Is none still too many?

Faculty of Law, University of Toronto
Constitutional Roundtable
presents
James Hathaway, University of Michigan Law School
Audrey Macklin, University of Toronto Faculty of Law
Lorne Waldman, Lorne Waldman and Associates

Is None Still Too Many? Asylum Seekers on Boats, Then and Now, Here and There

12:30 – 2:00
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Classroom C – Flavelle House – 78 Queen’s Park

James C. Hathaway, the William Hearn Professor and Dean of the Melbourne Law School, is a leading authority on international refugee law whose work is regularly cited by the most senior courts of the common law world. He is also Senior Visiting Research Associate at Oxford University’s Refugee Studies Programme, and President of the Cuenca Colloquium on International Refugee Law. Hathaway was previously the James E. and Sarah A. Degan Professor and founding Director of the Program in Refugee and Asylum Law at the University of Michigan, USA (1998-2008), Professor of Law and Associate Dean of the Osgoode Hall Law School, Canada (1984-1998), Counsel on Special Legal Assistance for the Disadvantaged to the Government of Canada (1983-1984), and Professeur adjoint de droit at the Université de Moncton, Canada (1980-1983). He has been appointed a visiting professor at the Universities of Cairo, California, Macerata, and Tokyo and has provided training on refugee law to academic, non-governmental, and official audiences around the world. Hathaway’s publications include more than sixty journal articles, a leading treatise on the refugee definition (The Law of Refugee Status, 1991), an interdisciplinary study of models for refugee law reform (Reconceiving International Refugee Law, 1997) and, most recently, The Rights of Refugees under International Law (2005) – the first comprehensive analysis of the human rights of refugees set by the UN Refugee Convention, all linked to key international human rights norms and applied to the world’s most difficult protection challenges. He serves as Counsel on International Protection to both the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants and Asylum Access, a non-profit organization committed to delivering innovative legal aid to refugees in the global South. Hathaway also sits on the editorial boards of the Journal of Refugee Studies and the Immigration and Nationality Law Reports and directs the Refugee Caselaw Site (www.refugeecaselaw.org), a website that collects, indexes, and publishes leading judgments on refugee law.

Audrey Macklin is a professor at the Faculty of Law. She holds law degrees from Yale and Toronto, and a bachelor of science degree from Alberta. After graduating from Toronto, she served as law clerk to Mme Justice Bertha Wilson at the Supreme Court of Canada. She was appointed to the faculty of Dalhousie Law School in 1991, promoted to Associate Professor 1998, moved to the University of Toronto in 2000, and became a full professor in 2009. While teaching at Dalhousie, she also served as a member of the Immigration and Refugee Board. Professor Macklin’s teaching areas include criminal law, administrative law, and immigration and refugee law. Her research and writing interests include transnational migration, citizenship, forced migration, feminist and cultural analysis, and human rights. She has published on these subjects in journals such as Refuge and Canadian Woman Studies, and in collections of essays such as The Security of Freedom: Essays on Canada’s Anti-Terrorism Bill and Engendering Forced Migration.

Lorne Waldman LL.B. (Osgoode), LL.M (Toronto) practices exclusively in the area of immigration and refugee law, and has done so since 1979. Mr. Waldman has appeared very frequently at all levels of the courts in Canada, including the Supreme Court of Canada, the Federal Court and the Federal Court of Appeal where he has argued many of the leading cases in immigration and refugee law. Mr. Waldman successfully acted as co counsel for Maher Arar at the public inquiry into the circumstances behind his deportation from the United States to Syria where he was subjected to brutal torture. The Public Inquiry concluded that there was absolutely no evidence that Mr. Arar was involved in any illegal activities. He acted for the Canadian Bar Association at the recent Supreme Court hearings in the case of Charkaoui where the Supreme Court struck down the Security Certificates. He has also appeared for the CBA as one of the spokesperson on national security issues at hearings into the Review of the Anti Terrorism Legislation and assisted in the writing of the CBA briefs on the Anti Terrorism Legislation to the Parliamentary And Senate Committees. Mr. Waldman has appeared as a witness before the House of Commons and Senate on issues of immigration and refugee law frequently and is a frequent commentator on immigration and refugee issues in the media. He is the author and editor of Immigration Law and Practice, a two volume, loose leaf service published by Butterworth’s Canada in 1992, and two other works: The Definition of Convention Refugee published by Butterworths in 2001 and Canadian Immigration and Refugee Practice, first published in October of 2005 by Butterworths. It is published annually with updates to case digests and commentary. In August, 2007 he was awarded the Louis St Laurent award by the CBA for his contribution to the legal profession.