For the first 20 years of his academic career, Peter Cane taught at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, successively as lecturer, reader and professor. Since 1997 he has been Professor of Law at the ANU, until 2007 in the Research School of Social Sciences. He was appointed Distingished Professor in 2007. He is a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law. In 2011-12 he was joint Arthur Goodhart Visiting Professor of Legal Science at the University of Cambridge.

Public Law and Public Administration: A Comparative Analysis. The aims of this project are: 1. To conceptualise administrative law as providing a legal framework for public administration. 2. To explore the relationship between public law and public administration, the impact of law on administration and the interaction of legal and bureaucratic values. 3. To develop a theoretical account of the interaction between the institutional structure of public administration and norms that frame the implementation of public programmes. 4. To pursue these aims comparatively, with Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States being the jurisdictions to be compared 5. To give Australians generally and Australian public administrators in particular a better appreciation of the role of law in framing and regulating public administration.