Projects per year
Personal profile
Biography
Vince Morabito is a professor in the Department of Business Law and Taxation.
Vince has practised as a solicitor with Clayton Utz, one of Australia's top law firms. He has also taught in the law schools of Monash, Melbourne and Deakin universities. Vince has also been a Senior Fellow (Melbourne Law Masters) at Melbourne University's law school.
His publications have dealt with class actions, access to justice, the regulation of commercial litigation funders, the Financial Ombudsman Service, the constitutional dimensions of taxation legislation and inconsistent Federal and state laws, compensation orders against offenders, national security law, judicial accountability and independence, tax administration, public enforcement of securities laws, litigation costs, contingency fees, security for costs, public interest costs orders, statutes of limitations and ideological plaintiffs.
Vince has been Australia's 'national reporter' at various international conferences. His research has been published in Australia, England, the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Israel and Singapore. His publications and research have been cited:
- by law reform commissions and similar entities in Australia, Canada, England, Scotland, Ireland, New Zealand, Hong Kong and South Africa;
- in 125 cases by the following 19 courts in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Israel, the United States and Singapore: High Court of Australia; Supreme Court of New Zealand; Full Federal Court of Australia; British Columbia's Court of Appeal; Quebec's Court of Appeal; Manitoba's Court of Appeal; New South Wales' Court of Appeal; Victoria's Court of Appeal; Supreme Court of Israel; NZ's Court of Appeal; Ontario's Superior Court of Justice; Federal Court of Australia; Supreme Court of Victoria; Supreme Court of NSW; Queen's Bench of Saskatchewan; High Court of NZ; a United States District Court; and District Court of Singapore;
- by the International Bar Association; the American Bar Association; Hong Kong's Legislative Council Secretariat; various committees of the Australian Federal Parliament; Ministers of the Federal, Victorian and Western Australian Governments; the Australian Government Productivity Commission; the Australian Securities and Investments Commission; the German Law Association; the Federal Attorney-General's Department; the Federal Treasury; the European Law Institute; the Australian Bar Association; the Law Council of Australia; the Law Institute of Victoria; the NSW Law Society; and scholars and commentators from over 45 countries; and
- by the Australian Government in an Amicus Curiae brief it filed in the United States Supreme Court in relation to a class action filed in an American court against an Australian bank.
Vince has been a consultant to the UK Government Equalities Office, the Hong Kong Law Reform Commission, the Federal Court of Australia, the Australian Research Council, the Western Australian Government, the Law Reform Commission of Western Australia, and the Victorian Law Reform Commission; rapporteur for the UK Economic & Social Research Council; and a member of an advisory panel to the Australian Law Reform Commission with respect to its 2016-2018 reference on class actions and litigation funders. He has also been a member of the Federal Court of Australia's Class Action Users Group, since it was established in 2009, and a member of the Law Council of Australia's Class Actions Committee, since March 2025.
A report on class actions co-authored by Vince in 1995, at the request of the Victorian Attorney-General's Law Reform Advisory Council, subsequently resulted in the introduction of a new and comprehensive legal regime governing Victorian class actions to the Victorian Parliament.
In 2009 Vince was invited to appear before the Federal Attorney-General's Department's Access to Justice Taskforce to provide its members with his views on developing a strategic framework for access to justice. He was also the only academic to be invited by the Federal Treasury to take part in a roundtable organised to discuss a 2009 Full Federal Court's decision to classify class actions as managed investment schemes and what regulatory action (if any) may be necessary to deal with its consequences.
Vince has frequently been a media commentator and has been interviewed on various legal issues by a number of well-respected Australian and international news outlets. In 2013 Vince was a member of a panel of academics that reviewed the rankings of business law and taxation journals by the Australian Business Deans Council.
In 2010 and 2020 Vince was the recipient of the Dean's Award for Excellence in Research and the Dean's Award for Research Impact, respectively. He has received research grants from several entities including the Australian Research Council, the Victoria Law Foundation and the Australasian Institute of Judicial Administration. Since 2007, Vince has been conducting the first empirical study of Australia's class action regimes (see http://ssrn.com/author=617549).
He is currently the Department's ERA Director. Vince was also, on several occasions, the Department's Deputy Head and HDR Director and its first Research Impact Director. For a total of five years, Vince was a co-Editor and then sole Editor of the Journal of Australian Taxation.
Expertise related to UN Sustainable Development Goals
In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. This person’s work contributes towards the following SDG(s):
Research area keywords
- Class Actions
- Access to Justice
- Litigation Funding
- Empirical Studies
- Private Enforcement
Collaborations and top research areas from the last five years
Projects
- 12 Finished
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Twenty-three years of class actions in Australia
Morabito, V. (Primary Chief Investigator (PCI))
OMNI Bridgeway Limited (trading as IMF Bentham Limited)
1/05/16 → 1/05/19
Project: Research
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Class Action Reform Study
Morabito, V. (Primary Chief Investigator (PCI))
22/08/14 → 22/08/15
Project: Research
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Evaluating Federal class actions through empirical and comparative perspectives
Morabito, V. (Primary Chief Investigator (PCI)) & Sweeney, B. J. (Chief Investigator (CI))
Australian Research Council (ARC), Monash University
5/01/09 → 31/12/11
Project: Research
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Emperical Study of Class Actions
Morabito, V. (Primary Chief Investigator (PCI))
31/08/07 → 31/12/07
Project: Research
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Empirical study of class actions
Morabito, V. (Primary Chief Investigator (PCI))
Australasian Institute of Judicial Administration
20/04/07 → 31/12/07
Project: Research
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How to address the regulation of third-party litigation funding of class actions?
Waye, V., Chamberlain, N. & Morabito, V., 2 Jan 2025, In: Law Quarterly Review. 141, 1, p. 131-157 27 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Research › peer-review
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The impact of statutes of limitations on Australian class actions - a tale of legislative failure, conflicting judicial views and uncertainty
Morabito, V., 2025, In: Civil Justice Quarterly. 44, 1, p. 42-68 27 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Research › peer-review
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Aggregate damages awards - the most important unused dimension of Australia's class action regimes?
Gilsenan, R., Sardar, R., Lubomirska, I. & Morabito, V., 2022, In: Civil Justice Quarterly. 41, 4, p. 380-407 28 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Research › peer-review
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Post-Brewster jurisprudence - the future of the common fund doctrine
Slade, B., Gibbs, S. & Morabito, V., 2022, In: The Australian Law Journal. 96, 6, p. 430-449 20 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Research › peer-review
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Public interest costs orders in federal class actions: time for a new approach
Petrovski, B., Li, K., Morabito, V. & Nichol, M., 2022, In: Melbourne University Law Review. 45, 2, p. 651-694 44 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Research › peer-review
Open Access