Adjunct Professor
Charles Sampford

Biography

At Melbourne University, Charles Sampford graduated at the top of his class in politics, philosophy and law, gaining a 'double first' in Arts and the Supreme Court Prize in Law. He then won a Commonwealth Scholarship to Oxford to pursue all three disciplines in his doctoral studies. He was awarded a PhD in 1984 which was published by Blackwells as 'The Disorder of Law'. 
He returned to Melbourne University to teach law before being seconded to the Philosophy Department in 1990 to help establish the Centre for Philosophy and Public Issues where he was promoted to Principal Research Fellow. In 1991 he was invited to come to Queensland as Foundation Dean of Law at Griffith University. This is widely regarded as the most innovative and most successful of Australia's new law schools and was hailed by Sir Ninian Stephen as a 'revolution in legal education'. 
In 1999, he was appointed Foundation Director of the Key Centre for Ethics, Law, Justice and Governance (the only Australian centre in law or governance to receive centre funding from the Australian Research Council). In September 2004, he became the Director of the Institute for Ethics, Governance and Law, a joint initiative of the United Nations University and Griffith (one of 23 UNU centres around the world).  At the same time he took on the role of Convenor of the Australian Research Council funded Governance Research Network. 
Foreign fellowships include the Visiting Senior Research Fellow at St John's College Oxford (1997) and a Senior Fulbright Award to Harvard University at the Program for Ethics and the Professions (2000).
Professor Sampford has written over eighty articles and chapters in Australian and foreign journals and collections ranging through

• constitutional law and theory


• legal philosophy


• legal education


• politics


• criminology


• applied ethics.

He has completed twenty one books and edited collections for international publishers including Oxford University Press, Blackwell, Routledge, Cavendish and Ashgate. He is the general editor of three book series and his most recent monograph, Retrospectivity and the Rule of Law, was released by OUP in Oxford in 2006. He is on the editorial Boards of Legal Ethics and Public Integrity – the leading journals in their fields based in England and the USA respectively. 
He has also been awarded over $15 million in grants, consultancies and awards for research work he has led. During the 1980s, he concentrated on constitutional law and theory. The bulk of his research since 1990 has been in the areas of

• applied ethics


• ethics regimes


• corruption measurement


• integrity systems


• the rule of law


• the role of values in international affairs. 

His writings on legal education, which led to his appointment as Griffith’s Foundation Dean of Law, were put to work on its ground-breaking interdisciplinary curriculum. As Foundation Director of the Key Centre, he led the development of a post graduate suite of courses in ethics and governance. 
Since October 2001, he has been President of an international NGO linking ethics academics and practitioners (the International Institute for Public Ethics). As such he was the Chair of the Organizing Committee for its World Ethics Forum held in Oxford in April 2006. He is a leading member of the Board of World Bank/USAID/DIFID/AusAID supported Global Integrity Alliance.
Professor Sampford has been consulted by business, government and various Parliaments, including the principal legal advisor to the Queensland Scrutiny of Legislation Committee from its inception in 1995 to 2002. He was heavily involved in the anti-corruption reforms which inspired the Transparency International concept of a 'national integrity system', and later did extensive research with Transparency International on measuring corruption and mapping and assessing integrity systems. He advised the Nolan Committee on Standards in Public Life and the Lord Chancellor's Committee on Legal Education and Professional Conduct.
In September 1998, he went to Indonesia on a special mission for the World Bank to advise the Indonesian government on governance reforms to deal with corruption. Other missions for the World Bank and APEC followed. 
From 2002 to 2003, he was a member of a task force on responding to threats to democracy co-chaired by Madeleine Albright. In 2003 to 2004, he led a Soros-funded series of dialogues on governance values involving western and Islamic scholars. At the same time he has pursued a successful career as a part-time company director and chairman, gaining insights into the operation of Australian and international business that are valuable in ethics and governance work.
Research interests

• International law


• International governance


• Ethics


• Law and theory


• Legal philosophy


• Legal education


• Human rights.