Dr Jane Norton is a teaching fellow in constitutional and administrative law and the law of trusts. Her research is focused on civil liberties (particularly religious freedom and freedom of expression), cultural minority rights, gender and the law, discrimination law, and normative legal philosophy. She is also interested in the regulation of charitable trusts.
Feedback & office hours
I am on leave until 25 March 2013.
Outside of these times, or outside term time, please contact me for an appointment.
After completing undergraduate studies Jane worked as a judges’ clerk at the High Court of New Zealand, qualifying as a barrister and solicitor in 2003. She then moved to New York where she was a Fulbright Scholar and an Associate-in-Law at Columbia Law School before practising as an attorney at a large commercial law firm. She recently submitted her doctoral thesis in law at the University of Oxford on the religious freedom of religious organisations. She has a strong interest in pro bono work having been an executive committee member of both the Auckland Women Lawyers Association and Oxford Pro Bono Publico. She has also provided pro bono legal assistance for the organisation inMotion in New York.
Jane’s research is primarily focused on public law and legal theory. She is interested in civil liberties (particularly religious freedom, freedom of association, and freedom of expression), cultural minority rights, gender and the law, discrimination law, and normative legal philosophy. She is particularly concerned with examining how the liberal state ought to respond to claims of cultural groups that are inconsistent with liberal norms and how the state ought to regulate those intermediary groups that sit between the individual and the state. She is also interested in the regulation of charitable trusts.
She recently submitted her doctoral thesis on the extent to which the law should apply to religious organisations, examining in particular the exceptions granted to religious organisations from the Equality Act 2010 and the operation of religious tribunals in family matters.
She is currently working on projects examining judicial resolution of church property disputes, the regulation of charities for the advancement of religion, and the regulation of religious tribunals.