Rate My Professor Stephen Young

Associate Professor Stephen Young holds the position in the Faculty of Law at the University of Otago, where he joined in 2019. He earned a BA (Hons) from Bucknell University, an MA from Colorado State University, a JD from the University of Colorado, and a PhD from the University of New South Wales. Before entering academia, he worked in private practice as a civil litigator focusing on tort disputes in Denver, Colorado. He also served as a Teaching Fellow at the University of New South Wales. Young teaches courses in Torts, Laws and Indigenous Peoples, and International Human Rights Law. His research centers on the fringes of law, encompassing forms of legal resistance and contested legality, including pseudolaw and sovereign citizen movements. He examines Indigenous peoples’ rights, the strategic deployment of human rights claims, and how individuals and communities challenge, reinterpret, and reconfigure legal authority. This work intersects legal theory, socio-legal studies, and critical legal scholarship, particularly in everyday encounters with state authority.

Young's scholarly output includes the 2020 book Indigenous Peoples, Consents and Rights: Troubling Subjects, published by Routledge, which received the Law and Society Association of Australia and New Zealand’s Early Career Research Award. Recent publications feature 'Pseudolaw behind the judgments: The hidden impact on the administration of justice' in the Australian Law Journal (2025, with J. McIntyre, H. Hobbs, and M. Perrett), 'Pseudolaw beyond the bar' (editorial, Australian Law Journal, 2025, with H. Hobbs), and 'A quantitative analysis of the risk of pseudolaw in South Australia' in the Adelaide Law Review (2025, with J. McIntyre, F. Bray, M. Perrett, and H. Hobbs). Other significant works are 'Modern Treaty Making and the Limits of the Law' in the University of Toronto Law Journal (2021, with H. Hobbs) and 'Re-historicising dissolved identities: Deskaheh, the League of Nations and the international legal discourse on Indigenous peoples' (2019). In 2023, he was awarded the University of Otago Early Career Award for Distinction in Research, recognizing his outstanding publications and international collaborations. Young has led initiatives studying pseudolaw and sovereign citizen phenomena in New Zealand, fostering collaborations with researchers such as Harry Hobbs and Joe McIntyre. His contributions advance understandings of Indigenous rights, human rights litigation, and challenges to legal authority.