The challenge for critical corporate law scholars is to provide an account of corporate law that accommodates responsiveness to the public interest. This involves defining a space for debate about both the public policy goals of corporate law and the regulatory mechanisms for achieving those goals. This task is a complex one because it involves recognising the insights of law and economics scholars, in particular, that corporations are at once important components of markets and constituted by those markets. A recent book and winner of the 2008 Hart Socio-Legal Book Prize, The Constitutional Corporation by Stephen Bottomley, provides just such an account of corporate law. This book provides a pragmatic account of corporate law which opens up corporate law to political concerns while acknowledging that corporate law is private in its orientation. This review of The Constitutional Corporation provides an overview of Bottomley’s analysis, locates his approach in broader theoretical debates about corporate law and examines the potential of the approach to develop systems of corporate social responsibility in order to meet impending global challenges such as climate change.

A comparison between the judicial reasoning adopted by the House of Lords in Belmarsh and Torture Evidence cases, and the High Court of Australia's administrative detention cases (especially Al-Kateb) reveals stark differences in the approach to common law rights, judicial reasoning, and constitutional rhetoric. Using the language of historically-based identity-informing constitutional values, their Lordships' speeches can be seen as exercises in public and political persuasion, made within the idiom of constitutional veneration which is enjoying a renaissance in the UK. This emerging judicial rhetoric combines an appeal to a mythologised constitutional past with an emphasis on the quintessentially 'British' nature of the rights at stake to consolidate both the constitutional status of the 'principle of legality' and an inclusive notion of 'equality'. By contrast, the High Court's majority decisions are virtually devoid of the language of values, and are silent on the nature or status of the rights which Parliament was impliedly abrogating. The decisions are instead shrouded in the equally powerful rhetoric of strict legalism. Behind this purportedly valueless methodology, however, their Honours' decisions reveal attitudes towards aliens as 'illegal,' 'unlawful' and 'unwanted' rather than rights-bearers, and a judicial deference to Parliament to 'protect' an undefined Australian community. The arrival of French CJ to the helm of the High Court might see a reinvigoration of common law rights via the principle of legality.

Recent research in Australia has suggested that law students are four times more likely than students in other degrees to suffer from anxiety and depression. The Brain and Mind Research Institute’s (BMRI) 2008 survey of lawyers and law students found that over 35% of the law students studied suffered from high to very high levels of psychological distress, and that almost 40% reported distress severe enough to warrant clinical or medical intervention. This contrasted with just over 17% of medical students and 13% of the general population. Similarly, a significant portion of the lawyers surveyed were found to suffer from elevated levels of anxiety and depression, with 31% falling in the high to very high levels of psychological distress.

With research on student well-being now becoming available in Australia, this article takes up the point of how Australian law schools will respond to these findings. It suggests that even before we start to consider the question of what we should do about the problem of student well-being, we must recognize that there are common psychological processes which can undermine our response to these issues. In particular, research in cognitive dissonance and rationalization suggest that even as we become aware of negative information on law student distress, we can unconsciously ignore it or rationalize it away on the basis that it is not relevant to us. Furthermore, these same cognitive processes can affect our students, such that they can fail to appreciate the significant implications of this research for them.

Over 185 international law and environmental law academics and lawyers, from over 40 countries, joined together to challenge the legality of the decision by the French Government to resume nuclear testing at Mururoa atoll in French Polynesia in 1995. The academics and lawyers joined in a letter and legal memorandum that outline international environmental obligations requiring to an effective environmental impact assessment that will be violated if the testing resumes as currently planned. A copy of the letter is reproduced below.

The reasons behind the letter and memo were primarily three-fold. First, the lawyers believed it important that public attention be focused important international environmental obligations that France will be breaching if the tests are carried out as currently planned. No state likes to be known as an international outlaw and the lawyers hoped that the "shaming" effect of the publicity about law-breaking would have some influence on the decision to resume testing. Due to French claims that protests against the testing were being essentially orchestrated by Australia and New Zealand it was important that the challenge to legality come from an independent group of experts from as many countries as possible. Second, because President Chirac had repeatedly stated that the decision to reverse testing was "irrevocable" almost from the outset, the lawyers hoped to provide a "face-saving" and graceful way based on law for the President to reverse his decision. Finally, the lawyers hoped that the arguments raised in the letter and legal memo would influence Australia or New Zealand to reopen the 1973-74 World Court Nuclear Test Cases by providing legal support as to the substance of the matter.

The letter and memo were formally transmitted to French President Jacques Chirac by the Australian Government via formal diplomatic channels. While the Australian Government expressly stopped short of endorsing the totality of the contents of the documents, in a letter to the author Foreign Minister Senator Gareth Evans states that "the Government concurs generally with the legal opinion put forward in the memorandum concerning France's responsibilities". Foreign Minister Evans states that "France clearly has a duty under international law to prevent transboundary environmental harm, coupled with an obligation to conduct environmental impact assessments when planning to undertake activities which might cause significant environmental harm". The Foreign Minister states that "as yet insufficient research has been done to make a comprehensive assessment of the environmental impact of the proposed tests. It is by no means clear that France has fulfilled its international obligations in this regard. We cannot be satisfied on that point until further information is available concerning the environmental impact of the testing at the atoll". "This information would also improve our understanding of whether significant transboundary environmental harm may be caused and whether France would be in breach of its obligations to prevent such harm," Senator Evans emphasises.

This article examines the international legality of the projection of Australian adjudicative and enforcement jurisdiction against non-nationals in the Southern Ocean forming part the Antarctic Treaty Area. It sets out the Australian legal foundations on which Australian jurisdiction is currently being exercised for alleged breaches of Australian law applying to the Australian Antarctic Whale Sanctuary in the HSI v. Kyodo case. It then evaluates the exercise of Australian jurisdiction in light of the applicable international law. It accepts arguendo the factual basis of Australia's territorial claim in Antarctica, but nevertheless concludes that the extension of Australian jurisdiction over non-nationals in the purported Antarctic Australian Whale Sanctuary contravenes conventional and customary international law. In light of this conclusion, the article details the nature and importance of the ATS in order to highlight what is at stake by the challenged posed by the assertion of Australian jurisdiction. It then presents reasons why (in addition to illegality) the projection of Australian prescriptive, adjudicative and enforcement jurisdiction in what almost all other states consider the high seas off Antarctica is an unsound idea. The article concludes by arguing that the current Australian law conferring jurisdiction ought to be repealed.

This note sets out the background to the Bali Action Plan, including the IPCC Fourth Assessment Synopsis Report Summary for Policymakers. It outlines the key features of both documents. The Note appears in 47 International Legal Materials 94 (2008).

This article addresses some of the complex legal issues raised by the sustainable use of marine biological diversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction and the deficiencies in its existing legal protection. The importance ofsuch an undertaking was emphasised by the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in its first meeting (COP I), through its selection of marine and coastal biological diversity as the first major ecosystem theme to be addressed as part of its medium-term programme of work. Realistically, effective conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity in areas solely or partially outside of national jurisdiction will require the further "cooperation" of all states. There are a number of alternative ways forward each with its advantages and disadvantages. Regardless of the alternative selected, a number of common and familiar legal issues will have to be faced and there are risks. Politically, it will be essentially to avoid the intractable problems that arose in connection with the negotiation of the normative regime intended to regulate the exploitation of mineral resources in the LOS Convention. Unworkable law is little better than no law.

A national approach to environmental protection is the most effective way for Australia to protect its own environment and to contribute to the common cause of global environmental protection. The centerpiece of this approach should be a federal environmental protection authority (EPA), able to deal with the issues which arise on a transboundary basis, both nationally and internationally. However, the powers of a national agency will need to be tailored to avoid conflict within the system of cooperative federalism in Australia.

This article reviews constitutional tensions between federal and state government as they relate to several of the major international environmental conventions that bind Australia. The authors conclude that a federal authority, committed to enforcing Australia's international agreements to protect the environment, is the most effective means of addressing worldwide concern with the state of the natural world.

The following another draft Chapter in a forthcoming text on Human Rights and the Environment by Anton and Shelton, to be published by Cambridge Univ. Press in 2009. The chapter walks students through possible avenues for environmental protection within the U.N. human rights system.