World Renowned International Admiralty and Maritime Law Expert Presents Tetley Lecture, Wednesday, April 15 at 6pm

The 2009 Tetley Lecture proudly presents Justice James Allsop, President of the New South Wales Court of Appeal, on Wednesday, April 15 at 6:00 p.m. in room 110 of John Giffen Weinmann Hall (6329 Freret Street). The topic of Justice Allsop’s lecture is “Maritime Law – the Nature and Importance of its International Character.”

Professor Martin Davies, who has read Justice Allsop’s lecture, says “it is a very interesting, scholarly piece on the transnational nature of maritime law.” Davies further comments that several decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court and, to some extent, the U.S. Constitution itself, treat the general maritime law as if it were a pre-existing transnational (or anational) body of law, part of the lex mercatoria, not dependent on sovereign authority for its existence but recognized and enforced by individual sovereigns. Oliver Wendell Holmes’s famous statement that “the common law is not a brooding omnipresence in the sky but the articulate voice of some sovereign that can be identified” was made in dissent in an admiralty case, Southern Pacific Co. v. Jensen, 244 U.S. 205 (1917). “Justice Allsop’s paper is a comparative and historical analysis of the relationship between international maritime law and its municipal application,” says Davies. “Anyone interested in international law generally, or even legal theory, will find much of interest in it.”

Before becoming President of the NSW Court of Appeal, Justice Allsop was a judge of the Federal Court of Australia. He teaches as an adjunct professor at the University of Sydney Law School.

Justice Allsop currently is visiting the Maritime Law Center. For the next two days, he will be in suite 351(D) if you care to visit him.