Howard Bell

Adjunct Staff

Dr Howard Bell, OAM

Dip Law (1985), LL.M (1989), Cert IV (TAE) (2000), PhD (Syd) (2004), Grad Dip Res Mgmt (2005), Cert IV in WHS (2015), Spec Acc (Govt and Admin Law) 2016

Adjunct Senior Lecturer
off campus

Howard is a legal practitioner and currently a principal lawyer with the NSW Department of Customer Service with special interest in regulatory legal practice and in administrative law. He previously worked as a senior legal officer at NSW Police and the NSW Crime Commission. Prior to that he was self-employed as a barrister-at-law.

Howard is also currently serving Major in Australian Army Reserve. He has served as a military lawyer, appeared as counsel before courts-martial, a military policeman and served as Officer Commanding, The Second Military Police Company. He has been an instructor, career advisor, staff officer and a governance and compliance auditor. In 2002 he deployed on operational service to East Timor as part of a multinational peacekeeping force.

He is a keen community volunteer and was in 2011 a recipient of the Order of Australia Medal (OAM) for services to the community through social justice and legal organisations.

Teaching

Howard has supervised postgraduate doctoral students in areas which include public safety, counter-insurgency, counter-terrorism and peace studies. He has previously lectured and tutored undergraduate students in criminal law. Howard has lectured at the NSW Police Academy in criminal law and procedure as well as teaching military law and justice at Army training establishments.

Howard  has also designed, presented and delivered community education courses in business law, criminal justice and forensic science through the Centre for Continuing Education at the University of Sydney.

For over 25 years Howard was also a part time teacher at TAFE NSW where he taught law, management, team leadership, customer service and business studies. More recently he has designed, delivered, presented and continues to present community education courses in human rights, social justice, climate change and environmental law at Workers Education Association-Sydney (WEA-Sydney). Howard has served on the Council and the Board of Directors at WEA-Sydney.

Research

Howard’s earlier career before law was in the scientific fields and in the chemical industry. His main initial research interests were in the forensic science fields during his years of private practice at the criminal Bar and later when working with NSW Police. As a post graduate student in law at the University of Sydney’s Law School, Howard won the H.J McLemmens Award for postgraduate students in criminology.

Howard’s PhD thesis was based on field work he undertook in relation to jury trials in which he studied the dynamics associated with socio-legal influences on juror impression formation in the criminal courts. This has formed the basis of a number of post-doctoral papers he has presented at legal, justice and multi-disciplinary conferences both locally and overseas. Howard is currently engaged in researching law reform options across a number of human rights and social justice fields including the case for a human rights act in Australia and on potential therapeutic jurisprudence-based models for the development of a homelessness court system.

Memberships

Howard is an active member of the Law Society of NSW. He is Accredited by the Law Society as a Specialist in Government and Administrative Law. He has served on a number of committees of the Law Society including the Anti-Discrimination Committee, the Human Rights Committee and the Public Law Committee. He has also served as a mentor in the Law Society’s mentoring programs. He currently sits as a member of the Government Lawyers’ Committee of the Law Society.

Howard has served on the NSW Regional Board of Amnesty International as well has having been the Convenor of his local community action group within Amnesty International.

He has also volunteered extensively with other community groups including the Society of St Vincent de Paul, Cana Communities and Shelter NSW. He has served as a member of the Board of Cana Communities and also on the Board of Shelter NSW.