Professor Hathaway is a leading authority on international refugee law.  In resigning his deanship, Professor Hathaway says that having devoted a quarter century to the progressive development of refugee law norms, he now wishes to re-engage all of his energies to find answers to what is clearly a moment of crisis in the international protection regime.

"Refugee law is the single most effective international human rights system in the world today; I feel a deep ethical responsibility to do what I can to avoid its collapse," he says.

University of Melbourne Vice-Chancellor Professor Glyn Davis said that the University fully supports this ambition.

Professor Davis said that with James Hathaway’s departure from the position of law dean, the University of Melbourne loses one of its most creative academic leaders.

"Professor Hathaway joined us at the start of 2008 to lead the most ambitious change in the history of Australian legal education - the establishment of this country’s first all-graduate law program, flagship of the University’s ‘Melbourne Model’ transition.

"Drawing on extensive experience as a faculty member and administrator at leading law schools in Canada and the United States, he led a seamless and wholly successful transition to the graduate education model. The Melbourne JD is now widely regarded as Australia’s premier legal credential, attracting extraordinarily gifted students from across the country and around the world."

Professor Hathaway engineered critical shifts in the way the University recruits and supports law students, led thinking on reform of the classroom and extracurricular experience and dramatically enhanced the connection between the study and practice of law through major expansion of the career services office and establishment of a comprehensive mentorship program linking students to alumni and other seasoned practitioners.

"James Hathaway has more generally served as an exemplary dean," Professor Davis said.  "Despite challenging economic times and the costs of curricular transition, Melbourne Law School’s always-strong financial position has actually improved over the course of his deanship."

Professor Hathaway also secured important new infrastructure for the Law School including a successful bid for Commonwealth funding to renovate classrooms to accommodate new teaching styles, and conceived the design for a dramatic refurbishment of the ground floor of the Law Building, expected to be completed by year’s end.

In just two years, he recruited six new members of academic staff as well as the Law School’s first Executive Director.  Alumni in Australia and in leading global cities have engaged as never before with the Law School, and supported critical new scholarship drives initiated by Professor Hathaway.  He conceived new collegial research fora, established the Law School’s first PhD teaching fellowships, and implemented new media relations and academic support systems.

Two critical achievements of Professor Hathaway’s deanship are particularly noteworthy.

First, he has been unreservedly proactive in advancing the Law School’s scholarly mission, in particular by driving the creation of this country’s first Legal Research Service - an innovative system generating tailored research that has made Melbourne Law School academics the best supported legal scholars in Australia.

Second, he has truly made Melbourne a global law school.  During his tenure, Melbourne LLB and JD students commenced study at the innovative Centre for Transnational Legal Studies in London - a collaboration of 12 leading law faculties, including Melbourne.  Exciting new exchange partnerships were established with top law schools around the world.  And most exciting of all, he master-minded degree-granting partnerships with the prestigious New York University School of Law and with the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s groundbreaking Program in Chinese Business Law - with at least two more leading global law schools expected to affiliate with Melbourne for degree-granting purposes by the end of this year.

His deanship has been marked by strategic innovation on an unprecedented scale.  It will provide the perfect base for a period of consolidation of gains and forward-planning for the next phase of the Law School’s evolution.

Professor Davis said the University of Melbourne is very much in Professor Hathaway’s debt. "We thank him for his superb leadership and wish him well in his return to full-time academic life. We are particularly delighted that he will remain a Professorial Fellow at the Law School, and look forward to his continued participation in the intellectual life of the University."