Staff profile

Dr Roger Neil Douglas

Professor

Faculty of Business, Economics and Law

La Trobe Law School

Melbourne (Bundoora)

 

Qualifications

BA (Hons), LLB (Hons) (Melb), MPhil (Yale), PhD (La Trobe)

Area of study

Law

Brief Profile

I have taught at La Trobe since 1972, after having earlier been a tutor in Political Science at the University of Melbourne. My main ongoing research has related to the use of law in relation to political dissent, and in particular, to the way in which law is used both by governments and by their adversaries. This work has included research into the control of demonstrations; a study of Australian governments' attempts to use law to control the activities of the Communist Party of Australia; and most recently, a study of the law and politics of counter-terrorism. A parallel interest has involved the study of courts as quasi-political institutions, and this coexists uneasily with some largely 'black letter' legal research which is, of course predicated on the assumption that judicial decision-making can also be described as 'law bound' - and especially so when one is examining lower courts. I have taught numerous subjects including: Criminal Behaviour; Criminal Justice; Law and Psychology; Quantitative Methods for Criminologists; Law and Economics; Socio-Legal Research Methods; Policy Making in a Federation, and more recently, Civil Procedure, Administrative law and Law of Equity and Trusts.

I do not manage any large money-making or money-losing centres.

 

Teaching Units

Currently:

Civil Procedure

Administrative Law

Recent Publications

(a) Books.

(2006) (with Jane Knowler) Trusts in Principle Sydney, Thompson Legal and Regulatory.(2004); Dealing with Demonstrations: The Law of Public Protest and its Enforcement Sydney, Federation Press; (2004) (with N O’Neill, S Rice) Retreat from Injustice: Human Rights Law in Australia 2nd ed Sydney, Federation Press (20%); (2003) (with Jeff Barnes) Administrative Law LexisNexis Butterworths Questions and Answers series. (2nd ed, 2008); (1999) (with H. Katzen) Administrative law Butterworths Tutorial Series. Sydney, Butterworths (50%); a second edition of this book, for which I was solely responsible, appeared in 2004; (1998) (with S Colbran, G Reinhardt, P Spender, and S Jackson) Civil Procedure. Commentary and Materials. Sydney, Butterworths (20%) (there have been three subsequent editions of this book: (2002), (2005), (2009); (1993); (with Melinda Jones) Administrative Law. Cases and Materials. Sydney, Federation Press (50%) (there have been five subsequent editions of this book, the 4th and subsequent editions of which are entitled: Douglas and Jones’ Administrative Law. Commentary and Materials, and for whose updating I have been solely responsible).

 (b) Contributions to Legal Encyclopaedias

(2001) ‘Trial procedure’ Halsbury’s Laws of Australia. Butterworths, [325-8000]-[325-8535] (114 pages, of which my contributions was about 50%) (2000) ‘Parties’ Halsbury’s Laws of Australia. Butterworths, [325-1300]-[325-1515] (52 pages) (1999) ‘Drug offences’ The Laws of Australia Title 10.6 (118 pages) (1999); ‘Sentencing for Specific Offences’ The Laws of Australia Title 12.4 (142 pages) I have also been responsible for updating ‘Practice and Procedure, Preliminary Matters’ Halsbury’s Laws of Australia [325—1]-[325-2585] (2002, 2004, 2009); ‘Sentencing for Specific Offences’ (2006), ‘Human Rights’ (2007) and 'Drugs' (2007) in the Laws of Australia Title 21.

(c) Chapters in books

(2007) ‘Brian Fitzpatrick, Manning Clark and ASIO’ in Stuart MacIntyre and Sheila Fitzpatrick, (eds), Against the grain: Brian Fitzpatrick and Manning Clark in Australian history and politics, Carlton Vic., Melbourne University Press, 2007, 170-190. (2007) ‘Standing’ in Matthew Groves and HP Lee, Administratie law: fundamentals, principles and doctrines, Port Melbourne, Vic.: Cambridge University Press, 158-171, 412-415; (2001) ‘The Latham Court’ In: Tony Blackshield, Michael Coper and George Williams (eds) The Oxford Companion to the High Court. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 421 (2000).

(d) Journal articles: refereed.

(2008) ‘Proscribing terrorist organisations: legislation and practice in five English speaking democracies’ Criminal Law Journal 32: 90-99; (2007) ‘The relevance of confiscation to sentencing and its limitations’ Criminal Law Journal 31: 345-358. (2007); ‘Cold war justice? Judicial responses to communist and communism, 1945-1955’ Sydney Law Review 29: 43-84; (2006) ‘Collateral attack on administrative decisions: anomalous but efficient’ AIAL Forum 51: 71-88; (2006) ‘Uses of standing rules, 1980-2006’ Australian Journal of Administrative Law 14: 22-37; (2005) ‘The ambiguity of sedition: the trials of William Fardon Burns’. Australian Journal of Legal History 9: 227-248; (2005) ‘The constitutional freedom to insult: The insignificance of Coleman v Power’. Public Law Review 16: 23-38; (2003) ‘Law, war and civil liberties’. Melbourne University Law Review 27: 65-115; (2002) ‘Let’s pretend? Political trials in Australia, 1930-39’. University Of New South Wales Law Journal 25: 33-70; (2002) ‘Saving Australia from sedition: Customs, the Attorney-General’s Department and the administration of peacetime political censorship’. Federal Law Review 30: 135-175; (2001) ‘A smallish blow for liberty? The significance of the Communist Party case’. Monash University Law Review 27: 257-93; (2001) ‘Keeping the revolution at bay: The Unlawful Associations provisions of the Commonwealth Crimes Act’. Adelaide Law Review 22: 259-97.

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