Dr Ben Gussen

Biography

Dr. Engr. Benjamen F. Gussen, SMIEEE, ΒΓΩ, Esq,

BScEE (hons) (KSU) BCom (hons) LLB (hons) (Auckland) MScEE (Arizona) MBA (Otago) GradCertT&L (Swinburne) PostGradDipTerEd (AUT) PhD (law) (Auckland)

Dr. Gussen joined the Swinburne Law School (SLS) in January 2018 as a tenured international and constitutional law jurist. He was admitted to the legal profession in New Zealand in 2011, and in Australia in 2014. His main research is on the constitutional status of cities. He is also an expert on the principle of subsidiarity and its application in unitary and federal polities. His other research interests include the application of constitutional economics to constitutional designs, the comparative analysis of sub-national constitutions (in the United States, Canada and Australia), and the application of complexity theory to the analysis of legal systems. Dr. Gussen has published in journals such as Comparative Law, Public Law, Monash University Law Review, University of Melbourne Law Review, Constitutional Political Economy and the Evolutionary and Institutional Economics Review. His first monograph (Ranking Economic Performance and Efficiency in the Global Market) was published in 2018. His second monograph was published in May 2019 (Axial Shift: City Subsidiarity and the World System in the 21st Century, Palgrave Macmillan). Dr. Gussen's latest monograph is Sharing Cities 2020: A Case-Based Approach, co-edited with Iris Wang and Hideaki Ninomiya (Springer Nature).

Dr. Gussen is an Australian New Zealander, with ancestry from the cities of Breda and Shechem. He holds graduate degrees in law (PhD and LLB(hons), Auckland), economics (BCom (hons), Auckland), engineering (BScEE, KSU; MScEE, Arizona), business administration (MBA, Otago) and education (Post Grad Dip Ter Ed, AUT; Grad Cert Teach'g & Learn'g, Swinburne). He is a member of the International Association of Constitutional Law (IACL) and a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Dr. Gussen has a working knowledge of French, biblical Hebrew and classical Arabic.

In addition to constitutional law (LAW20012), Dr. Gussen is the coordinator for administrative law (LAW20010) and public and private international law (LAW20035).

Prior to joining Swinburne, Dr. Gussen taught at the University of Southern Queensland, the University of Auckland and the Auckland University of Technology. Before embarking on his academic career, Dr. Gussen worked in government and industry in the United States, the Persian Gulf, and New Zealand.

PRIZES AND SCHOLARSHIPS

2019 winner of the Swinburne University of Technology Outstanding Early Career Researcher Award

2016 winner of scholarship to attend the Coase-Sandor Institute (University of Chicago)

2016 winner of the University of Southern Queensland Publication Excellence Award in Law

2015 winner of the University of Southern Queensland Publication Excellence Award in Law

2014 winner of the Alan and Virginia Green Prize in Environmental Law

2012 winner of the University of Auckland Doctoral Publication Award 

2011 winner of the University of Auckland PhD Scholarship

HONORARIA

2018 Hongik University (Seoul, South Korea) for delivering the keynote speech at their seminar on the sharing economy: 'On the Governance of Sharing Cities: Lessons from the sharing economy in Seoul' (15 June 2018).

2017 Straits Times newspaper for: 'A proposal for a Singaporean "Charter City" in Australia' , Straits Times (Singapore), 24 January 2017, A21.

PhD STUDENTS

Sam Alexander, The Laws to Make Australia's Silicon Valley (2018-2022). The examiners passed Sam's thesis without amendments.

• Sam Alexander, ‘A Uniquely Australian Approach: A Thematic Analysis of the Normative Foundations of Australia’s Approach to the Regulation of the Internet’ (2022) 43(1) Adelaide Law Review (forthcoming).
• Sam Alexander, ‘Australian Information Businesses: The Adoption of an Information Fiduciary Framework in the Australian Context’ (2021) 2(1) ANU Journal of Technology and Law 7.
• Sam Alexander, ‘Free Speech Norms and the Regulation of the Internet: The Economic Consequences in Australia and the United States’ (2021) 24(2) Media and Arts Law Review 80.
• Sam Alexander, ‘A Quiet Harbour: Finding a Balanced Approach to the Copyright Liability of Online Service Providers’ (2020) 32 Bond Law Review 91.
• Sam Alexander, ‘Reforming Australia’s Safe Harbour for Internet Intermediaries’ in Margaret Jackson and Marita Shelly (eds), Legal Regulations, Implications, and Issues Surrounding Digital Data (IGI Global, 2020), 68.
  

Brendan Walker-Monro, Australian Criminal Regulators, Disruptors and the Need for Innovation Intelligence (2018-2021). Brendan was the first student to be awarded a PhD in law with publications from the Swinburne Law School. 

• B. Walker-Munro, ‘Regulating Disruption and the Development of the Disruption Calculus’ (2019) 46 University of Western Australia Law Review 1, 111-143.
• B. Walker-Munro, ‘A Shot in the Dark: Australia’s Proposed Encryption Laws and the “Disruption Calculus”’ (2019) 40 Adelaide Law Review 3, 783-813.
• B. Walker-Munro, ‘A Case for Systemic Design in Criminal Law Techno-Regulation’ (2019) 43 Criminal Law Journal 1, 306-324.
• B. Walker-Munro, ‘Tax Enforcement in the Black Economy’ in Abdul Rafay (ed.), Theories, Practices, and Cases of Illicit Money and Financial Crime (Information Science Reference, Hershey, 2020) 356.
• B. Walker-Munro, ‘Cyber-Systemics, Systemic Governance and Disruption of the Criminal Law’ (2020) 39 University of Queensland Law Journal 1, 225-252.
• B. Walker-Munro, ‘A Case for the Use of Cyber-Systemics to Combat Financial Crime in Australia’ (2020) Kybernetes, accepted 5 November 2020, https://doi.org/10.1108/K-09-2020-0581.
• B. Walker-Munro, ‘An Examination of Cyber-systemic Regulation in Criminology through the Lens of “Flows”’ (2020) British Journal of Criminology, accepted December 2020.

NOTABLE RESEARCH OUTPUT

Authored books

Gussen, Axial Shift: City-Subsidiarity and the World System in the 21st Century (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).

Gussen, Ranking economic performance and efficiency in the global market : emerging research and opportunities (IGI Global, 2017).

Edited books

Iris Wang, Hideaki Ninomiya and Benjamen Gussen (eds), Sharing Cities 2020: A Case-Based Approach (Springer, 2020).

Scholarly book chapters

Gussen, 'The Third Commonwealth: Resolving the Tension between Responsible Government and Federalism in Australia' in Vito Breda and Matteo Frau (eds), La contrattazione costituzionale dei livelli di autonomia: Modelli per una comparazione (Editoriale Scientifica, 2020) 129-148.

Gussen, ‘On the Hardingian Renovation of Legal Transplants’ in Vito Breda (ed), Legal Transplants in East Asia and Oceania (Cambridge University Press, 2019) 84.

Gussen, ‘Constitutional Recognition of Indigenous Peoples in New Zealand and Ecuador’ in Simon Young, Jennifer Nielsen and Jeremy Patrick (eds), Constitutional Recognition of First Peoples in Australia: Theories and Comparative Perspectives (Federation Press, 2016) 247.

Refereed journal articles

Gussen, 'Notes on Continental Constitutional Identities' (2023) 56(1) Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law 67.

Gussen and Sahar Araghi, 'The Engineers Case Centenary: SCOTUS and the Origins of Australia's Scabrous Constitutional Signature' (2021) 10(1) The British Journal of American Legal Studies 27.

Gussen, ‘Reflections on La Fata Morgana: Watsonian “Prestige” and Bagehotian “Efficiency”’ (2017) 12(1) The Journal of Comparative Law 80.

Gussen,  ‘A Comparative Analysis of Constitutional Recognition of Aboriginal Peoples’ (2017) 40(3) Melbourne University Law Review 867.

Gussen, ‘Two Strategies for Diffusing Tension in the Middle East’ (2016) Harvard Journal of Middle Eastern Politics and Policy 8.

Gussen, ‘Australian Constitutionalism between Subsidiarity and Federalism’ (2016) 42(2) Monash University Law Review 383.

Gussen, ‘The State is the Fiduciary of the People’ (2015) 3 Public Law 440.

Gussen, ‘The Evolutionary Economic Implications of Constitutional Designs: Lessons from the Constitutional Morphogenesis of New England and New Zealand’ (2014) 6(2) Perspectives on Federalism E319.

Gussen, ‘On the Problem of Scale: Hayek, Kohr, Jacobs and the Reinvention of the Political State’ (2013) 24(1) Constitutional Political Economy 19.