Space Law, International Law and What You Study at Adelaide

← Adelaide Law School guide

Last updated September 2026 · 5 minute read

In this guide

1. The foundation, first
2. Space law at Adelaide
3. International law
4. Environmental and natural resources law
5. Constitutional and public law
6. Corporate, commercial and insolvency law
7. Health and medical law
8. Legal philosophy and theory
9. How much of this will you study?
10. Where to go from here

Every law school teaches contracts and torts. The interesting question is what a school is unusually good at.

Adelaide Law School has been running since 1883, which is long enough to have developed genuine specialisms rather than a prospectus full of everything. Some of them are unusual, and one of them is close to unique.

The foundation, first

Before the distinctive parts, the ordinary ones matter. The Bachelor of Laws (Honours) covers the core areas required for admission to practice in Australia: contracts, torts, criminal law, property, equity, constitutional and administrative law, civil procedure, evidence, company law and professional conduct.

That foundation is what the National Committee on Accreditation assesses when you come home, and it is why an Australian law degree maps onto Canadian requirements as closely as it does. Both systems are common law systems descended from the same root. How that assessment works is covered here.

Space law at Adelaide

This is the one people do not expect, and it is not a novelty.

Adelaide is a world leader in space law, a field governing satellites, orbital debris, resource extraction beyond Earth, liability for objects launched into space, and the treaties that hold it all together. The school has genuine standing here rather than a single elective.

There is a reason it sits in Adelaide. The Australian Space Agency is headquartered in the city, which puts the academic work next door to the regulator.

Whether this matters to you depends entirely on your ambitions. For most students it is a curiosity. For a few it is the reason to choose the school, and those few end up somewhere very interesting.

International law

The school has long-standing strength in public and private international law: treaties, trade, jurisdiction, dispute resolution across borders.

For a Canadian this is more relevant than it first sounds. You are already going to be a lawyer trained in two jurisdictions, having studied Australian law and then Canadian and Quebec law in Montréal. Adding international law to that makes a coherent profile rather than a scattered one, and it is a profile Canadian firms with cross-border practices notice.

Environmental and natural resources law

Adelaide houses a dedicated research unit in this area, covering water law, climate regulation, mining and resource governance.

South Australia is a useful place to study it. The state runs one of the world’s higher shares of renewable electricity generation, and the Murray-Darling Basin is one of the most contested water governance problems anywhere. The case studies are outside the window rather than in a textbook.

The overlap with Canadian practice is direct: resource law, Indigenous consultation, environmental assessment and interprovincial water disputes are live areas of Canadian legal work.

Constitutional and public law

Australia and Canada are both federations with written constitutions, entrenched division of powers, and a supreme court resolving disputes between levels of government. The structural similarity is close enough that studying Australian constitutional law is genuinely useful preparation rather than an academic detour.

It is also one of the school’s continuously strong areas, and it is part of why the research standing holds up. We have written about that standing here.

Corporate, commercial and insolvency law

Strength here is less romantic and more employable. Corporate governance, securities regulation, restructuring and insolvency are where a large share of commercial legal work is, in Adelaide and in Toronto alike.

Health and medical law

A smaller but established area, covering regulation of the professions, consent, capacity, research ethics and the law around emerging medical technology. It draws on the university’s considerable medical and health faculties.

Legal philosophy and theory

Worth mentioning because it signals something about the school. A law faculty that sustains serious jurisprudence is one that treats law as a discipline rather than a trade qualification. That tends to show up in how you are taught to think, which outlasts any particular subject you take.

How much of this will you study?

A fair question. The compulsory core takes up most of a law degree everywhere, and Adelaide is no different. Specialisms show up in your electives, your honours work, and in who is available to supervise and teach you.

That last part is the real benefit. Being taught constitutional law by someone who publishes in it, or writing an honours piece under someone who advises on space regulation, is a different experience from reading the same material from a textbook.

Where to go from here

The Adelaide Law guide covers the pathway, entry routes, costs and timeline. If there is a particular field you are aiming at, tell us and we will tell you honestly whether Adelaide is the right school for it, or whether another of our partner universities fits better.

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