Dr Robert Nelson Moles - Curriculum Vitae

Go to: Definition and Rule in Legal Theory
Go to: A state of Injustice - table of contents
Go to: Losing Their Grip - The Case of Henry Keogh - table of contents

Address and contact details for correspondence

Tel: +61 8 8270 6524 or Mobile: 0405 10 6524
Email: bobmoles@iprimus.com.au
web site: http://www.netk.net.au
Date and place of birth: 20 October 1949 – Norwich, Norfolk, UK

Nationality and Citizenship - British and Australian

Permanent Residence - South Australia

Major publications

Losing Their Grip - The Case of Henry Keogh 2006 Elvis Press Full text available here
A State of Injustice 2004 Lothian Books Full text available here
Definition and Rule in Legal Theory, Blackwell, Oxford, 1987 Full text available here

Education, academic and professional qualifications

ACII Associate Member of the Chartered Insurance Institute ( UK) 1972

LLB (Hons) The Queen’s University, Belfast 1978.
Final honours classification 2:1.
I graduated as top student of the year and was awarded the following prizes:
Maxwell Law Prize - most distinguished student in the final examination for the degree of bachelor of law.
Law Society Prize - best research paper submitted in Part II of the final degree examination for the degree of bachelor of law.
Queen's University Foundation Studentship - for postgraduate study, subsequently renewed for a 2nd year.

PhD Edinburgh University, 1985

PhD thesis title - Definition and Rule in Jurisprudence:  A Critique of HLA Hart's Response to John Austin.

After graduating, I was awarded a UK Department of Education and Science Major State Studentship for three years. I engaged in work on a PhD under the supervision of Professor D.N. MacCormick at the University of Edinburgh, Faculty of Law. The work was a sustained critique of the work of H.L.A. Hart. I sought to demonstrate that his analysis of John Austin's Lectures on Jurisprudence (1855) was fundamentally flawed. In my view, Hart's own contribution The Concept of Law then reinstated many of the errors, which Austin had sought to clear away.  Hart's contribution also led to further confusion in interpreting the works of others and in developing our understanding of the nature and dynamics of law.

Present activities

I am now engaged full time on the Networked Knowledge project. I have established this to investigate and report upon alleged serious miscarriages of justice which are said to have taken place in South Australia over the last 30 years. I am seeking the establishment of a Review Commission of the type established in the UK (the CCRC).
I have done considerable work with the media in South Australia .

I have completed the books A State of Injustice which was published in October 2004, and Losing Their Grip – The Case of Henry Keogh published January 2006. The other work in which I have been engaged is sufficiently evidenced from the web site.

Previous Appointments

Adelaide University

I was engaged as an Associate Professor at Adelaide University Law School from November 1998 to November 2001. Here I developed a programme which enabled students to work collaboratively in small teams on real issues, with judges, lawyers and a wide range of community groups and NGOs.

The Australian National University

Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Law, 1989-1998. My main teaching was undertaken in jurisprudence, expert systems, and contract law. During my time at the ANU I also engaged in the following activities:

Hypertext - an ANU priority development

I established the Faculty of Law Hypertext Project which received initial funding from Federal Department of Education of $20,000 in 1992-3. It was one of 14 projects included in the ANU submission to the external assessors on Teaching Quality in 1993. It was one of only two, which were specifically referred to by those assessors in their report. It was designated an ANU priority development project. This project received a further $40,000 from ANU “quality funds” and a further $25,000 from Law Faculty reserves in 1994. It received a further $50,000 in 1995 from quality funds.
Total funding $135,000

UniServe-Law

I was appointed by the Federal Minister for Education as Director of UniServe-Law. The objective was to develop an Electronic Clearing House in Law, in conjunction with a National Coordinating Centre, also at the ANU. There were to be 4 other disciplinary clearing houses at other universities. Funding was received from the Committee for the Advancement of University Teaching (CAUT) of some $350,000, for the Law Clearing House and the Coordinating Centre, for the three years, November 1994-97. The UniServe project was also awarded a further $60,000 from ANU quality funds.
Total funding $410,000. 

A number of the web sites we developed until they were able to become full web sites in their own right included the following:

The Australian Law Reform Commission
The Family Law Council of Australia
The Judicial Conference of Australia.
The Australian Institute of Judicial Administration
The Council of Australian Law Deans.

Managing Director - Australasian Universities Online Pty Ltd - 1997-1998

From 1997-1998 I was granted leave of absence from my normal teaching duties at ANU to explore commercial opportunities for online publishing for the university sector. This was a collaborative project with Telstra who in conjunction with the ANU, Edith Cowan University , Coop Bookshops and the Imago Multimedia Centre provided $240,000 of initial funding. Whilst Telstra formally committed to the further funding of the project to the extent of $14m, the universities who were requested to partner with us, were unable to make the required commitments within the timeframe required.

Whilst working with AUO, I developed the proposal for a submission to DIST in support of  a project for the Australian Publishers Association. This was successful and received some $130,000 in funding from DIST.
Total funding - $370,000.

Queen’s University, Belfast

I was Lecturer in Jurisprudence and Law at Queen's University, Belfast 1985-1988. 

I was awarded tenure in October 1986. From 1986-1987 I served as Vice-President of the Association for Legal and Social Philosophy in the United Kingdom. I was responsible for organising the Association's conference on "Law and Economics" at Queen's University, Belfast, in April 1987. In December 1986 I was elected to the Council of the Irish Association of Law Teachers and was also appointed to its publications sub-committee.

Teaching experience

In my previous appointments I have lectured in Legal Theory, Contract Law, Sociology of Law, Insurance Law, Legal System and Methods, Information Technology and the Law. I developed a new course in Decision Support Systems at the ANU. It has been my practice to make my lecture and teaching materials available online. I have utilised drama classes in lectures and encourage students to work on projects with practitioners and others in the community. My activities in this regard have been written up in the national press, and academic articles. They involve assessments based on the student files which contain details of minutes of meetings, work diaries, legal or other documents drafted, negotiation skills, planning, presentation and progress of the case file. Students are encouraged to give presentations arising from their work to schools, community groups and professional groups and associations.

Pre-undergraduate employment

Prior to my undergraduate work, I was employed by the Norwich Union Insurance Group at their head office in Norwich and at the branch office in Londonderry N.I. I was also employed by the Phoenix Assurance Co as an Inspector for Co Down N.I.  During this time I completed 10 examinations to qualify as a member of the Chartered Insurance Institute.

Academic professional and research interests

I was initially involved in issues of legal theory and artificial intelligence. Within the last 10 years, I have developed an interest in the ways in which the university sector needs to develop to take advantage of the emerging technology. Although it will impact on ways of teaching and completing research, I believe that it will enable us to re-instate more collaborative teaching and research arrangements. During this time I have had a number of research grants to develop strategies for online publishing, and to enable me to consult with and work with a wide range of people across the university, government and business sectors. I believe it is possible that we can develop student-based research and publishing capabilities which will enable a university to provide an income stream to offset fees. We can also provide students with practical research experiences which will provide them with a solid foundation for their future activities. Any students passing through this system will want to remain part of it and to become a leader for future generations of students.

I now have former students in Europe, London and New York who would be keen to provide leadership to student teams. International collaboration between student researchers is an exciting possibility, and I have developed a project for working with students in South Africa .

My work in the area of innovative teaching was for some time the subject of a major entry on the University of Adelaide web pages. The entries are produced by the University Centre for University Education with a view to bringing attention to innovative developments in University Education. The entry in my case profiled my developments utilising drama in the teaching of Contract Law. This initiative has also been featured in The Adelaidean – the University newspaper and well as in The Australian which is our main national newspaper.

In the last few years, I have realised that the University sector - at least that part of it with which I am still familiar, has stifled innovation and risk taking. I have therefore decided to emabark upon the projects which appear to me to have social, intellectual and economic value to demonstrate what can be done without the inhibiting effects of university bureaucracy.

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