities in New Zealand and England. He also holds a permanent faculty appointment at the University of Melbourne, Australia, in its Master of Laws program.

His reputation as one of the country's most productive and thoughtful business law scholars has earned Professor Branson an especially influential role in framing the highly prestigious American Law Institute's recommendations for corporate governance. In addition, he is considered the world's leading expert on the corporate law aspects of Alaska native corporations.

The Hon. John von Doussa QC President of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission of Australia.

Before his appointment to this position in 2003, he was a Judge of the Federal Court of Australia for 15 years and prior to that, a Judge of the Supreme Court of South Australia. For eleven years he was also a part-time Commissioner of the Australian Law Reform Commission.

In South Australia he has had a close interest in the provision of practical legal training for new graduates in law. At different times he has been the chair of advisory committees for the graduate diploma courses in legal practice conducted by the University of South Australia and by the Law Society of South Australia.

He still holds appointments as a member of the Court of Appeal of Vanuatu and a non-resident member of the Supreme Court of Fiji.

Mr von Doussa was appointed Chancellor of the University of Adelaide in 2004.

Hon. Justice E T Durie Judge of the High Court and Commissioner, New Zealand Law Commission

Edward Taihakurei Durie, presently Judge of the High Court and Commisioner, New Zealand Law Commission. Born 1940 of Ngati Kauwhata, Ngati Rangitane of Manawatu, attended Te Aute Maori Boys College and Victoria University of Wellington (BA., LLB, 1965), legal partnership in Murray, Dillon, Gooch and Durie, Tauranga (1969-1974), former General Synodsman, Anglican Church and Legal Adviser to Bishopric of Aotearoa, Judge Maori Land Court (1974 - 2000), Chief Judge Maori Land Court and Chairman, Waitangi Tribunal (1980 - 2000), Judge of High Court (1998 - ), Commissioner, New Zealand Law Commission (2004 -). Honorary Doctor of Law, Victoria University of Wellington (1990), Honorary Doctor, University of Waikato (1994), Honorary Doctor of Literature, Massey University (1999). Wife, Donna Marie Taitokerau Durie-Hall (Te Arawa), barrister and solicitor and principal of legal firm. Adult family.

Professor John Farrar University of Waikato

Professor Farrar is Dean of Law at the University of Waikato. He is Emeritus Professor of Law of Bond University, and Professorial Fellow of the University of Melbourne.

Professor Farrar has had extensive experience in commercial law reform, having acted as a consultant to the New Zealand Treasury, the Law Commission, the Business Council of Australia and the UK Department of Trade and Industry. He is English-born but a New Zealand citizen and has worked extensively in New Zealand, having spent ten years at Canterbury University, including three years as law dean in the 1980s, and two years as Professor of Law at Victoria University in the early 1990s. He was a partner in the law firm Bell Gully Buddle Weir in the early 1990s before moving to Australia to posts at the University of Melbourne and Bond University. He was director of Australia's Institute for Corporate Governance and a member of the Legal Committee of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Professor Farrar is a member of the editorial boards of a number of journals dealing with corporate and commercial law and published extensively in this field in New Zealand, Australia and the UK

Professor Alexander Gillespie University of Waikato

Alexander Gillespie obtained his LLB and LLM degrees with Honours from The University of Auckland. He did his PhD at Nottingham and post-doctoral studies at Colombia University in New York City. He has written over thirty articles that have been published in the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Al has published five books; the latest book is "The Illusion of Progress; Unsustainable Development in International Law". He has been awarded fellowships from the Rotary, Fulbright and Rockafeller Foundations. In 2004 Al was the New Zealand Law Foundation International Research Fellow, and the New Zealand lawyer on a number of international delegations. His specialist areas of expertise are international environmental law and the laws of armed conflict.

Associate Professor Jenny Hocking Australian Research Council QEII Research Fellow with the National Centre for Australian Studies at Monash University

Jenny Hocking’s book, Beyond Terrorism: the Development of the Australian Security State (Allen & Unwin. 1993) was an early examination of the politico-legal significance of contemporary counter-terrorism developments. She is the author of the best-selling biography of the Australian High Court justice and former Attorney-General in the Whitlam labor government, Lionel Murphy: a Political Biography (CUP. 1997, 2000). In 2002 Dr Hocking gave evidence to two Parliamentary committees inquiring into the government’s proposed security legislation and her recent book, on Australia's counter-terrorism developments post-September 11 Terror Laws: ASIO, Counter-terrorism and the Threat to Democracy was published by UNSW Press in 2004. Her biography of the author Frank Hardy will be published later this year. Jenny Hocking is now working on a biography of Gough Whitlam.

Justice Sir Kenneth Keith New Zealand Supreme Court

RT HON SIR KENNETH KEITH is a Judge of the newly established Supreme Court of New Zealand. He was a Judge of the Court of Appeal of New Zealand from 1996 to 2003. Before 1996 he was a member and President of the New Zealand Law Commission (1986-96); member of the Law Faculty of the Victoria University of Wellington (1962-64, 1996-91); Director of the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs (1972-74); member of the United Nations Secretariat (1968-70); and member of the New Zealand Department of External Affairs (1960-62). He studied law at the University of Auckland, Victoria University of Wellington and Harvard Law School. He has also sat as an appeal court judge in the Pacific and on the Privy Council in London and as a member of international tribunals.

Cathy Quinn Securities Commission of New Zealand

Cathy Quinn is a commercial corporate partner of Minter Ellison Rudd Watts. A leading lawyer in the field of securities, mergers and acquisitions, and corporate governance, she co-authored Morison's Company and Securities Law.

Ms Quinn has been a Member of the Securities Commission since 2001, and was recently reappointed for a five year term. She has presented a number of road shows on securities law issues for the New Zealand Law Society, most recently in 2004.

Ms Quinn was appointed as a member of the sub-committee on securities law issues following the inaugural Australia New Zealand Leadership Forum which was held in May 2004. Ms Quinn has also written widely on the topic of corporate governance in New Zealand.

Jane Diplock, Chair of the Securities Commission is unavailable to attend due to other commitments.

Professor Avrom Sherr Director of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies

Professor Sherr graduated in Law from the London School of Economics in 1971 and qualified as a solicitor in commercial litigation with the then firm of Coward (now Clifford) Chance. From 1974 to 1990 he taught at Warwick University where he was a pioneer of clinical legal education. His PhD from Warwick University was on "The Value of Experience in Legal Competence".

In 1990 he became the first Alsop Wilkinson Professor of Law at the University of Liverpool and subsequently Director of the Centre for Business and Professional Law. In 1995 he moved to the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies to become the founding Woolf Professor of Legal Education, a research chair at the Institute.

Professor Sherr’s main areas of interest have been the development of legal education, the sociology of the legal profession, ethics in professional work and the provision of legal services. He has also been involved in human rights generally and has written in the area of freedom of protest. A more recent body of work on discrimination relating to AIDS/HIV and the issues of welfare rights provision within health care has been developed together with Professor Lorraine Sherr, of the Royal Free and University College Medical School.

Professor Sherr has been the principal architect of the concept and system of competence assessment in publicly funded legal aid work under franchising and contracting. He is the founding editor of the International Journal of the Legal Profession, was the project leader producing the seminal report "Willing Blindness" on regulation of the legal profession, and has coordinated a number of trans-European projects on legal ethics, money laundering, legal and accountancy practitioner defaults and discrimination.

Professor Sherr was a member of the Lord Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Legal Education and Conduct; and of the Race Relations and Equal Opportunities Committees of the Law Society of England and Wales. He acts as a consultant to government and professional bodies in relation to access to justice and professional training and discipline.

For the present, Professor Sherr will remain as the Woolf Professor of Legal Education at the Institute. His other areas of activity will include: access to justice in a wide sense including the issues of civil and criminal procedure, access to justice as a human right, the methods of provision and funding of legal services; and the work, organization, discipline and ethics of the legal profession and issues of human rights allied to discrimination.

Professor John Wade Professor of Law, Bond University, Australia

John Wade is currently a Professor of Law at Bond University. John is a nationally and internationally acclaimed expert in dispute resolution, legal education and in family law. For the last 34 years he has taught at two Australian, three Canadian and four US Law Schools. He has led over 200 courses in mediation and negotiation in UK, Hong Kong, NZ, USA and Australia. He won the inaugural awards for teaching excellence at both Sydney University and Bond University. John was one of the founding editors of the Legal Education Review and pioneered the postgraduate teaching of educational methods and theory to new law teachers.

He has published over 90 books and refereed journal articles, as well as conducting an ongoing clinical practice in mediation and in family law. He is a regular consultant to state and federal law reform bodies. John is acknowledged world-wide for teaching with enthusiasm, clinical expertise and innovative interactive methods. He has had a unique and long career of expertise in legal theory, clinical practice and teaching.

Margaret Wilson

After starting her academic career at the University of Auckland in 1972, Margaret Wilson became a Professor of Law and foundation Dean of the Waikato Law School in 1990. In 1999 she entered Parliament on the Labour Party list. She served as a Minister of the Crown until 2005. Her Ministerial positions included Attorney-General, Minister of Labour, Minister responsible for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations and Minister of Commerce. In March 2005 she became the first female Speaker of the New Zealand Parliament.

Michael A. Adams is the Perpetual Trustees Australia Professor of Financial Services Law in the Faculty of Law at the University of Technology, Sydney. His specialist areas are corporate law, financial services regulation, management law and corporate governance. In 2002, he was appointed Assistant Director of the research unit, the UTS Centre for Corporate Governance. Between 1993 to 1998 he was Director of the Cross-Disciplinary Programmes at UTS. Michael has been teaching corporate law in the UK, Australia and USA for over 18 years. In both 1993 and 1998 he was a Visiting Professor at the Universities of Louisville (Kentucky, USA) and Southampton (UK).

Michael is an author of a number of books, articles and regularly contributes to the Butterworth's loose-leaf service "Australian Corporation Practice" and TimeBase’s “Corporations Law Commentary” CD-ROM. His book, Essential Management Law (2001) and Essential Corporate Law (2002) and referred articles have been well received. His research and publications on insider trading with A/Prof Mark Freeman of UTS have been widely reported in the media.

In 1992 Michael was honoured for his expertise in teaching and educational developments with the UTS Award for Excellence in Teaching. In 2000 this was followed by the Federal Government awarding him Australian University Teacher in Law and Legal Studies. As Past President of the Corporate Law Teachers’ Association, he still serves on the Executive of the Australasian Law Teachers’ Association.