CONSTITUTIONAL ROUNDTABLE
presents
Counter-Terrorism and the Constitution:
Perspectives from Australia, New Zealand and Canada
Nicola McGarrity, University of New South Wales, Australia
John Ip, University of Auckland, New Zealand
Kent Roach, University of Toronto
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
12:30 - 2:00
Solarium (room FA2), Falconer Hall
84 Queen's Park
This roundtable will bring together experts from Australia, New Zealand and Canada to discuss constitutional issues arising from counter-terrorism. This roundtable will explore some of the significant differences between Australia’s and Canada’s responses to 9/11. Topics include Australia’s enactment of more than 40 anti-terrorism laws since 2001 (compared to Canada’s enactment of two main laws) and the contrast between the role played by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in Canada and the absence of a constitutional bill of rights in Australia. Our guests will also evaluate the role of sunset clauses. Such clauses led to the expiry of preventive arrests and investigative hearings in Canada, but were renewed in Australia, the UK and the US. It is possible that new counter-terrorism legislation in both Canada and the UK will not be subject to sunsets.
Click on name to read paper (PDF)
Nicola McGarrity, University of New Wouth Wales, Australia
John Ip, University of Auckland, New Zealand
Kent Roach, University of Toronto
Nicola McGarrityis a lecturer (research) with the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law at the University of New South Wales, Australia. She graduated from Macquarie University with a BA / LLB (1st Class Honours and University Medal in Law). Since then, Nicola has been Associate to the Honourable Justice Tamberlin (formerly of the Federal Court), and has lectured in constitutional and administrative law and foundations of law at a number of Sydney universities. She has published extensively on Australia’s anti-terrorism legal regime and terrorism trials, and is a co-editor of the 2010 book, Beyond Counter-Terrorism: The Culture of Law and Justice after 9/11 (with Andrew Lynch and George Williams). Nicola also practices as a barrister. In 2010, she represented Saney Aweys (who was accused of terrorism offences) before the Victorian Supreme Court.
John Ipjoined the law faculty at the University of Auckland in New Zealand in 2005. Prior to arriving in Auckland, he worked on Guantánamo Bay and death penalty litigation at an NGO in the United States, and clerked at the Auckland High Court. John is a graduate of the University of Auckland and Columbia University Law School. He has published on various counter-terrorism issues including the rise of special advocates in the leading British journal Public Law as well as in various American, Australian, and New Zealand journals.
Kent Roachis a Professor at the University of Toronto. His latest book The 9/11 Effect: Comparative Counter-Terrorism examines the responses of 9 countries and the UN to 9/11 including Australia and Canada. He is a former law clerk to Justice Bertha Wilson and the author of 11 other books. He has taught his course on comparative anti-terrorism at the University of New South Wales. He served with both the Arar and Air India commissions and is a member of an international task force on terrorism, democracy and the rule of law.
A light lunch will be served.
For more information, please contact Professor Lorraine Weinrib at l.weinrib@utoronto.ca or Nadia Gulezko at n.gulezko@utoronto.ca.
