Welcome to the Sydney Health Law blog. We provide information on the latest developments and events in health law, ethics, and governance, focusing both nationally and globally. The blog’s main contributors are academic staff affiliated with Sydney Health Law, a research centre at the University of Sydney’s law faculty. Our academics research and teach in a broad range of areas related to health law and ethics, including in Sydney Law School’s Master of Health Law program. We hope that you’ll visit regularly, and participate in wide-ranging discussion on topics including the ethical dilemmas of biobanks, developments in chronic disease prevention, and the issues posed by refusal of consent to medical treatment – to name just a few of our many interests.

Dr Terry Carney, AO, is Emeritus Professor of Law at Sydney Law School and Visiting Research Professor at the University of Technology, Sydney. A Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law, he is a past President (2005-2007) of the International Academy of Law and Mental Health, and chaired Commonwealth bodies such as the National Advisory Council on Social Welfare and of the Board of the Institute of Family Studies, along with various State enquiries on child welfare, adult guardianship and health law. Terry is author of nearly a dozen books/monographs and nearly 200 academic papers.

Dr Roger Magnusson is Professor of Health Law and Governance at Sydney Law School. He teaches Critical Issues in Public Health Law and Law, and Law, Business Regulation and Healthy Lifestyles within the Master of Health Law program. Roger’s research interests include: regulatory responses to non-communicable diseases (including tobacco control, obesity prevention, public health nutrition); public health law generally; and law, governance and health development.

He is currently co-chair of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Implementation, Monitoring and Accountability supporting the World Health Organisation’s Global Commission on Ending Childhood Obesity.

Dr Belinda Reeve is a lecturer at Sydney Law School, and teaches Information Rights in Health Care and Fundamentals of Regulation for the Master of Health Law program. Prior to her appointment at the law school, she worked as a Law Fellow at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, at Georgetown University. Her current research focuses on legal and regulatory options for creating a healthier food environment, including through product reformulation, restrictions on food advertising to children, and innovative obesity prevention measures at local government level.

Professor Cameron Stewart is a director of Sydney Health Law at Sydney Law School, as well as an associate of Sydney Health Ethics. He has worked in the Supreme Court of New South Wales and has practiced commercial law at Phillips Fox Lawyers. His previous appointment was at Macquarie Law School, where he spent 10 years, the last of which as Dean. He was the Director of CHGLE for 4 years (2009-2012), was the Acting president of the Australian and New Zealand Institute of Health Law and Ethics in 2008-2010 and was the Vice-President of the Australasian Association of Bioethics and Health Law from 2010-2013.

Cameron teaches Death Law, Health Care and Professional Liability, and Government Regulation, Health Policy and Ethics for the Master of Health Law program. Cameron is also the co-editor of the Ethics and Health Law news service and the Clinical Ethics Resource. He is Health Law Reporter editor for the Journal of Law and Medicine. He also runs a website on Discovering Australian Guardianship Law.

Dr Chris Rudge is a lecturer in Sydney Law School at the University of Sydney. Currently, he teaches Foundations of Law, Torts and Mental Illness: Law and Policy. Chris’s research takes place at the intersection of law, psychiatry and biomedicine. Recent projects include analysis of the regulation of stem cell advertising, the therapeutic goods personal importation scheme, work contending that vaccine mandates are a legally and morally justified public health neccessity, work on health practitioner regulation and work on the bioethics and regulation of somatic cell genome editing.

In the past, Chris’ research has focused on the the history, politics and literature associated with psychiatric interventions and technologies, including unorthodox treatments (eg, the e-meter, telepsychiatry, deep sleep therapy, and rTMS).

Dr Olugbenga Olatunji is a lecturer at Sydney Law School at the University of Sydney. He holds a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Ibadan, a Master of Laws from the University of Cambridge, and a Doctor of Philosophy (Law) from the University of Tasmania. His research explores the intersections between the conferral of intellectual property-related monopoly rights to private entities and access of poor populations (especially in the East African community) to quality and affordable medicines.

Dr Olugbenga’s research also extends to other IP-related subject-matters of both domestic and international concern. These fields of research include the analysis of free trade agreements, anti-counterfeiting laws, and the implications of developed-country-favoured preferential agreements on the freewill of low- and middle-income countries to use IP rights exceptions.

Dr Peter Cashman is a Adjunct Professor (Social Justice) at Sydney Law School. He has been involved in a number of major cases in the area of health law, including in relation to patients’ rights of access to medical records, liability for defective medical and pharmaceutical products and the patenting of human genes.

He was formerly: Commissioner in charge of the civil justice review with the Victorian Law Reform Commission; Commissioner jointly in charge of the reference on class actions with the Australian Law Reform Commission; founding Director of the Public Interest Advocacy Centre; founder and senior partner of the firm Cashman & Partners which merged with the Melbourne firm Maurice Blackburn & Co to form the national firm Maurice Blackburn Cashman (now Maurice Blackburn Pty Ltd); Governor of the American Trial Lawyers’ Association (now the American Association for Justice) and National President of the Australian Plaintiff Lawyers’ Association (now the Australian Lawyers Alliance).

He holds a degree in law and a diploma in criminology from the University of Melbourne and a Master of Laws degree and a PhD from the University of London. He has practised law in the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia and is the author of numerous publications, including Class Action Law and Practice (Federation Press, 2007).

Dr Sasha Callaghan is an affiliate of Sydney Law School and Sydney Health Law. Her main research area is health care decision-making, mental health and cognitive disability. She also has a research interest in law and reproduction and medical decisions in pregnancy.

Sascha has published widely in the field of mental health law and psychiatric ethics and is the lawyer member of the Ethics of Clinical Practice Committee for Sydney Local Health District. In her spare time she is a solicitor-advocate with Legal Aid’s Mental Health Advocacy Centre.