David Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights

"Generous" to a Fault? The Supreme Court of Canada's Approach to Section 6(1) of the Charter
2014-01-15 12:30 - 14:00 (America/Toronto)
CONSTITUTIONAL ROUNDTABLE SERIES
presents
John Norris
Constitutional Litigator in Residence
David Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights
“Generous” to a Fault? The Supreme Court of Canada’s Approach to
Section 6(1) of the Charter
John Norris maintains a trial and appellate practice in criminal, constitutional and national security law. He is a Special Advocate for security certificate proceedings, and acts regularly for public interest groups on appeals before the Supreme Court of Canada. John is an adjunct member of the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, and is an active contributor to continuing legal education. He is the Asper Centre’s Constitutional-Litigator-in-Residence for 2013. John is a Director of the Canadian Council of Criminal Defence Lawyers. He is an Assistant Editor of the Canadian Rights Reporter, and has authored several scholarly articles. In 2011, John received the Catzman Award for Professionalism and Civility in the practice of law from the Advocates’ Society. John received his LL.B. from the University of Toronto in 1991 and was called to the Bar of Ontario in 1993.

Event date: Wednesday, January 15, 2014, from 12:30 PM to 2:00 PM

Location: Solarium – Falconer Hall, 84 Queen’s Park

Religious Diversity, Education, and the "Crisis" in State Neutrality
2014-01-29 12:30 - 14:00
CONSTITUTIONAL ROUNDTABLE
presents
Benjamin Berger
Osgoode Hall Law School
Religious Diversity, Education, and the “Crisis” in State Neutrality
Education – and particularly public education – has become a crucible for the relationship between state and religious diversity, a principal site for contemporary debates about the meaning of secularism and the management of religious difference. This is so across a variety of national traditions, and despite wide differences in the historical and “emotional inheritances” surrounding the configuration of law, politics, and religion. Through an exploration of Hannah Arendt’s thought about responsibility and freedom in education, this article works towards a better understanding of why education is such a crucial and fraught field in the modern encounter between religion and law. The article turns to the recent jurisprudence of the Supreme Court of Canada to draw out the implications of these ideas, arriving ultimately at a claim about the nature and limits of the concept of state neutrality.
Professor Benjamin Berger’s areas of teaching and research specialization are criminal and constitutional law and theory, law and religion, and the law of evidence. Prior to joining Osgoode, Professor Berger was an associate professor in the Faculty of Law and held a cross appointment in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Victoria, where he began teaching in 2004. He served as law clerk to the Rt. Honourable Beverley McLachlin, Chief Justice of Canada, and was a Fulbright Scholar at Yale University. He has published broadly in his principal areas of research and his work has appeared in multiple edited collections and in legal and interdisciplinary journals such as: Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence; Law, Culture and the Humanities; McGill Law Journal; Osgoode Hall Law Journal; ICON; and the Journal of Comparative Law. He is on the editorial board of the Canadian Journal of Law and Society and is an associate editor for the Hart Publishing series Constitutional Systems of the World. He is also co-editor of The Grand Experiment: Law and Legal Culture in British Settler Societies, published by UBC Press in October 2008. He received the 2010 Canadian Association of Law Teacher’s Scholarly Paper Award for an article entitled “The Abiding Presence of Conscience: Criminal Justice Against the Law and the Modern Constitutional Imagination.” Professor Berger is active in professional and public education, is involved in public interest advocacy, and has appeared before the Supreme Court of Canada. While at UVic Law, Professor Berger twice received the Terry J. Wuester Teaching Award, and was awarded the First Year Class Teaching Award; he received the Osgoode Hall Law School Teaching Award in 2013.

Event date: Wednesday, January 29, 2014, from 12:30 PM to 2:00 PM

Location: Alumni Hall, Victoria College

Constitutional Remedies: Are They Effective and Meaningful?
2014-02-28 08:30 - 17:00
REGISTRATION NOW CLOSED
LINK TO LIVE WEBCAST
Keynote Address
For more information contact Kara Norrington at kara.norrington@utoronto.ca
The David Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights is hosting a conference examining in detail the remedies available in constitutional litigation.
Papers and panel discussions will stimulate and develop an ongoing dialogue on the effectiveness of remedies. The goal is to examine the available remedies pursuant to s.24 and s.52 of the Charter as well as remedies for the violation of Aboriginal and treaty rights under the constitution. Key themes include the following.
• Will the promise of the Ward Charter damage claim be realized? Issues related to the quantum of damages in relation to the costs and risks of litigation; the interaction between Charter and tort claims.
• The role of injunctions and declarations: Would/should the Supreme Court affirm supervisory jurisdiction as it did in Doucet Boudreau if it heard the case today; are injunctions necessary or will declarations suffice including in litigation with respect to conditions of confinement and positive rights? What can be learned from comparative experiences?
• Remedies for violations of Aboriginal and treaty rights: What are the remedies for breach of the duty to consult and are they meaningful and effective?
• Remedies for unconstitutional legislation: Are the courts employing the soft remedies of reading down and suspended declarations of invalidity too much?
Opening Plenary Debate: Be it resolved that Judges can rewrite statutes to make them constitutional
Debaters: Prof. Kent Roach and Prof. Hamish Stewart
Moderator: Hon. Justice Robert Sharpe, Ontario Court of Appeal
Keynote Speaker: Professor Sandra Liebenberg
H.F.Oppenheimer Chair in Human Rights Law Department of Public Law Faculty of Law, University of Stellenbosch, SA
Accreditation: This program is worth 5.0 substantive hours and 0 professionalism hours.
Full Program Here

Deepening Democratic Transformation in South Africa Through Participatory Constitutional Remedies
2014-02-28 12:30 - 14:00
CONSTITUTIONAL ROUNDTABLE
presents
Sandra Liebenberg
H.F. Oppenheimer Chair in Human Rights Law
University of Stellenbosch Law Faculty
Deepening democratic transformation in South Africa through
participatory constitutional remedies

Prepared for Conference, Constitutional Remedies: Are they Effective and Meaningful?
David Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights, University of Toronto
There is an intimate association between the exercise of court’s remedial powers to address violations of constitutional rights and the particular animating purposes and ideals of the particular Constitution understood in its unique social and historical context. Expressed differently, cognisance of the relevant constitutional provisions and remedial powers vested in the courts tells us very little about the principles which should guide the crafting of remedies for violations of the rights enshrined in a constitution’s bill or charter of fundamental rights. In order to understand some of the most acute remedial challenges facing the South African courts in human rights litigation, it is necessary to provide an account first of the nature of the South African Bill of Rights, and the overall role it is designed to fulfil in the context of South African society. Thereafter I turn to examining the general principles which have been articulated in relation to the crafting of constitutional remedies. The third section draws on the general purposive account of the Constitution and the remedial principles identified to discuss one of the emerging remedial strategies of the Constitutional Court of South Africa – orders of meaningful engagement. I choose to focus on this particular remedy (one of a wide range of available constitutional remedies deployed by the South African courts) as it illustrates an innovative response to one of their most pressing challenges faced by the South African courts in designing constitutional remedies – namely how to give effect to the far-reaching positive obligations imposed by a range of provisions in the Bill of Rights. It also resonates with the deeper underlying values and purposes of the Constitution discussed in the first part of the paper. I consider the multi-faced nature of this remedy as it has been applied in various cases, particularly eviction and education rights cases, where, to date, the remedy has found its primary application. The relationship of meaningful engagement as a remedy with the criteria for assessing compliance with constitutional norms in the first phases of constitutional analysis (rights definition and limitations), and the features that distinguish it from the supervisory orders and structural interdictions/injunctions more familiar to constitutional lawyers are also considered. The final part of the paper evaluates the remedy and its potential to serve as a workable remedial mechanism for advancing the transformative commitments of the South African Constitution.
This is the lunchtime plenary for the conference, “Constitutional Remedies: Are They Effective and Meaningful?”

February 28th, 2014

Privacy at Risk?
2014-03-12 16:00 - 17:30
David Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights and Centre for Innovation Law and Policy, Faculty of Law
present
Privacy at Risk?
The NSA and CSEC, its Canadian Surveillance Partner

Wednesday, March 12, 2014
4:00 – 5:30
Emmanuel College, 75 Queen’s Park Crescent
Room EM 001
Revelations by former NSA analyst Edward Snowden have drawn much needed attention to the involvement of governments, including the government of Canada, in internet spying. Recent focus has been place on the role that the Communications Security Establishment of Canada (CSEC), an organization of which few Canadians are aware, plays in such surveillance, including spying on Canadians at airports using free Wi-Fi. What are the legal limits of this surveillance? What rights are impacted by the government when they engage in this activity? Experts from the Faculty of Law and the Canada Centre for Global Security Studies at the Munk School of Glob al Affairs will address what we know about what is happening, what laws apply, and what should concern us about the implications of this activity by governments around the world and in Canada.

Panelists:
Lisa Austin, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto
Kent Roach, Professor and Prichard Wilson Chair in Law and Public Policy, Faculty of Law
Hamish Stewart, Professor, Faculty of Law
Christopher Parsons, Post-doctoral Fellow, Citizens Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs
Moderator:
Simon Stern, Associate Professor and Co-Director, Centre for Innovation Law & Policy, Faculty of Law

Clinic Applications Deadline
2014-07-07
CLINICAL LEGAL EDUCATION: DAVID ASPER CENTRE FOR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS (LAW391H1F) FALL 2013
CLINICAL LEGAL EDUCATION: HALF TERM CLINIC – WINTER 2014
University of Toronto, Faculty of Law students wishing to apply for these courses must email a 1-2 page statement of interest to Cheryl Milne, cheryl.milne@utoronto.ca by July 7, 2014. Please indicate the following:
(a) previous upper-year courses in constitutional law or human rights law or experience that you consider to be equivalent (note pre/co-requisite for half-term clinic);
(b) indicators of academic, analytical and research and writing ability, which may include grades in related classes;
(c) any experience in human rights or constitutional issues;
(d) any experience with lawyering or advocacy;
(e) why you wish to enroll in the Clinic.
Successful applicants will be notified of admission in time for course registration prior to July 14, 2013.

Foreign Relations Law
2014-09-12 12:30 - 14:00
Campbell McLachlan, Q.C. Victoria University of Wellington Foreign Relations Law
Reviewer/Discussant:
Stephen Toope
Friday, September 12, 2014
12:30 – 2:00
Solarium (room FA2), Falconer Hall
84 Queen’s Park
What legal principles govern the external exercise of the public power of states within common law legal systems? Foreign Relations Law tackles three fundamental issues: the distribution of the foreign relations power between the or¬gans of government; the impact of the foreign relations power on individual rights; and the treatment of the foreign state within the municipal legal system. Focusing on the four Anglo-Commonwealth states (the United Kingdom, Aus¬tralia, Canada and New Zealand), McLachlan examines the interaction between public international law and national law and demonstrates that the prime function of foreign relations law is not to exclude foreign affairs from legal regulation, but to allocate jurisdiction and determine applicable law in cases involving the external exercise of the public power of states: between the organs of the state; amongst the national legal systems of different states; and between the national and the international legal systems.
Campbell McLachlan QC is Professor of International Law at Victoria University of Wellington. He is a New Zealand Law Foundation International Research Fel¬low and sometime Visiting Fellow at All Souls Col¬lege, Oxford. He has been President of the Australian and New Zealand Society of International Law and taught at The Hague Academy of International Law. He is a member of Essex Court Chambers (London) and Bankside Chambers (Auckland & Singapore).
Stephen Toope recently stepped down after eight years as President and Vice-Chancellor of UBC. In January, he will become Director of the Munk School of Global Affairs at U of T. He previously served as Dean of Law at McGill and President of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation. He has written extensively on the interplay between domestic and international law, especially in the area of human rights.
For more workshop information, please contact Nadia Gulezko at n.gulezko@utoronto.ca.

The Case Against 8 - Special Screening
2014-10-14 12:00 - 14:00
Battles Are Won Because They Are Fought!
The Case Against 8 is a behind-the-scenes look inside the historic case to overturn California’s ban on same-sex marriage. The high-profile trial first makes headlines with the unlikely pairing of Ted Olson and David Boies, political foes who last faced off as opposing attorneys in Bush v Gore. The film also follows the plaintiffs, two gay couples who find their families at the centre of the same-sex marriage controversy. Five years in the making, this is the story of how they took the first federal marriage equality lawsuit to the US Supreme Court.
Co-sponsored with Out in Law, and the International Human Rights Program.
Event date: Tuesday, October 14, 2014, from 12:10 PM to 2:00 PM
Location: Alumni Hall (VC 112), Victoria College, University of Toronto
View the Event Poster HERE.

Deadline: Call for Papers October 15, 2014
2014-10-15
The Interplay between Sections 7 and 15 of the Charter
Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, St. George Campus – February 27, 2015
The David Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights invites papers for its upcoming conference examining in detail the interplay between sections 7 and 15 of the Charter.
The Centre invites papers that stimulate and develop an ongoing exploration of the relationship between sections 7 and 15. Issues that can be addressed include:
• Is equality a principle of fundamental justice under section 7?
• How have the courts treated the two separate grounds for challenging government action?
• Are their strategic advantages to pleading both grounds or only one?
• How can different cases challenging the same law proceed differently based on the ground pleaded (e.g. Bedford and Downtown Eastside Sex Workers)?
• How does the relationship between the sections play out in circumstances such as mandatory minimum sentencing, challenges to the NCR provisions, human smuggling legislation?
Other conference topics may include issues such the role of individual choice in respect of both equality and liberty rights; harm or dignity as central themes; socio-economic rights or the rights of the poor; and arbitrariness as an element of the analysis under each section.
The papers will be utilized as the central themes on various panels across the one day conference and selected conference papers will be considered for publication as part of a special issue of the National Journal of Constitutional Law. Authors of papers chosen for presentation will be notified by November 1, 2014. Final (for the conference) papers are due by February 6, 2015.
The David Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights is a centre within the University of Toronto, Faculty of Law devoted to advocacy, research and education in the areas of constitutional rights in Canada. For more information about the Centre go to www.aspercentre.ca.
For those interested in participating, please send an abstract (max: 250 words) of your intended paper with a 1-2 paragraph biography to: Cheryl Milne at cheryl.milne@utoronto.ca
Deadline for Submissions: October 15, 2014

R v Kokopenace: The Panel
2014-10-15 12:30 - 14:00
The Aboriginal Law Program Speaker Series and the Constitutional Roundtable present:
“R v Kokopenace: The Panel”

Heard before the Supreme Court on October 6, 2014, R v Kokopenace is a case concerning the representativeness of jury panels in Ontario, particularly with respect to First Nations people living on-reserve and the role of s. 6(8) of the Juries Act. Issues in this case involve the constitutional right to an impartial jury, the meaning of representativeness, reasonable efforts required by the Crown to attain representativeness, and the appropriate remedy failing reasonable efforts. Join us for a panel of the parties (featured below), who will discuss their arguments to the Court and responses to questions posed by the Bench. Panelists include Brian Greenspan, Jessica Orkin, Cheryl Milne, Mary Eberts, Julian Roy and Christa Big Canoe.
View event poster here.
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
12:30-2pm
Alumni Hall, Victoria College, University of Toronto
Lunch provided. RSVP: n.gulezko@utoronto.ca

Wishful Thinking: The Supreme Court of Canada Looks at Canadian Democracy in the Charter Era
2014-11-18 12:30 - 14:00
Mary Eberts
Constitutional Litigator-in-Residence David Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights
University of Toronto
Moderator:
Yasmin Dawood
University of Toronto Faculty of Law
NOTE DATE CHANGE: Tuesday, November 18th 2014
12:30 – 2:00
Solarium (room FA2), Falconer Hall
84 Queen’s Park
MARY EBERTS received her legal education at Western and the Harvard Law School, and is a member of the Bar of Ontario. She joined a Bay St. law firm after several years of teaching at the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, and was a partner at that firm until opening a small firm specializing in Charter and public law litigation. From this base in Toronto, she has appeared as counsel to parties and interveners in the Supreme Court of Canada, Courts of Appeal and Superior Courts in Ontario and other provinces, the Federal Court and Court of Appeal, and before administrative tribunals and inquests in Ontario and other provinces. She was active in securing the present language of section 15 of the Charter, and was one of the founders of the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF). Since 1991, she has been litigation counsel to the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC). Mary held the Gordon Henderson Chair in Human Rights at the University of Ottawa in 2004-2005 and the Ariel Sallows Chair in Human Rights at the College of Law, University of Saskachewan in 2011 and 2012, where she taught courses in test case litigation. Recognition of her work includes the Law Society Medal, the Governor-General’s Award in Honour of the Persons’ Case, the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal and several honourary degrees.

A light lunch will be provided.

For more workshop information, please contact Nadia Gulezko at n.gulezko@utoronto.ca.

Constitutional Roundtable- Richard Stacey
2015-02-05 12:30 - 14:00
Constitutional Roundtable
presents
Richard Stacey, Faculty of Law University of Toronto
12:30 – 2:00 p.m.
Thursday, February 5, 2015
Room 101, Victoria College
Constitutional Law in the Absence of Constitution: Power in the Revolutionary Interregnum
In early February 2011, the Egyptian armed forces assumed executive control of Egypt and suspended the 1971 Constitution. A group of academics was mandated to propose amendments to the Constitution which, once approved by referendum on 19 March, became Egypt’s ‘interim’ Constitution. A process for the drafting and adoption of a new constitution was initiated, and the 2012 Constitution was adopted by referendum in December 2012. The armed forces again assumed executive control in July 2013 and suspended the 2012 Constitution, with another new constitution approved at referendum in January 2014. During both periods of military control, it remains unclear what replaced the suspended Constitution as the country’s foundational legal instrument. The Egyptian case is an example of constitutional interregnum, where political authority is exercised in the apparent absence of any formal constitutional foundation for political authority. This paper focuses on these periods of constitutional interregnum, exploring through a number of contemporary and historical cases how the gap left by the suspension of a constitution during a period of constitutional replacement is filled. The paper argues that even without a formal written constitution, a governing body’s authority and the lawfulness of its conduct depends on adherence to supra-constitutional principles derived from the commitment to constitutional democracy itself. Because a democratic constitution claims to speak for the whole people, the law in force during the constitutional interregnum and which governs the drafting of a new constitution must, at least, treat all and each of the people as equals and affirm a democratic right to representation in the drafting process. Any meaningful claim to be exercising authority in the name of the people – a claim to the authority of popular sovereignty – implies a commitment to a set of principles capable of constraining and directing the groups or individuals who exercise authority. These principles provide a constitutional foundation for government and for the legal system during the interregnum, ensuring both a benchmark for lawful government and legal continuity.
Richard Stacey served as Director of Research at the Center for Constitutional Transitions at NYU Law until joining the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto. He holds a PhD from New York University’s Institute for Law and Society and bachelors degrees in political theory and law from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. He served as law clerk to Justice Kate O’Regan and Justice Bess Nkabinde at the Constitutional Court of South Africa, and has taught courses in political theory, constitutional law, administrative law and human rights at the University of Witwatersrand, the University of Cape Town and the City University of New York Law School. In 2009 he was a research consultant during Kenya’s constitutional review process and has remained involved in constitutional transitions around the world, providing technical advice through the Center for Constitutional Transitions in Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt. His work has appeared in a number of journals of law and political theory, the multi-author reference work Constitutional Law of South Africa (of which he acts as co-editor), and in books on constitutional design, land reform, and women’s rights.
A light lunch will be provided.

Constitutional Roundtable - Richard Moon
2015-09-16 12:30 - 14:00
Constitutional Roundtable
presents
Richard Moon Law Faculty University of Windsor
12:30 – 2:00 p.m.
Wednesday, September 16, 2015
Solarium, Falconer Hall
Topic: The Myth of Balancing In Constitutional Rights Cases
Richard Moon teaches at the Law Faculty, University of Windsor. He is the author of The Constitutional Protection of Freedom of Expression (U of T Press, 2000) and Freedom of Conscience and Religion (Irwin Law, 2014), editor of Law and Religious Pluralism in Canada (UBC Press, 2008), co-editor of Religion and the Exercise of Public Authority (Hart Publications, forthcoming) and contributing editor to Canadian Constitutional Law (3rd and 4th editions) (Emond-Montgomery, 2006, 2010). He is currently completing work on a book entitled “Putting Faith in Hate: When Religion is the Source or Subject of Hate Speech”. He has been the recipient of both the law school and university-wide teaching awards as well as the Mary Lou Dietz Award for contributions to the advancement of equity in the university and community.

Constitutional Roundtable - Cristina Rodriguez
2015-10-14 12:30 - 14:00
Constitutional Roundtable
presents
Cristina Rodriguez, Leighton Homer Surbeck Professor of Law at  Yale Law School
12:30 – 2:00 p.m.
Wednesday, October 14, 2015
Location: Victoria College, Room VC 115
The Power to Enforce the Law: Presidential Power and American Immigration Policy
In November 2014, President Obama announced his intention to dramatically reshape immigration law through administrative channels. Together with relief policies announced in 2012, his initiatives would shield over half the population of unauthorized immigrants from removal and enable them to work in the United States. These events have drawn renewed attention to the President’s power to shape immigration law. They also have reignited a longstanding controversy about whether constitutional limits exist on a central source of executive authority: the power to enforce the law.
In using the Obama relief policies to explore these dynamics, we make two central claims. First, it is futile to try to constrain the enforcement power by tying it to a search for congressional enforcement priorities. Congress has no discernible priorities when it comes to a very wide swath of enforcement activity—a reality especially true for immigration law today. The immigration code has evolved over time into a highly reticulated statute through the work of numerous Congresses and political coalitions. The modern structure of immigration law also effectively delegates vast screening authority to the President. Interlocking historical, political, and legislative developments have opened a tremendous gap between the law on the books and the law on the ground. Under these conditions, there can be no meaningful search for congressionally preferred screening criteria. Far from reflecting a faithful agent framework, then, immigration enforcement more closely resembles a two-principals model of policymaking—one in which the Executive can and should help construct the domain of regulation through its independent judgments about how and when to enforce the law.
Second, when exploring limits on the enforcement power, we should focus not on who benefits from enforcement discretion but on how the Executive institutionalizes its discretion. The Obama relief initiatives are innovative: they bind the exercise of prosecutorial discretion to a more rule-like decision-making process, constrain the judgments of line-level officials by subjecting them to centralized supervision, and render the exercise of enforcement discretion far more transparent to the public than is customary. These efforts to better organize the enforcement bureaucracy ultimately advance core rule of law values without undermining deterrence or legal compliance, as some critics have worried. Moreover, while our focus on discretion’s institutionalization requires contextualized judgments that may rarely translate into clear doctrinal rules to govern the enforcement power, we believe it is generally unnecessary and unwise to use constitutional law to limit the President’s authority over how to organize the enforcement bureaucracy.
Cristina M. Rodríguez was appointed Professor of Law at Yale Law School in January 2013. From 2011-2013, she served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice, and from 2004-2012 she was on the faculty at the NYU School of Law. Professor Rodriguez also has been a non-resident fellow at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., a term member on the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Henry L. Stimson Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Before entering academia, she clerked for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge David S. Tatel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Professor Rodriguez’s fields of research and teaching include immigration law; constitutional law and theory; administrative law and process; language rights and language policy; and citizenship theory. Originally from San Antonio, Texas, she earned a B.A. in History from Yale College in 1995, a Master of Letters in Modern History in 1998 from Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes Scholar, and a J.D. from Yale Law School in 2000.

Constitutional Roundtable - Zaid Al-Ali
2015-10-30 12:30 - 14:00
Constitutional Roundtable
presents
Zaid Al-Ali, Law and Public Affairs Fellow at Princeton University
12:30 – 2:00 p.m.
Friday, October 30, 2015
Solarium, Falconer Hall

The Absence of Social Solidarity Amongst Arab Elites: Causes and Consequences of the Failure of post-2011 Constitutional Reform
Post-colonial constitutions in the Arab region were all based on the promise that they would correct the inequities of colonial rule with a new form of social justice. Virtually all included references to political accountability, independence of the judiciary, as well as long lists of political, social and economic rights for all. The 2011 uprisings demonstrated the extent to which these constitutions failed to achieve that promise, and the reform efforts that followed were an important opportunity to correct the institutional flaws that had become so apparent. This paper will first demonstrate that the post-uprising reform efforts make close to no progress in comparison to the texts that they were designed to replace, particularly in so far as social justice is concerned. Secondly, it will demonstrate that those few elements of progress that were made were the result of generally undemocratic processes (in the traditional sense). Thirdly, the paper will explore the processes through which Arab countries reformed their constitutions, with a view to explaining why reliance on direct elections and other traditional democratic mechanisms did not generally lead to improved social justice for those individuals and communities who commenced the uprisings in the first place.
Zaid Al-Ali is Senior Adviser on Constitution Building for International IDEA and is also a fellow and visiting lecturer at Princeton University’s Law and Public Affairs Program. He has been practicing law since 1999, specializing in international commercial arbitration and comparative constitutional law. He has law degrees from Harvard Law School, the Université de Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne) and King’s College London. From 2005 to 2010, he was a legal adviser to the United Nations focusing on constitutional, parliamentary and judicial reform in Iraq. Since the beginning of 2011, he has been working on constitutional reform throughout the Arab region, in particular in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Yemen. He has published widely on Iraq and on constitutional law. His book on the post-2003 transition in Iraq (The Struggle for Iraq’s Future) was published by Yale University Press in February 2014

Morris A. Gross Lecture - the Honourable George R. Strathy, Chief Justice of Ontario
2017-01-19 16:30 - 18:00
Judicial Courage and Restraint in Canadian Constitutional History
The Morris A. Gross Memorial Lecture was established in memory of the late Morris A. Gross by the law firm Minden Gross LLP and by members of his family, friends and professional associates. The intention of the lectureship is to, every two years, bring to the Faculty of Law a distinguished scholar or a member of the practicing bar or bench for discussion with the student body and Faculty, and to deliver the bi-annual Morris A. Gross Memorial Lecture.
This year, the Morris A. Gross Memorial Lecture will be delivered by the Honourable George R. Strathy, Chief Justice of Ontario, as an introduction to the David Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights’ 2017 Constitutional Roundtable series, which will be in celebration of Canada’s Sesquicentennial.
The Honourable George R. Strathy was appointed Chief Justice of Ontario June 13, 2014. He was appointed to the Court of Appeal for Ontario on April 25, 2013. For the previous five years he served as a judge of the Superior Court of Justice in the Toronto Region, where he presided over civil, class action and criminal matters. Chief Justice Strathy received a Bachelor of Arts degree from McGill University in 1970 and was awarded a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship to pursue graduate studies. He received a Master of Arts degree in International Relations at the University of Toronto in 1971. He attended the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto and was awarded the Gold Medal in 1974.
In practice, he specialized in civil litigation, with particular emphasis in Maritime and Transportation Law. He was a partner in the firms of MacKinnon, McTaggart, Campbell Godfrey and Lewtas, and Fasken Martineau Walker before establishing his own firm in 1991. The firm ultimately became Strathy & Isaacs. He was active in a number of professional organizations, including the Canadian Bar Association (Chair of the Young Lawyers’ Division and member of the Executive Committee), the Canadian Maritime Law Association (Vice-President), the Canadian Association of Maritime Arbitrations (Vice-President), and the Canadian Association of Average Adjusters (Chairman). He is the author of two books on marine insurance in Canada as well as numerous papers and articles.
Chief Justice Strathy is married to Elyse Strathy. They have five daughters and seven grandchildren. He is an enthusiastic, but not particularly talented, squash player, golfer and tandem cyclist.

Constitutional Roundtable: Alistair Price
2017-11-29 12:30 - 14:00 | Jackman Law Building Room J140, 78 Queen’s Park
Asper Centre Constitutional Roundtable
presents
ALISTAIR PRICE
Associate Professor in Law, University of Cape Town
“The Relationship between Constitutional and Tort Damages for State Failures to Protect in Canada, England, and South Africa”
Moderated by:
Assistant Professor Richard Stacey
University of Toronto Faculty of Law
Wednesday, November 29, 2017
12:30 – 2:00
Solarium (Room FA2), Falconer Hall
84 Queen’s Park
Canada, England, and South Africa face a similar challenge arising from their shared Diceyan heritage in public law. On the one hand, public bodies and officials in these jurisdictions are bound by the ordinary law of the land applied by ordinary courts, including the private law of tort. On the other hand, the state also owes positive obligations to provide a range of services and protections to members of the public that individuals do not bear, arising from constitutional and administrative law. Where the state breaches its distinctive responsibilities by failing to protect an individual, who as a result is harmed and seeks recompense, a question arises as to the proper law to apply. What then is the relationship between the state’s duties and liabilities in tort and constitutional law? The three legal systems under consideration have answered this question in subtly different ways. The English courts have been unwilling to adjust private law to take account of the state’s special duties. In tort law, public defendants are held to the same standards as private individuals, who are liable for omissions only exceptionally. State liability for breach of positive duties to protect human rights arises instead under the Human Rights Act 1998, where courts have a discretion to award compensation alongside declarations and other public-law remedies. South Africa, by contrast, has to a large extent fused private law and constitutional law in this context. Novel private law duties and liabilities may be grounded on the need to hold the state accountable for breaching positive constitutional duties. As a result, the standalone remedy of constitutional damages is comparatively underdeveloped. Canada, it appears to me, has avoided both extremes: the courts have developed a narrow range of uniquely public duties of care in tort while also recognising that constitutional damages may be just and appropriate to compensate loss, vindicate rights, or deter Charter violations where tort (and other) remedies are insufficient. These varying responses to a shared challenge bring the following issue into sharp focus: to what extent can and should tort law be instrumentalised to serve the social goals of constitutional law?
Alistair Price is an Associate Professor in the Department of Private Law at the University of Cape Town (UCT). He received a BBusSc (distinction) and LLB (magna cum laude) from UCT, a Bachelor of Civil Law (distinction) from University College, Oxford, and a PhD from Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. His thesis was entitled The Influence of Human Rights on State Negligence Liability in England and South Africa and, in 2014, he was awarded a prestigious Yorke Prize by the Cambridge Law Faculty for making ‘a substantial contribution’ to knowledge. Before his appointment at UCT, he worked as a research clerk for Chief Justice Pius Langa at the Constitutional Court of South Africa and as a research assistant to Professor Reinhard Zimmermann at the Max Planck Institute for Private Law in Hamburg, and taught tort law for several colleges at Cambridge University. Research interests: the law of obligations (primarily delict/tort); constitutional and administrative law; comparative law.
A light lunch will be provided.
For more information, please contact Nadia Gulezko at n.gulezko@utoronto.ca.

Asper Centre Immigration & Refugee Law student working group presents Senator Ratna Omidvar
2018-03-07 12:30 - 14:00 | J140 Jackman Law Building, 78 Queen's Park Cres, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 2C5, Canada
The Asper Centre’s Immigration & Refugee Law Student Working Group is honoured to host Senator Ratna Omidvar for a lunchtime seminar on Wednesday March 7, 2018 at 12h30. All students are welcome and encouraged to attend. Senator Omidvar will share her personal story of coming to Canada from India, and she will discuss issues related to inclusion and diversity in Canada, immigration and refugee law and policy, the Charter and progressive law reform. She will then take questions from the audience. This will be a great opportunity to get some insight from her inspiring career.
Light lunch will be provided
Email tal.schreier@utoronto.ca for further information.
About Senator Omidvar:

The Honourable Ratna Omidvar, C.M., O.Ont.
Senator for Ontario, The Senate of Canada
Ratna Omidvar is an internationally recognized voice on migration, diversity and inclusion. In April 2016, Prime Minister Trudeau appointed Ms. Omidvar to the Senate of Canada as an independent Senator representing Ontario. As a member of the Senate’s Independent Senators Group she holds a leadership position as the Scroll Manager.
Senator Omidvar is the founding Executive Director and currently a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Global Diversity Exchange (GDX), Ted Rogers School of Management, Ryerson University. GDX is a think-and-do tank on diversity, migration and inclusion that connects local experience and ideas with global networks. Previously, Senator Omidvar was the President of Maytree, where she played a lead role in local, national and international efforts to promote the integration of immigrants.
Senator Omidvar is the current Co-Chair of the Global Future Council on Migration hosted by the World Economic Forum and serves as a Councillor on the World Refugee Council. She is also a director at the Environics Institute, and Samara Canada. Senator Omidvar is the Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council’s Chair Emerita and was formerly the Chair of Lifeline Syria.
Senator Omidvar is co-author of Flight and Freedom: Stories of Escape to Canada (2015), an Open Book Toronto best book of 2015 and one of the Toronto Star‘s top five good reads from Word on the Street. She is also a contributor to The Harper Factor (2016) and co-editor of Five Good Ideas: Practical Strategies for Non-Profit Success (2011). Senator Omidvar received an Honorary Degree, Doctor of Laws, York University in 2012.
Senator Omidvar was appointed to the Order of Ontario in 2005 and became a Member of the Order of Canada in 2011, with both honours recognizing her advocacy work on behalf of immigrants and devotion to reducing inequality in Canada. In 2014, she received the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in recognition of her contribution to the advancement of German-Canadian relations.

Asper Centre's 10th Anniversary Celebration
2018-10-17 17:00 - 19:00 | Jackman Law Building, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, 78 Queens Park
View the event photo gallery
Read our “Celebrating 10 Years” Magazine
Read the Asper Centre’s 2017 – 2018 annual report
Watch the video of the event on YouTube
It’s been a full decade since the Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights opened its doors!
To celebrate 10 years of dedicated advocacy, education and research, former Supreme Court of Canada Justice Thomas Cromwell will moderate a conversation between Mary Eberts and Joseph Arvay, two of our former Constitutional Litigators-in-Residence
on October 17, 2018 at 5:00pm
Reception to follow
The Honourable Thomas Albert Cromwell, C.C. received law degrees from Queen’s and Oxford, practised law in Kingston and Toronto and taught law at Dalhousie University. During his time at Dalhousie, he was active as a labour arbitrator and served as Vice-chair of the Nova Scotia Labour Relations Board. After serving as Executive Legal Officer to the Chief Justice Canada from 1992 – 1995, he was appointed a judge of the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal in 1997, serving there until his appointment as a judge of the Supreme Court of Canada in 2008. Mr. Cromwell was the first recipient of the Canadian Bar Association’s Louis St. Laurent Award of Excellence and is an honorary fellow of Exeter College, Oxford and of the American College of Trial Lawyers. A holder of four honorary doctorates in law, he has also had an award established in his name at the Queen’s Faculty of Law, The Honourable Thomas Cromwell Award for Public Service. He is the chair of the Action Committee on Access to Justice in Civil and Family Matters, a director of the International Centre for Criminal Law Reform and Criminal Justice and of Access Pro Bono British Columbia. He retired from the Supreme Court of Canada on September 1st, 2016. A member of the Bars of Nova Scotia, Ontario and British Columbia, he now serves as senior counsel with Borden Ladner Gervais LLP in Ottawa and Vancouver. He is a recipient of the Canadian Institute for the Administration of Justice’s Justice Medal and of the Medal of the International Society for the Reform of Criminal Law. In 2017, was named a Companion of the Order of Canada for his “illustrious service as a Supreme Court justice, and for his leadership in improving access to justice for all Canadians.” In 2018, he was named by the Canadian Lawyer Magazine as of one Canada’s most influential lawyers.

Mary Eberts received her legal education at Western and the Harvard Law School, and is a member of the Bar of Ontario. She joined a Bay St. law firm after several years of teaching at the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, and was a partner at that firm until opening a small firm specializing in Charter and public law litigation. From this base in Toronto, she has appeared as counsel to parties and interveners in the Supreme Court of Canada, Courts of Appeal and Superior Courts in Ontario and other provinces, the Federal Court and Court of Appeal, and before administrative tribunals and inquests in Ontario and other provinces. She was active in securing the present language of section 15 of the Charter, and was one of the founders of the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF). Since 1991, she has been litigation counsel to the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC). Mary held the Gordon Henderson Chair in Human Rights at the University of Ottawa in 2004-2005 and the Ariel Sallows Chair in Human Rights at the College of Law, University of Saskachewan in 2011 and 2012, where she taught courses in test case litigation. Mary was the Constitutional Litigator in Residence in 2014-15 and a McMurty Fellow at Osgoode Hall Law School in 2015-16. Recognition of her work includes the Law Society Medal, the Governor-General’s Award in Honour of the Persons’ Case, the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal and several honourary degrees. In 2017, Mary was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. She is currently a Senior Fellow at Massey College, University of Toronto.
Joseph Arvay, who co-founded the firm of Arvay Finlay Barristers in 1990 with offices in Vancouver and Victoria, is recognized as one of this country’s most highly respected lawyers. His practice emphasizes constitutional and administrative law matters, as well as Indigenous rights litigation.. He has been counsel in scores of important Supreme Court of Canada cases. His exceptional commitment to human rights in this country has been recognized with numerous awards and tributes. He was awarded honourary doctorates of law from both York University and the University of Victoria. In 2017 he was named an Officer of the Order of Canada as well as a Member of the Order of British Columbia.

Asper Centre & IHRP student working group Information and Sign-up session
2019-09-10 12:30 - 14:00 | J250 Jackman Law Building
For current JD students at UTLaw only

JD students in all years can volunteer with one of the Asper Centre student working groups, or IHRP student working groups that are led by upper year law students. Working groups draft policy briefs, organize workshops, and conduct research on emerging constitutional/charter rights issues and international human rights topics.
This year, the Asper Centre is pleased to support the following 4 working groups:

I. Right to Equality in Accommodation: Access to adequate, appropriate, and affordable housing is a growing problem for many people in Ontario, especially those from marginalized groups. Low vacancy rates make affordable housing more difficult to find, and also increase the potential for housing discrimination, because landlords can be highly selective. Section 21.1 of the Ontario Human Rights Code states that the right to equal treatment with respect to accommodation does not apply where an accommodation is in a dwelling where the occupants share a kitchen or bathroom with the landlord or their family. This means that Ontarians who would otherwise be protected from discrimination based on code grounds are not. This working group will be assisting CERA (the Centre for Equality Rights in Accommodation) by preparing a research memo on the exemption of shared residential accommodation from the human rights code, which will support CERA’s future goal of challenging the constitutionality of S. 21.1 of the Ontario Human Rights Code.
II. Sex Workers Rights: The Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act, SC 2014, c 25 [PCEPA] was introduced in response to the Supreme Court of Canada’s 2013 decision in Bedford v Canada, where the Court found that three Criminal Code provisions which criminalized components of sex work unjustifiably violated section 7 of the Charter and struck them down. The PCEPA includes new provisions that criminalize the purchase of sexual services in Canada and other related activities such as advertising the sale of sexual services. Sex worker organizations and constitutional experts believe that these new provisions remain unconstitutional because many of the harms identified in Bedford continue to be perpetuated. The continuation of these harms under a new legal context means that a new constitutional analysis is necessary. This working group will develop a comprehensive memo that provides information that could assist in a constitutional challenge of the post-Bedford sex work laws by key sex-worker organizations in Canada.
III. Refugee and Immigration Law: Recently, there have been incidents in which CBSA (Canadian Border Services Agency) officers have randomly conducted street checks in minority-populated Toronto neighbourhoods. In light of the United States ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) raids and immigration camps, these events are extremely concerning. Thus, HALCO (the HIV/AIDS Legal Aid Clinic of Ontario) is looking to collaborate with our longstanding Refugee and Immigration working group to create a plain-language public legal information brochure detailing the powers of a CBSA agent and an individual’s rights when interacting with them. The working group will research and develop the brochure under the supervision of a staff immigration lawyer at HALCO.
IV. Climate Justice: November 18th, 2019 is ‘Student Law Clinic Global Day of Action for Climate Justice.’ The event organizers (GAJE, the Global Alliance for Justice Education) have asked participating student legal clinics to choose a project related to air pollution and complete it by or on November 18th to mark the date. This student working group will prepare an opinion piece on the Ontario government’s potential constitutional obligations with respect to regulating air pollution in Chemical Valley. The OpEd will urge the provincial government to honour its commitment to evaluating the impact of the new regulations in the winter of 2019-2020, and to recognize the role it can and should play in protecting environmental rights. In the second term, the group will have the opportunity to brainstorm and work together on another climate justice/constitutional law related project.

Learn more at O-week Clubs Fair (September 5th) and at the Information & Sign Up session on Tuesday September 10, 2019 at 12:30 in J250 (Moot Court).
PLEASE NOTE: to be eligible to sign up for one of the above working groups, you must attend the September 10th Information & Sign-up Session.

For more information, please email: tal.schreier@utoronto.ca

Constitutional Roundtable with Professor Ran Hirschl
2020-11-12 12:45 - 14:00
“City, State: Constitutionalism and the Megacity” by Ran Hirschl

The Asper Centre is pleased to present a Constitutional Roundtable on Thursday November, 12 2020 at 12:45p.m. with Professor Ran Hirschl about his new book: City, State: Constitutionalism and the Megacity (Oxford: 2020).
This book:

Addresses a major scholarly gap – the great constitutional silence concerning urban agglomeration and the rise of megacities.
Provides a detailed, first-of-its-kind, comparative analysis of the constitutional status of cities across time and place.
Probes the origins and consequences of the constitutional (dis)empowerment of the metropolis.
Advances novel arguments for granting the metropolis adequate constitutional standing while mitigating the urban/rural divide.

Ran Hirschl is Professor of Political Science & Law at the University of Toronto. As of 2016, he holds the Alexander von Humboldt Professorship in Comparative Constitutionalism, having been granted a coveted AvH International Research Award (the most highly-endowed research award in Germany) by the Humboldt Foundation. From 2006 to 2016 he held the Canada Research Chair in Constitutionalism, Democracy and Development at the University of Toronto. In 2014, he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (FRSC)–the highest academic accolade in that country. The official citation describes him as “one of the world’s leading scholars of comparative constitutional law, courts and jurisprudence.”
Many of the themes of this book can be found in this recent paper by Prof Hirschl: Cities in National Constitutions:
Northern Stagnation, Southern Innovation.

VIEW RECORDING of the WEBINAR HERE

Charter @ 40 Webinar
2022-10-21 12:00 - 14:00 | Online Zoom Webinar
Forty years ago, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was adopted with the signing of the Proclamation of the Constitution Act, 1982. The Charter protects the rights and freedoms of all Canadians and is built on the shared values of equality, justice and freedom. This year also marks the 40th anniversary of Section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, which recognizes and affirms Indigenous and Treaty rights of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis.
On October 21, 2022 at noon, please join us for a stimulating discussion (via Zoom Webinar), hosted by the Asper Centre’s Executive Director Cheryl Milne, who will be joined by 9 of the Centre’s past Constitutional Litigators in Residence, for a reflection on the Charter’s anniversary – how far have we come in the last 40 years to uphold the Charter’s rights and values and what we can hope for in the next 40 years?
The following esteemed guests will take part in this special conversation:

Raj Anand
Constitutional Litigator-in-Residence, 2015
Senior partner at Weir Foulds LLP, focused on litigation, administrative and human rights law. Former Chief Commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission and Bencher for the Law Society of Ontario.
Justice Breese Davies
Constitutional Litigator-in-Residence, 2017
Appointed to the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in 2018. Prior to her appointment, she maintained a criminal, constitutional, and human rights law practice.
Mary Eberts
Constitutional Litigator-in-Residence, 2014
Canadian constitutional lawyer and human rights advocate. Recipient of Order of Canada. Influential in creation of Section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and founding member of Women’s Legal Action and Education Fund (LEAF).
Nader Hasan
Constitutional Litigator-in-Residence, 2020
Partner at Stockwood LLP, Nader practises criminal, regulatory and constitutional law at the trial and appellate levels.
Janet E. Minor
Constitutional Litigator-in-Residence, 2016
Former General Counsel in the Constitutional Law Branch of the Ministry of the Attorney General of Ontario and former Treasurer of the Law Society of Ontario.
Justice John Norris
Constitutional Litigator-in-Residence, 2013
Appointed to the Federal Court of Canada in 2018. Prior to his appointment, he maintained a trial and appellate practice in the areas of criminal, constitutional and national security.
Jessica Orkin
Constitutional Litigator-in-Residence, 2022
Partner at Goldblatt Partners, with a broad litigation practice including criminal, civil and administrative law matters, with an emphasis on constitutional rights, human rights, and Aboriginal rights.
Jonathan Rudin
Constitutional Litigator-in-Residence, 2021
Program Director and senior lawyer at Aboriginal Legal Services, Jonathan has written and spoken widely on issues of Indigenous justice.
Susan Ursel
Constitutional Litigator-in-Residence, 2018
Senior partner with the law firm of Ursel Phillips Fellows Hopkinson LLP. Labour and human rights lawyer and frequent speaker, teacher and writer on human rights and Charter issues.

Register for this virtual event at charterat40.eventbrite.com
All welcome!

Asper Centre Panel on Indigenous Child Welfare & Self-Governance
2024-10-31 12:30 - 14:00 | J130 Jackman law building, 78 Queen's Park, University of Toronto, Faculty of Law, Jackman Law Building Atrium, Toronto, Canada
Asper Centre Constitutional Roundtable Presents a Panel on
Indigenous Child Welfare & Self-Governance
with Prof John Borrows (the Loveland Chair of Indigenous Law, UofT Law), Prof Maggie Blackhawk (NYU Law) & Sara Mainville (JFK Law LLP)
Moderated by Asper Centre ED, Cheryl Milne
Thursday, October 31, 2024 at 12:30pm – 2:00pm (in person or virtual)
Room J130, Jackman Law Building, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto
All are welcome * Light lunch will be provided * Registration Required
REGISTER HERE
Background
Over the past few years, both Canadian and American courts have decided cases that impact Indigenous Nations’ ability to care for Indigenous children. Both countries have histories and present realities of removing Indigenous children from Indigenous homes, thereby jeopardizing the safety of Indigenous children and undermining Indigenous Nations’ sovereignty and governance. With this context in mind, the recent Supreme Court of the United States Haaland v Brackeen decision, and the Supreme Court of Canada Attorney General of Québec, et al. v. Attorney General of Canada, et al decisions are of paramount importance to Indigenous sovereignty and safety. Both cases address federal legislation introduced to address the historic and ongoing harms caused by the apprehension of Indigenous children by settler governments. In both countries, these decisions also demonstrate how child welfare is closely connected to Indigenous assertions of and rights to self-government.
The Asper Centre Indigenous Rights Working Group is pleased to present a panel event to unpack the significant legal issues and potential future implications of these cases, with a focus on the Quebec Reference case and its meaning for the interpretation of Section 35 of the Constitution and Indigenous self-governance.
Panelists
Maggie Blackhawk (Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe) is professor of law at NYU and a prize-winning scholar and teacher of federal Indian law, constitutional law, and legislation. Blackhawk was awarded the American Society for Legal History’s William Nelson Cromwell Article Prize and her research has been published or is forthcoming in the Harvard Law Review, Stanford Law Review, Yale Law Journal, Supreme Court Review, American Historical Review, Legislative Studies Quarterly, Journal of the Early Republic, and Journal of Politics. Much of her scholarship explores the relationship between law and power, with a particular emphasis on the ways that subordinated peoples leverage law to shift power to their communities—especially outside of rights and courts-based frameworks. Her recent projects have focused on the laws and legal histories of American colonialism and the central role of the American colonial project, including the resistance and advocacy of Native and other colonized peoples, in shaping the constitutional law and history of the United States.
Sara Mainville is a partner at JFK Law LLP and has been a member of the Ontario bar since 2005 and she is a member of the BC bar (2022) with specific matter approvals to practice in Nunavut and Quebec. Sara has a Management/Public Administration degree (Lethbridge) and a Bachelor of Laws from Queen’s University. She has a LLM from the University of Toronto and an Advanced Negotiations certificate from Harvard University, and a Certificate in Entertainment Law (Osgoode PD). In 2014, Sara was elected as Chief of Couchiching First Nation after the sudden death of her friend and mentor, Chief Chuck McPherson. Sara uses this experience as a former Chief to help leadership work past difficult issues, within Indigenous forms of dispute resolution, and walk the community through processes to encourage discourse and grassroots solutions to long-held problems. Sara has completed Advanced Negotiations training at Harvard University and dispute resolution, legislative drafting, and mediation training at professional institutes in order to advance her clients’ long held goals for self-determination and truer treaty partnerships in Canada. Sara is generally seen as a subject-matter expert about Crown-Indigenous relations, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Treaty 3, and Anishinaabe Inakonigewin. However, Sara sees herself as a life-long learner willing to meet in community, read voraciously, and listen intently to better understand Indigenous knowledge systems across Canada.
John Borrows B.A., M.A., J.D., LL.M. (Toronto), Ph.D. (Osgoode Hall Law School), LL.D. (Hons., Dalhousie, York, SFU, Queen’s & Law Society of Ontario), D.H.L, (Toronto), F.R.S.C., O.C., is the Loveland Chair in Indigenous Law at the University of Toronto Law School. His publications include, Recovering Canada; The Resurgence of Indigenous Law (Donald Smiley Award best book in Canadian Political Science, 2002), Canada’s Indigenous Constitution (Canadian Law and Society Best Book Award 2011), Drawing Out Law: A Spirit’s Guide (2010), Freedom and Indigenous Constitutionalism ((Donald Smiley Award best book in Canadian Political Science, 2016), The Right Relationship (with Michael Coyle, ed.), Resurgence and Reconciliation (with Michael Asch, Jim Tully, eds.), Law’s Indigenous Ethics (2020 Best subsequent Book Award from Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, 2020 W. Wes Pue Best book award from the Canadian Law and Society Association). He is the 2017 Killam Prize winner in Social Sciences and the 2019 Molson Prize Winner from the Canada Council for the Arts, the 2020 Governor General’s Innovation Award, and the 2021 Canadian Bar Association President’s Award winner. He was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2020. John is a member of the Chippewa of the Nawash First Nation in Ontario, Canada.
REGISTER HERE
