The Margaret Stone Lecture
The Margaret Stone Lecture co-hosted by the Faculty of Law & Justice, UNSW Sydney and Herbert Smith Freehills honours the life and contribution to the law of the late Honourable Margaret Stone AO FAAL.
Amongst her many achievements, Justice Stone was a much-loved and revered teacher at UNSW Sydney, a partner at Freehill, Hollingdale and Page and a judge of the Federal Court of Australia. In her later life she undertook a number of important roles in the public service including as the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security. The creation of this Lecture has been with the support and encouragement of Justice Stone’s family.
This newly established 2023 Margaret Stone Lecture will focus on Private & Commercial Law but also accommodate other areas in which Justice Stone made contributions, including the federal judiciary and national security.
2025 – The Honourable Justice Nye Perram
Thursday 8 May | 6.30pm | Court 1, Federal Court of Australia, Sydney
Register now
In the second Margaret Stone Lecture, The Honourable Justice Nye Perram will consider Private Property and Public Rights: a new phenomenon?
The Anglo-American legal tradition has long encumbered some private property rights with burdens in favour of the public or the State. These have ranged from uses of commons through to legislative enlistment or appropriation and, in certain circumstances, exercises of executive power to similar effect. Modern statutes create whole classes of regulated assets which may be used against the wishes of their owners but the mingling of private property and State utilisation of that property is not new and the practice can be discerned both with tangible assets, such a railways, wharves and toll roads, as well as many species of intellectual property. The paper explores whether there is any unifying theme underpinning these inroads into private ownership of property.
