New Head of Law at UQ to create an atmosphere of scholarship

The University of Queensland has appointed commercial law specialist Professor Charles Rickett as the new Head of the TC Beirne School of Law.

A graduate of both the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge Law Schools, he was formerly Professor of Commercial Law at the University of Auckland and Director of the university’s Research Centre for Business Law.

After taking up his position this month Professor Rickett said he hoped to have an active teaching role and would lead by example.

He said he wanted to create an atmosphere of scholarship: “care for the intellectual and spiritual well-being of the student body, mutual respect amongst the community of scholars that make up the school and commitment to excellence in all aspects of the School’s life.”

Professor Rickett said his teaching interests included equity, banking law, restitution, theories of obligations and legal ethics.

He has also been involved in consultancy work, advising on a range of major equitable and restitutionary commercial litigation in New Zealand. He was advisor to the Crown in the multimillion dollar Equiticorp litigation and has also advised a number of banks in respect of equitable and restitutionary claims against them.

Professor Rickett said he stumbled into academic life after originally intending to practise as a barrister in England.

“When I was at Oxford as an undergraduate I was taught by a profoundly inspiring teacher who is now the Regius Professor of Civil Law at the university, Peter Birks,” he said.

“He taught me to value scholarship for its own sake, he taught me never to use the word academic in an apologetic way and he was such an inspiring teacher and such an inspiring scholar I just found myself caught up in the whole razzmatazz of academic life.”

Despite recognising he will have a heavy workload Professor Rickett said he would like to maintain an active teaching role.

Professor Rickett has taught at University College London and the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom as well as Victoria University of Wellington, the University of Auckland and Massey University in New Zealand.

He said important research was happening within the School of Law that needed to be recognised. He said research in law schools was often as active as in other schools but could be less easy to see.

“Legal scholarship is actually about better understanding the way in which our liberal democratic society finds its identity and continues to operate successfully,” he said.
“At the end of the day it is the law that keeps the society cohesive and gives us confidence in our ability to be free and creative.”

Media: For more information, contact Professor Charles Rickett (telephone 07 3365 1021, email: c.rickett@law.uq.edu.au) or Chris Saxby at UQ Communications (telephone 07 3365 2479, email: c.saxby@uq.edu.au).