Constitutional Litigator in Residence

Constitutional Litigator in Residence for 2022

Posted on by Tal Schreier

Jessica Orkin has been selected as the Asper Centre Constitutional-Litigator-in-Residence for Fall 2022.

Jessica Orkin is a partner at Goldblatt Partners LLP in Toronto and leads the firm’s Aboriginal law practice. She has a broad litigation practice including criminal, civil and administrative law matters, with an emphasis on constitutional, Aboriginal rights and access to information law matters.

In her Aboriginal law practice, Jessica provides legal and strategic advice and advocacy to Indigenous governments, communities, organizations and individuals to advance and protect their rights and interests in interactions with governments, industry, the justice system and civil society. Her practice includes complex Aboriginal title, Aboriginal rights and treaty rights litigation; environmental assessment and regulatory processes relating to mining, infrastructure and energy projects; environmental stewardship and natural resource management, including negotiations with industry proponents; and advice on the constitutional duty to consult and accommodate. Jessica has particular expertise in relation to expressive and protest rights, including those of Indigenous individuals in the context of land and resource disputes. She also has a particular interest in systemic issues relating to the overrepresentation of Indigenous individuals within the criminal justice and carceral systems.

Jessica appears at all levels of court, including the Court of Appeal for Ontario and the Supreme Court of Canada. She has been recognized by Best Lawyers in Canada in the categories of Aboriginal law and Administrative & Public Law, and by Lexpert in the category of Aboriginal law.

Jessica received her law degree from the University of Toronto. She also holds an M.Phil. degree in Development Studies from the University of Oxford, and a bachelor of arts and sciences from McMaster University. She was called to the Ontario Bar in 2006, after clerking at the Federal Court of Appeal.

View the Asper Centre’s past Constitutional Litigators-in-Residence HERE.

Meet Jonathan Rudin, the Asper Centre’s New Constitutional Litigator-in-Residence

Posted on by Tal Schreier

 

By Leila Far Soares 

Jonathan Rudin, program director at Aboriginal Legal Services and experienced litigator, will be co-teaching the Asper Centre’s Clinic course as the new Constitutional Litigator-in-Residence for Fall 2021. Mr. Rudin has written widely and spoken passionately on the topic of aboriginal justice and has advocated countless cases before all-levels of Canadian court. We are very fortunate to have him join our faculty at the law school this coming term.  

Mr. Rudin’s interest in the law emanated from a desire to influence social change, a desire which served as the driving force behind his motivation to attend law school. Yet, for just over a decade after graduating and getting called to the bar, he did not work directly in law. Instead, Mr. Rudin opted to work with social justice organizations, where he could focus on fundraising and organizational development: “I wanted to get involved with things that I felt were working more broadly and systemically to address issues,” rather than “putting a Band-Aid on a gaping wound.”  

However, this social justice work ultimately led Mr. Rudin to a career in litigation. His involvement with several indigenous organizations coupled with the knowledge he gained while completing his Masters in Constitutional Law at Osgoode Hall, piqued his interest in indigenous justice and culminated in an opportunity to work for Aboriginal Legal Services. ALS marked the beginning of Mr. Rudin’s engagement with constitutional litigation, allowing him to intervene in a number of significant and noteworthy cases. Of these, Mr. Rudin described R v Gladue and R v Ipeelee as two cases which stand out as most memorable to him. “You don’t always know going in how significant a case will be, how the court is going to take it, or what they are going to focus on.” Mr. Rudin emphasized the real issues and consequences at play in bringing constitutional challenges: “when you do this sort of work, especially if it is constitutional, you don’t just lose for your client, there are bigger issues at play.” 

Mr. Rudin plans to bring the litigation experience he’s gained at ALS to the University of Toronto Faculty of Law this fall, offering students a practical perspective and sharing insights as to what constitutional litigation really entails. He hopes to convey “a sense of how the process works and what it takes.” His experiences speaking before the Court have taught him valuable lessons in what judges want: brevity, clarity, and structure. “Writing a factum or doing oral arguments before the court, you are presenting things to an audience: judges. This is a very different audience, and one we are not familiar with playing to.” He plans to share these lessons, alongside many more, through the clinic.  

In the meantime, I asked Mr. Rudin if there was any advice he could offer to current law students. He remarked how difficult being a law student during a global pandemic must be and the inevitable fatigue that must accompany zoom law. In fact, Mr. Rudin described the challenges he faces as a lawyer working in a COVID world. “A lot of the work I do, it’s not me, it’s a whole team of people working together,” and meeting over zoom can certainly change professional dynamics. Mr. Rudin expressed his hope that next fall he will be able to meet with students in person. To mitigate zoom fatigue and the exhaustion that can come from the demanding nature of law school generally, Mr. Rudin stressed the importance of maintaining interests and activities outside of the law. For Mr. Rudin, this takes the form of regular jam sessions with his band: Gordon’s Acoustic Living Room. 

Additionally, Mr. Rudin encourages current students to keep an open mind as they navigate through their years of law school. Often times, he remarked, students have a pre-conceived notion of what area of law they want to pursue without knowing much about what it really entails. “There are all sorts of areas of law that we know nothing about and the more opportunities you have to try things the better.” He lauded the Asper Centre’s clinic as giving students a real sense of what working in constitutional law encompasses. He encourages students to take the opportunities the clinic has to offer and looks forward to meeting students in a few short months. 

Leila Far Soares is an incoming 2L JD student at the Faculty of Law and is currently one of the Asper Centre’s summer research assistants. 

Constitutional Litigator-in-Residence for 2021

Posted on by Tal Schreier

The Asper Centre is pleased to announce that Jonathan Rudin has been selected as its new Constitutional-Litigator-in-Residence and will be co-teaching the Asper Centre’s clinical course in the Fall of 2021. Mr. Rudin’s extensive constitutional litigation experience in pursuing Indigenous justice and Aboriginal rights, as well as his teaching experience will greatly enrich the Asper Centre’s Clinic students next term.

Jonathan Rudin received his LL.B. and LL.M. from Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto. In 1990 he was hired to establish Aboriginal Legal Services and has been with ALS ever since. Currently he is the Program Director.

Mr. Rudin has represented ALS as an intervener at the Supreme Court of Canada 12 times. He has often appeared before the Ontario Court of Appeal and before Courts of Appeal in Quebec, Nunavut, Saskatchewan and British Columbia.

At ALS he helped establish the Community Council – the first urban Aboriginal justice program in Canada in 1992, and in 2001 helped establish the Gladue (Aboriginal Persons) Court at the Old City Hall Courts in Toronto.

Mr. Rudin has written and spoken widely on issues of Indigenous justice. His book, Indigenous People and the Criminal Justice System was released by Emond Publishing in 2018 and won the Walter Owen Book Prize from the Canadian Foundation for Legal Research in 2019. A second edition of the book will be published in 2022.

Mr. Rudin also teaches on a part-time basis in the Masters of Law program at Osgoode Hall Law School. Last but not least, he plays the mandolin and sings with Gordon’s Acoustic Living Room, a group that plays regularly in Toronto and has a number of videos on YouTube.

Remembering Joseph Arvay

Posted on by Tal Schreier

The David Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights joins the constitutional law community in mourning the death of Joseph Arvay, O.C., O.B.C., Q.C. Joe Arvay offered his time to the Centre as our first constitutional litigator in residence. Indeed he was the inspiration for the continuing role that has been incorporated into our teaching and advocacy. He gave generously of his time to the students and was an important supporter of our advocacy. Of his time with us, Joe said, “I really enjoyed my experience as the first constitutional litigator in residence at the Asper Centre. It was a joy to work with students again.”

Marcus McCann (JD 2014) was one of the students who worked with Joe on the Asper Centre’s intervention in Bedford v Canada on the role of stare decisis in constitutional litigation: “It was a great pleasure to see Joe’s mind at work. He was very tactical, always five steps ahead in the conversation. That should be obvious from his career. But at the same time, he never lost sight of the goal, of the people who would be helped by litigation. He litigated with heart, even when he was litigating a seemingly bloodless topic like stare decisis.”

At the Centre’s 10th Anniversary Event, Joe joined Mary Eberts, another constitutional litigator in residence, on stage in a discussion with the Hon. Thomas Cromwell on significant issues in constitutional litigation in Canada. The topics were wide ranging with two formidable leaders of the constitutional bar and the former Supreme Court of Canada Justice, from the seminal cases in which they both participated in Andrews v British Columbia, to significant aboriginal rights cases, to the more recent Carter v Canada. Executive Director, Cheryl Milne, noted, “There is no other lawyer in Canada who has litigated as many significant constitutional cases at all levels of Court as Joe. His stamp on constitutional law in this country is monumental. While many lawyers have regularly taken on interventions at the Supreme Court, Joe made it a point to litigate these cases at the trial level.” As he himself noted in reference to his cases involving advanced costs, “We can all do pro bono work as interveners, but try starting a case like Little Sisters, try starting a case like Carter, try starting any of these cases, which involve thousands of hours of work. It would be so much more encouraging for lawyers if they could get costs in advance.”

Professor Kent Roach, the chair of the Asper Centre’s advisory board worked with Joe on number of cases, some focusing on aboriginal rights. He says, with sadness, “Joe was fearless and his intellectual curiosity knew no bounds. His advocacy shaped the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and always in the direction of helping the disadvantaged. He also knew how to have fun and never took himself too seriously. He will be sorely missed.”

Meet Nader Hasan, the Asper Centre’s New Constitutional Litigator-in-Residence

Posted on by Student

By Amy Chen

Nader Hasan, a partner at Stockwoods LLP and one of Canada’s leading appellate lawyers, will be co-teaching the Asper Centre’s clinic course this fall as the constitutional litigator-in-residence. He graciously sat down with me to discuss his legal education, career history, and hopes for the upcoming term.

Mr. Hasan has a long and varied career in criminal, constitutional, and regulatory law. Surprisingly, law school was not always the plan. “Like many children of immigrants, there was the expectation and hope that I would eventually become a doctor,” Mr. Hasan said. However, “along the way, I became really passionate about various social justice and human rights issues, both in the US, Canada, and around the world. That sparked my intellectual interest in the law.” His interest in the law was cemented after completing his undergraduate degree at Harvard in international human rights, as well as his Masters of Philosophy in international studies at Cambridge. Ultimately, he decided to begin his law career at the University of Toronto.

Mr. Hasan’s interest in constitutional law began in Professor Lorraine Weinrib’s constitutional law small group: “I learned about the power of the Charter, and how, if done properly and effectively, a constitutionally entrenched bill of rights could truly be a weapon on the side of good and justice… I knew early on in law school that I was very passionate about constitutional law, public law, and criminal law.” However, when considering heavy debt load and his need to care for his aging parents, Mr. Hasan began his career in a corporate firm in New York. Although Mr. Hasan was doing a lot of pro bono work on behalf of asylum seekers and the wrongfully convicted, he was only able to work on it in “from 10 pm to 3 am” after billing his normal hours. Still, he considered this a crucial step in his career: “in many ways it was a typical “Big Law” experience, but through this process I was able to learn a lot about what it meant to be a good lawyer, as well as the types of careers open to lawyers.”

Eventually, he returned to Canada to pursue a criminal/constitutional law career. Since then, Mr. Hasan has appeared as counsel in a number of high-profile constitutional law cases, including acting as lead counsel to the landmark Indigenous rights case Clyde River v. Petroleum Geo‑Services Inc. Most of the major cases he was involved in had humble beginnings: “these cases that end up at the Supreme Court of Canada, you don’t get there without a very carefully constructed record from the ground up, by interviewing people and doing your legal research. It is not glamorous, but all meaningful, with an important end goal in sight.” Right now, Mr. Hasan is working as lead counsel in Mathur et al v. HMQ, a constitutional challenge against Ontario’s greenhouse gas emissions targets. His rationale for working on this case was simple: “as a human being living in this day and age, we all have an obligation to move hearts and minds when it comes to climate change. I happen to be trained as a constitutional lawyer, and the way I know how to make a difference is constitutional litigation.”

At the Asper Centre this fall, Mr. Hasan will bring with him not just his significant constitutional litigation experiences, but also his extensive teaching and mentorship experiences. He has served as an adjunct professor at the University of Toronto law faculty since 2010, teaching the popular Crime and Punishment course and the criminal appellate externship. He hopes to nurture the passions that Asper Centre clinic students have for constitutional law: “I’m sure students have been told that you can’t make money in constitutional law, but if this is something you want to do, there are certainly avenues to pursue a constitutional law career.” He will illustrate these avenues by sharing his own experiences alongside the experiences of Asper Centre director Cheryl Milne and other guest speakers. Although this year’s clinic course will be unique, given that some students will be attending remotely, Mr. Hasan is optimistic that the course will proceed smoothly.

To end the interview, I asked Mr. Hasan what he believes to be the qualities that make a good constitutional lawyer. He did not hesitate in giving his answer – “it’s all about hard work and passion.” A strong case is comprised of dedicated people who are “willing to work whatever hours it takes with an unyielding attitude, knowing that they are fighting on the side of justice.”

The interview has been edited for clarity.

Amy (Jun) Chen is a 1L JD Candidate at the Faculty of Law and is the Asper Centre’s current summer Research Assistant.