As part of our regular program of inviting distinguished people to give a talk to our community NJA is very much delighted to announce that this time again we have an eminent scholar from Australia- Prof Suri Ratnapala of  the University of Queensland.

Date: 19th July, 2007
Time: 3.00 PM onward
Venue: Meeting Hall at the Attorney General's Office, Ramshah Path

Topic : Federalism in Australia and the Role of the Judiciary

About the Speaker
Prof. Suri Ratnapala: holds the degrees of LLB (Colombo); LLM (Macquarie) and PhD (Qld), and teaches constitutional law and jurisprudence, fields in which he has published widely. Professor Ratnapala’s work has received international acclaim, with his book Welfare State or Constitutional State? His latest books are, Australian Constitutional Law: Foundations and Theory  and the co-authored Australian Constitutional Law: Commentary and Cases, both of which have been released in September 2006 by Oxford University Press. He is currently writing a book on jurisprudence for Cambridge University Press.

Prof Suri is also the Director of the Center for Public, International and Comparative Law. Originally from Sri Lanka, Prof Suri is quite familiar with constitutional and legal development in South Asia and the role that the judiciary has played in shaping the right jurisprudence in these countries.  Early this year when Prof. Suri was in Nepal for inception of the AusAID project, he spoke to the select audience on "Securing Constitutional Government : A Perpetual Challenge"

Since the interim Constitution has already embraced federalism, and the judiciary is likely to work under that structure, we thought it is high time that we got first hand knowledge on the emergent challenges that the judiciary might face under federalism, and the leadership that the Supreme Court would have to give to shape the judicial structure in Nepal. From this perspective we have requested the learned professor to present the Australian experience on federalism, and the role that the judiciary played in that country to shape the constitutional discourse.