The Shakespeare Moot Court is a form of serious play that inspires participating legal and literary students and professors to think about interdisciplinary in a new way - by doing it. Members of the Court apply their analytical and argumentative skills to the task of creating the law of Shakespeare, tackling matters of public concern such as same-sex marriage, crimes against humanity, and freedom of religion. In the course, senior Law students and graduate students from English team up to argue cases in the “Court of Shakespeare” (where the sole Institutes, Codex, and Digest are comprised by the plays of William Shakespeare). The Court involves students (as counsel) and Shakespeareans and legal scholars (as judges) in a competitive and collaborative form of play whose object is to engage with Shakespeare’s plays in order to render judgments concerning particular contemporary legal problems. In the first part, this essay reflects on critical practice in Shakespeare studies and the argues that the legal model of the moot court offers this practice dimensions of accountability, corrigibility, and temporality which are essential to the future of the critical practice of literary studies. Above all the Shakespeare Moot Court provides a new and necessary way of restoring Shakespeare criticism, or some significant part of it, to the public realm. In the second part, the argument is reversed. The literary conceit of the Shakespeare Moot Project serves to dramatize that literature’s very different orientation offers to the world of law a vital reminder that the question of judgment is always imbricated in the character, experiences, and subjectivity of the judge. This perspective, which was indeed universally understood as integral to the exercise of judgment, whether literary or legal, in Shakespeare’s time, seems in many ways to have been forgotten or sidelined in most modern understandings of law. For the literary theorist, the “privatization” of literature from the late eighteenth century on has obscured its role in public discourse, as the first part argues. For the legal theorist, as the second part argues, the “publicization” of law from the late eighteenth century on has obscured its connection to personal responsibility. The two arguments together demonstrate that the Enlightenment’s project of defining and dividing disciplines - allocating the realm of public action to law and that of private feeling to literature - has come at the cost of the relevance of one and the humanity of the other.

This paper focuses on the construction of merit as the key selection criterion for judging. It will show how merit has been masculinised within the social script so as to militate against the acceptance of women as judges. The social construction of the feminine in terms of disorder in the public sphere fans doubts that women are appointable - certainly not in significant numbers to the most senior levels of the bench. It is argued that merit, far from being an objective criterion, operates as a rhetorical device shaped by power. The paper will draw on media representations of women judges in three recent Australian scenarios: an appointment to the High Court; the appointment of almost 50 percent women to Victorian benches; and the scapegoating of a female chief magistrate (resulting in imprisonment) in Queensland.

This paper links the opportunity to assist the development of a well-reasoned theoretical underpinning for nanotechnology regulation, to a review of the process by which most global health policy develops by default in an institutional environment heavily influenced by private interests. It focuses on two areas of particular significance to global public health: nanotechnology in medicine and human biosecurity.

It would be reasonable to suppose that dilemmas posed to public health and human biosecurity policy by increasing advances in practical applications of nanotechnology should initially be answered by reference to statistical evidence of the global burden of disease, or international agreements about rational threat assessments which then flow into the transparent development of norms that are fair and universally applicable. Yet this rational approach to health law and policy development is not at all characteristic of the field. Globally, medicinal and human biosecurity policy, both in general and in relation to nanotechnology, continue to be strongly influenced by the sophisticated lobbying of private interest groups from a few economically powerful countries. The governments of such nations characteristically express concern that agreeing to binding, universally-applicable international standards in these areas would compromise sovereignty over their own public health and security systems. Their political oligarchies, however, readily acquiesce to corporate funding of regulators, to industry positions on regulatory and policy development committees, to the tacit policy obligations resulting from corporate donations and to a personally lucrative but ethically compromising ‘revolving-door’ employment system between government, the bureaucracy and private sector.

This article proposes to discuss a particular approach to these challenges to norm creation in the context of some concrete examples that show the significance of what is at stake: (1) conflicts of interest in ensuring public safety (2) private exploitation of public-funded research (3) inequities in expenditure of public funds, and (4) diminishing public confidence in government and science.

It argues, with reference to these types of global policy dilemmas, that a better balance of private and public interests in such areas will be achieved in the long term by an international normative standard requiring that the development of relevant public health law and policy be consistent with norms issuing from bioethics and international human rights. It aims to demonstrate some practical policy outcomes from this approach and concludes by weighing arguments against it.

The World Trade Organisation's (WTO's) agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) has remained controversial ever since its inception at the behest of some of the world's largest multinational corporations. Balancing the need to protect the intellectual property rights (IPRs) (which the third author considers are more accurately described as intellectual monopoly privileges (IMPs)) of pharmaceutical companies, with the need to ensure access to essential medicines in developing countries is one of the most pressing challenges facing international policy makers today. In order for Commonwealth nations to craft and implement IPR (or IMP) legislation that realises this balance, decision-makers need to capitalise on the flexibilities and provisions afforded by the agreement, particularly compulsory licensing.

Nonetheless, the industry-influenced US Trade Representative (USTR) routinely opposes the use of such flexibilities and, despite contrary injunctions in US law, has sought to restrict them in a series of bilateral putatively 'free' trade agreements.

Despite recent advancements in prevention and treatment in many regions of the world, diseases such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis (TB) and malaria continue to scourge the poorest and most vulnerable of the global population. The vast majority of those suffering from these diseases live in developing countries, where low wages, high pharmaceutical prices and poor access to medical services means there is limited, if any, access to many of the life- saving drugs currently available in industrialised countries. In fact, about one-third of the world's population does not have access to essential medicines. Currently, 80 percent of the world's population lives in developing countries, but consumes less than 20 percent of all pharmaceuticals.

It is often thought that, as a former British colony, Australia must have a legal system that mirrors that of its colonial parent. To an extent this is true. Australia inherited that weird and wonderful body of judicial doctrine, and law-making process, called the 'common law', that uniquely melds and simultaneously produces constancy and change.

Moreover, in addition to this slow and accidental accretion of judge-made law that combines fidelity to precedent with incremental growth through the adaptation of precedent, Australia inherited many of the underlying and fundamental values and principles of the English common law, such as the rule of law, equality before the law, the presumption of innocence, the imperative of a fair trial, and an independent judiciary – all in the context of the achievement of finality (not necessarily of truth) through adversarial rather than inquisitorial processes.

This paper was presented at the International Association of Law Schools Conference, Learning from Each Other: Enriching the Law School Curriculum in an Interrelated World, Kenneth Wang School of Law, Soochow University, Suzhou, China, 17-19 October 2007.

A profession, as we know, is essentially a group of people with specialised knowledge and specialised skills (and certified as such), who then enjoy an exclusive or monopoly right to engage in the practice of those skills, and, moreover, enjoy a large degree of self-regulation in doing so. Why these privileges? What is the quid pro quo?

Put simply, the answer is that those monopoly rights are to be exercised not merely for personal reward but also in the service of society.

This paper was presented at the Fragmentation or Consolidation? Fostering a Coherent Professional Identity for Lawyers, Australian Academy of Law Launch Symposium, Government House, Brisbane, Australia, 17 July 2007.

Significant changes to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) are underway. The Australian Parliament recently passed the National Health Amendment (Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme) Act 2007. At the core of this Act are new sections (85AB and 85AC) to the National Health Act 1953. These had the effect of dividing, from 1 August 2007, the PBS into two separate formularies – F1 for single brand, mostly patented, medicines and F2 for multiple brand, mostly generic, medicines.

These complex changes aim to 'recognise the importance of world-class life-enhancing drugs to patients', protect patients from higher costs and get better value from market competition among brands of generic drugs. The changes may allow PBS and patient savings through lower priced generics, but their impact on the price of patented medicines is uncertain in our view.

The World Trade Organisation's (WTO's) agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) has remained controversial ever since its inception at the behest of some of the world's largest multinational corporations. Balancing the need to protect the intellectual property rights (IPRs) (which the third author considers are more accurately described as intellectual monopoly privileges (IMPs)) of pharmaceutical companies, with the need to ensure access to essential medicines in developing countries is one of the most pressing challenges facing international policy makers today. In order for Commonwealth nations to craft and implement IPR (or IMP) legislation that realises this balance, decision-makers need to capitalise on the flexibilities and provisions afforded by the agreement, particularly compulsory licensing.

Nonetheless, the industry-influenced US Trade Representative (USTR) routinely opposes the use of such flexibilities and, despite contrary injunctions in US law, has sought to restrict them in a series of bilateral putatively 'free' trade agreements.

Despite recent advancements in prevention and treatment in many regions of the world, diseases such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis (TB) and malaria continue to scourge the poorest and most vulnerable of the global population. The vast majority of those suffering from these diseases live in developing countries, where low wages, high pharmaceutical prices and poor access to medical services means there is limited, if any, access to many of the life- saving drugs currently available in industrialised countries. In fact, about one-third of the world's population does not have access to essential medicines. Currently, 80 percent of the world's population lives in developing countries, but consumes less than 20 percent of all pharmaceuticals.

Industrial renewal in the bio/nanopharma sector is important for the long term strength of the Australian economy and for the health of its citizens. A variety of factors, however, may have caused inadequate attention to focus on systematically promoting domestic generic and small biotechnology manufacturers in Australian health policy.

Despite recent clarifications of 'springboarding' capacity in intellectual property legislation, federal government requirements for specific generic price reductions on market entry and the potential erosion of reference pricing through new F1 and F2 categories for the purposes of Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) assessments, do not appear to be coherently designed to sustainably position this industry sector in 'biologics,' nanotherapeutics and pharmacogenetics.

There also appears to have been little attention paid in this context to policies fostering industry sustainability and public affordability (as encouraged by the National Medicines Policy). One notable example includes that failure to consider facilitating mutual exchanges on regulatory assessment of health technology safety and cost-effectiveness (including reference pricing) in the context of ongoing free trade negotiations between Australia and China (the latter soon to possess the world's largest generic pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity). The importance of a thriving Australian domestic generic pharmaceutical and bio/nano tech industry in terms of biosecurity, similarly appears to have been given insufficient policy attention.

Reasons for such policy oversights may relate to increasing interrelationships between generic and 'brand-name' manufacturers and the scale of investment required for the Australian generics and bio/nano technology sector to be a significant driver of local production. It might also result from singularly effective lobbying pressure exerted by Medicines Australia, the 'brand-name' pharmaceutical industry association, utilising controversial interpretations of reward of pharmaceutical 'innovation' provisions in the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA) through the policy-development mechanisms of the AUSFTA Medicines Working Group and most recently an Innovative Medicines Working Group with the Department of Health and Ageing. This paper critically analyses such arguments in the context of emerging challenges for sustainable industrial renewal in Australia's bio/nanopharma sector.