For the first 20 years of his academic career, Peter Cane taught at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, successively as lecturer, reader and professor. Since 1997 he has been Professor of Law at the ANU, until 2007 in the Research School of Social Sciences. In 2007 he was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia.

His main research interests are in private law – especially the law of obligations, public law – especially administrative law, and legal theory – especially concepts of responsibility. His major publications include The Law of Torts in Australia (4th edn, 2007) (with Francis Trindade and Mark Lunney); Atiyah’s Accidents Compensation and the Law (7th edn, 2006); Administrative Law (4th edn, OUP Oxford, 2004) and Responsibility in Law and Morality (2002). With Mark Tushnet, he co-edited The Oxford Handbook of Legal Studies (2003) and, with Joanne Conaghan, is currently co-editing The New Oxford Companion to Law, to be published by OUP Oxford in 2008. Principles of Administrative Law: Legal Regulation of Government (with Leighton McDonald) will be published by OUP Australia in 2008. He is currently engaged in a major study of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal and merits review, funded by a grant from the Australian Research Council.

Jane Stapleton originally trained as a scientist at the Universities of New South Wales, Adelaide and Cambridge but then retrained as a lawyer at the Australian National University and Oxford. She was Fellow in Law at Balliol College, Oxford (where she remains a Fellow) until 1997 when she returned to the ANU as a Research Professor.

She is also: the Ernest E. Smith Professor of Law at University of Texas School of Law where she teaches US law for part of each year; and a Statutory Visiting Professor and Member of the Law Faculty at Oxford where each year she gives a short lecture course on UK law. In 2004 she was the first foreigner elected to the Council of the American Law Institute.

Her research interests which centre on the private law of obligations, liability and compensation systems, range from comparative product liability to the philosophical foundations of the common law such as causation, duty and good faith. She has acted as a consultant in major commercial, pharmaceutical, medical and environmental litigation in the UK, US, Australia and New Zealand.

Leslie Zines is Emeritus Professor of the ANU, a Visiting Fellow of the Centre, and a Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Law, University of New South Wales. He was a Professor in the ANU Faculty of Law from 1967, becoming Robert Garran Professor in 1978. He was Dean 1973- 1975 and 1984- 1986. Retiring from the Faculty in 1992 he was appointed Goodhart Professor of Legal Science at Cambridge for the academic year 1992- 1993. From 1994- 1996 he was a University Fellow at ANU and, after that, a Visiting Fellow in the Law Program RSSS until it moved to the ANU College of Law.

Among his published works are The High Court and the Constitution (4 editions), Federal Jurisdiction in Australia (2nd and 3rd editions) and Constitutional Change in the Commonwealth.