Associate Professor Judith Jones

Judith Jones has been a member of the ANU College of Law since 1996. She is a graduate in science from the University of Sydney and in law from the University of New South Wales. She has conducted research on teaching threshold concepts to first year law students and is an author/co-author of 2 leading texts for teaching law to non-lawyers. 

Earlier in her career, interest in environmental regulation and regulatory theory led to historical research on environmental legal history and inventiveness within Australian regulatory approaches as a response to Australian environmental conditions. This resulted in a major case study that traced the emergence of voluntarism as an environmental policy instrument in Australia.

But with qualifications in both science and law her core research interest has consistently been informing environmental regulation for the assessment of environmental risk. This includes consideration of regulatory theory, comparative administrative law and problems of regulatory design for environmental impact assessment, risk assessment, uncertainty and precautionary approaches. The focus of current research is an examination of the role of discretionary administrative powers in the management of scientific uncertainty in Australian federal risk regulation/approvals contexts (such as environmental impact assessment, gene technology and also chemicals and pharmaceuticals registration). Engaging with the dual perspectives of regulatory theory and administrative law doctrine, this work considers the problems and limitations of regulatory design within risk regimes that require specialist expertise and scientific information.