Staff Profiles
Associate Professor Caron Beaton-Wells
Melbourne Law SchoolLLB(Hons)(Melb) LLM(Melb) PhD (Melb)Barrister and Solicitor of Supreme Court of Victoria
Dr Caron Beaton-Wells is a specialist in competition law. She has published widely in the area, including the highly regarded text, Proof of Antitrust Markets (Federation Press, 2003). More recently her research on the criminalisation of cartel conduct has led to articles published in leading national and international competition law journals and she has been awarded a major Australian Research Council grant to conduct a multidisciplinary empirical project on criminalisation, together with researchers from the Law School, the University's School of Politics, Sociology and Criminology and the University of South Australia's Centre for Regulation and Market Analysis. The website for the Cartel Project is at http://www.cartel.law.unimelb.edu.au. Dr Beaton-Wells teaches Competition Law in the LLB/JD program and oversees and manages a substantial graduate program in competition law, in which she co-teaches the subject, Enforcing Competition Law. She is a regular speaker at competition law conferences and frequently is called upon to comment in the media on competition law issues.
Dr Beaton-Wells has been a member of the Victorian Bar since 1997 and is a member of the Trade Practices Committee, Business Law Section of the Law Council of Australia and the American Bar Association's Sections of Antitrust law and International law. Prior to joining the Bar, she was Associate to Justice Balmford on the Supreme Court of Victoria and, prior to that, a solicitor at Mallesons Stephen Jaques. In December 2008 Dr Beaton-Wells became an inaugural member of the Academic Board of the Asian Competition Law and Economics Centre in Hong Kong.
In 2009 Dr Beaton-Wells was commissioned to assist the OECD in compiling its review and assessment of Australia's competition law and policy. This review assesses how Australia deals with competition and regulatory issues, from the soundness of its competition law to the structure and effectiveness of its competition institutions. The report that Dr Beaton-Wells has assisted in writing was peer reviewed by the Competition Committee of the OECD and will be published on the OECD website by the end of the year.
Areas of Expertise:
Teaching:
The Melbourne Law Masters:
- Competition Law Overview (2009)
- ACLA Competition Law Master Class For In-House Counsel (2009)
- Enforcing Competition and Consumer Law (formerly Enforcing Competition Law) (2010)
- Competition Law Overview (2010)
