Expertise: Feminist Legal Theory (Women and the Law; Gender Equality)

Matthews, Heidi

Professor Heidi Matthews researches and teaches in the areas of international criminal law, the law of war, international legal history and political theory. Her work theorizes contemporary shifts in the practice and discourse of the global legal regulation of political violence, with particular attention to history and gender, as well as political, critical and aesthetic theory.

Prior to joining Osgoode, Professor Matthews held a British Academy Newton International Fellowship at the SOAS School of Law, University of London. She served as a law clerk to the judges of the Appeals Chamber at the Special Court for Sierra Leone, and as an intern at the Immediate Office of the Prosecutor at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. Her doctoral dissertation, “From Aggression to Atrocity: Interrogating the Jus in Bello Turn in International Criminal Law” was awarded Harvard Law School’s Laylin Prize. Professor Matthews has been a Fellow of the Institute for Global Law and Policy and a Clark Byse Fellow at Harvard Law School, as well as a Fellow at the Film Study Center, the Edmund J. Safra Center for Ethics, and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University.

Professor Matthews’ current projects include a critical legal evaluation of American, Canadian and British counterinsurgency policy and practice, a reevaluation of the role of international criminal law during the Cold War, and an intellectual and political history of the concept of military necessity in international law. She is also working on a research and documentary film project that examines narratives of Allied sexual violence perpetrated against German women at the end of World War II. Professor Matthews is active in several international research networks, including the Critical Approaches to International Criminal Law and Cold War International Law projects.

Research Interests: International Criminal Law; Law of War/International Humanitarian Law; Public International Law; International Human Rights Law; Feminist, Legal and Political Theory; Law and the Arts.

Sutherland, Kate

Professor Kate Sutherland joined Osgoode’s faculty in 1998, and has taught law at the University of Saskatchewan. She was Osgoode’s Assistant Dean, First Year from July 1, 2012 to July 1, 2015.  She has served as law clerk to Chief Justice Antonio Lamer of the Supreme Court of Canada, as well as Chief Justice E. D. Bayda of the Court of Appeal for Saskatchewan. Professor Sutherland is former Acting Director of the Centre for Constitutional Studies at the University of Alberta. She was the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship in 1995 and the Law Society of Saskatchewan Gold Medal in 1989.  Professor Sutherland has written and presented in areas such as charter equality rights, sexual harassment, childhood sexual abuse, and tort law. She has served as editor or co-editor of several publications, including Review of Constitutional Studies, Constitutional Forum, Points of View, and Saskatchewan Law Review . Professor Sutherland has also written several literary pieces, including “The Necklace” in The New Quarterly , Winter (1997), Summer Reading: A Collection of Short Fiction (Saskatoon: Thistledown Press, 1995), and “Lucia” in Prairie Fire (1992).  Professor Sutherland’s community involvement has included her work for the Boston AIDS Care Project, University of Saskatchewan Women’s Centre, Her Story Calendar Collective, Saskatchewan Action Committee on the Status of Women, and the Saskatchewan Writers Guild.

Research Interests: Legal Theory, Feminist Legal Studies

Scott, Dayna N.

Professor Dayna Nadine Scott was appointed as York Research Chair in Environmental Law & Justice in the Green Economy in 2018. She is cross-appointed with York’s Faculty of Environmental Studies & Urban Change. Professor Scott is a Co-Director of Osgoode’s Environmental Justice and Sustainability Clinic and a Co-Coordinator of the joint MES/JD program.

Professor Scott joined Osgoode’s faculty in 2006 after completing a SSHRC Post-Doctoral Fellowship at McGill’s Faculty of Law and a Hauser Global Research Fellowship at NYU. Professor Scott’s research interests focus on contestation over extraction; exercises of Indigenous jurisdiction over lands and resources; the distribution of pollution burdens affecting marginalized communities and vulnerable populations; gender and environmental health; and the justice dimensions of the transition to a greener economy.

Professor Scott is currently the co-Principal Investigator, with Professor Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark of the University of Victoria’s Center for Indigenous Research and Community-led Engagement (CIRCLE), of a project funded by the SSHRC New Frontiers in Research Fund called “Jurisdiction Back: Infrastructure Beyond Extractivism”. In a partnership between the Yellowhead Institute, the University of Toronto’s Department of Geography and Planning and York University, this project includes 14 academics and land defenders from across the country pursuing research oriented towards how the “just transition” to sustainable economies can be imagined and infrastructured to restore Indigenous jurisdiction, laws and governance systems.

Professor Scott has been the Primary Investigator on several SSHRC-funded projects, including “Consent & Contract: Authorizing Extraction in Ontario’s Ring of Fire” with colleagues Andrée Boisselle, Deborah McGregor and Estair Van Wagner, and the Partnership Development Grant, “Reconciling Sovereignties: New Techniques for ‘Authorizing’ Extraction on Indigenous Territories” led by Professor Shiri Pasternak, in partnership with the Indigenous Network on Economies and Trade (INET) and MiningWatch Canada.  She also completed research in partnership with environmental justice activists from the Aamjiwnaang First Nation, near Sarnia`s Chemical Valley, that applied a critical, feminist perspective to the examination of law’s treatment of the risks of long-term, low-dose exposures to pollutants, and another SSHRC-funded project (“Investigating Regulatory Chill”) that examined constraints on regulation to protect the environment, with a focus on investor rights in the resource extraction context.

Professor Scott and collaborators recently completed a major report for the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada entitled, “Implementing a Regional, Indigenous-Led, and Sustainability-Informed Impact Assessment in Ontario’s Ring of Fire.” This project was undertaken in partnership with Chief and Council of Neskantaga First Nation, a remote Anishinaabe community in Ontario’s far north..

Recent publications explore impact-benefit agreements in “Extraction Contracting: The Struggle for Control of Indigenous Lands” (2020) in a special issue of South Atlantic Quarterly, co-edited with Shiri Pasternak; “Extractivism” in Mariana Valverde, Kamari Clarke, Eve Darian-Smith and Prabha Kotiswaran, eds, The Routledge Handbook of Law and Society (Abingdon: Routledge, 2021); the resurgence of Indigenous law in Treaty 9, with Andrée Boisselle (2019 UNB Law Review); the dynamics of “sacrifice zones” in the context of the emerging green energy economy (McGill Law Journal 2017, with Adrian A. Smith); anti-toxics politics (“Wanna-be Toxic Free? From Precautionary Consumption to Corporeal Citizenship” in Environmental Politics 2016); and the tactics of activists resisting tar sands extraction in Peace River Alberta (“‘We are the Monitors Now’: Experiential Knowledge, Transcorporeality and Environmental Justice” (2015) in Social & Legal Studies).

Professor Scott is the co-editor with Professor Deborah Curran, of a new journal of Canadian Environmental Law scholarship, the editor of Our Chemical Selves: Gender, Toxics and Environmental Health (UBC Press, 2015) and the past Director of the National Network on Environments and Women`s Health. Among other awards, Professor Scott has been a recipient of a York-Massey Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship, and the Law Commission of Canada’s “Audacity of Imagination” Prize.

Philipps, Lisa

Professor Lisa Philipps teaches and writes about taxation law and fiscal policy. She is known for incisive expert commentary on budgets, taxes, law, gender and social policy, and higher education policy.

On faculty at Osgoode Hall Law School since 1996, Philipps has published widely on topics such as registered savings plans, tax expenditures, income splitting and family taxation, balanced budget laws, judicial approaches to tax law, taxes and disability, and charitable donation tax incentives. In her scholarship and in the classroom, she explores the basic values and policy choices at play in designing a fair and efficient tax system.

Professor Philipps has provided commissioned research and advice to a number of bodies. In 2015 she was appointed as Special Counsel to Ontario’s Ministry of Finance. She practised tax law with the firm of Blake, Cassels & Graydon prior to embarking on her academic career, and taught at the Universities of Victoria and British Columbia before joining York University.

She has held a number of leadership roles at the Law School and University levels, most recently as Interim Dean of the Bora Laskin Faculty of Law at Lakehead University (fall 2015), and Associate Vice-President Research at York University from 2011-14.  She is currently serving a five-year term until June 30, 2022 as York’s Provost and Vice-President Academic. An active volunteer, she serves as Director of Research Policy on the Board of the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, a national non-profit organization. She is also appointed as a member of the Provincial Judges Pension Board.

Professor Philipps received her LLB from the University of Toronto and her LLM from York University. She was called to the Bar of Ontario in 1988.

Current Funded Research:

Principal Investigator, “Legal Frameworks for Work Integrated Learning: The Role of Law in Promoting Expansion of Quality WIL Programs” (Funded by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO)

Recent Media:

“In Praise of Secondments“, University Affairs, March 29, 2017

“Ontario the Indebted”, panellist on TVO’s The Agenda with Steve Paikin”, September 20, 2016.

“The principal-residence exemption is a fixable piece of the housing puzzle”, The Globe and Mail, September 16, 2016.

“We need Canadian courts to uphold the spirit of our tax laws”, The Globe and Mail, June 3, 2016.

Recent Publications:

“Registered Savings Plans and the Making of the Canadian Middle Class: Toward a Performative Theory of Tax Policy” (2016) 84:6 Fordham Law Review (forthcoming).

Canadian Income Tax Law, 5th ed. (with David G. Duff, Benjamin Alarie, Kim Brooks and Geoffrey Loomer) (Toronto: LexisNexis, 2015).

“Real versus Notional Income Splitting: What Canada Should Learn from the US ‘Innocent Spouse’ Problem” (2013) 61:3 Canadian Tax Journal 709.

“Bringing Evidence to Tax Expenditure Design: Lesson’s from Canada’s Innovation Policy Review 2006-12” in Evidence-Based Policy-Making in Canada, ed. S.Young (Oxford University Press, 2013).

“The Globalization of Tax Expenditure Reporting: Transplanting Transparency in India and the Global South” in Tax Law and Development, ed. Y. Brauner and M. Stewart (Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., 2013).

Mykitiuk, Roxanne

Roxanne Mykitiuk is a Full Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, where she engages in research and teaching in the areas of Disability Law, Health Law, Bioethics and Family Law. She is the founder and Director of the Disability Law Intensive clinical program and the Director of Osgoode’s part-time LLM program specializing in Health Law. She is a member of the core faculty in the graduate program in Critical Disability Studies at York University.  From 2018-2021 Professor Mykitiuk was the Faculty Co-Chair of Enable York and was the Chair of York University’s Senate from 2013-2015.

Professor Mykitiuk is nationally and internationally recognized for her work in disability law and the regulation of reproductive and genetic technologies and reproductive health more generally.  From 1990-1992 she was Senior Legal Researcher for the Canadian Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies. From 2002-2006 she was a member of the Ontario Advisory Committee on Genetics and from 2005-2008, she was a member of the Ethics Committee of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada. In 2009 Professor Mykitiuk was scholar in residence at the Law Commission of Ontario working on the Disability and Law Project. She is currently on the Board of Directors of ARCH Disability Law Clinic. Professor Mykitiuk has been consulted by a range of actors in policy making and litigation contexts and provided expert opinion related to her areas of expertise.

Professor Mykitiuk is an active, engaged and collaborative researcher. She is the author or co-author of numerous articles, book chapters and books investigating the legal, ethical and social implications of reproductive and genetic technologies and the legal construction and regulation of embodiment and disability.  Some of her more recent research created and investigated arts-based methods – digital stories and drama-based narratives – as a means of challenging and re-representing experiences, images and conceptions of disability and normalcy.

Professor Mykitiuk’s research has been funded by CIHR, SSHRC, the Australian Research Council, Genome Canada and the European Research Council, among other funding bodies.

In a currently funded SSHRC project, she is using legal research and digital story making to investigate episodic disability in the workplace and to assist employers to adopt policies that are accommodating to the needs of variously positioned workers with episodic disabilities. With a York Innovation funded grant, Professor Mykitiuk is working with colleagues in nursing and in digital media to devise a cell phone resource to support the communication and accommodation needs of students with disabilities and instructors in clinical placements. And as part of a New Frontiers in Research Fund, supporting research on Zero-Gravity 3D Bioprinting of Super-Soft Materials, she is combining her interests in the regulation of embodiment, health law and new technologies to better understand how to regulate in this new area of research and development. Under an NSERC CREATE grant, she is contributing to a collaborative project on artificial intelligence in aerospace engineering, with her contribution focussing on equity, diversity and inclusion issues presently and potentially engaged in the area.

Research Interests: Disability Law, critical disability studies, feminist legal studies, law and embodiment, genetic and reproductive technologies, critical science and technology studies and law, health law, family law, reproductive health law.

Mossman, Mary Jane

Professor Emerita Mary Jane Mossman joined the faculty at Osgoode Hall Law School in 1976-77, after several years as a faculty member in the Faculty of Law at the University of New South Wales. At Osgoode, she served as Associate Dean, Assistant Dean, Chair of Faculty Council, and Director of the Institute for Feminist Legal Studies, as well as numerous positions on Boards and committees at York University. Her research interests focus on women lawyers/legal professions; family law and economic dependency; property law and trusts; and access to justice and legal aid.

She has authored numerous scholarly articles and reports for governments and other organizations, and has been a Visiting Professor at a number of universities in Canada, the United States, Australia, France and Japan. In 2006, she published The First Women Lawyers: A Comparative Study of Gender, Law and the Legal Professions (Hart Pub 2006); and is currently authoring a study of women lawyers in Ontario 1890s to 1960s, as well as other writing projects. Her co-authored books include Families and the Law (2nd Captus ed 2015); Property Law: Cases and Commentary (3rd ed Emond Pub 2014); and Reconsidering Knowledge: Feminism and the Academy (Fernwood 2012).

Professor Mossman was awarded the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Medal for work with the Vanier Institute of the Family (2012); the Lexpert Zenith Award: Leadership for Change (2012); appointment as “University Professor” at York U (2007); the Bora Laskin Fellowship in Human Rights (SSHRC 2007); the Ontario Government Leadership in Faculty Teaching  Award (2007); an honorary doctorate by the Law Society of Upper Canada (2004); the Award of Excellence of the Canadian Association of Law Teachers (2004); the Medal of the Law Society of Upper Canada (1990); the Supporter of the Year award by the Advocacy Resource Centre for the Handicapped (1988); and the CBAO Distinguished Service Award (1987).

She has received research grants from SSHRC and the Canadian Bar Association Foundation for Legal Research, and was appointed the Gordon Henderson Chair in Human Rights (University of Ottawa 1995) and the Walter L Gordon Fellowship (York University 2004). She was admitted as a Barrister in New South Wales in 1975 and a member of the Bar of Ontario in 1977; and served as junior counsel in an Australian appeal to the Privy Council in 1978. From 1979-1982, she was on leave from Osgoode as the first Clinic Funding Manager for the Ontario Legal Aid Plan, and she has provided ongoing support to community legal clinics, including serving on several clinic Boards. Since 1997, she has chaired the Administrative Committee of the Unifor/CAW Legal Services Plan.

Mosher, Janet

Professor Mosher joined the faculty of Osgoode Hall Law School in 2001 after teaching at the Faculties of Law and Social Work at the University of Toronto, where she was also the Director of the Combined LLB/MSW program. Between 2001 to 2005 and 2011 to 2013 she was the Academic Director of Osgoode’s Intensive Program in Poverty Law at Parkdale Community Legal Services. She is the co-founder of the Feminist Advocacy: Ending Violence Against Women Clinical Program and has served on many occasions as the program’s co-director. Professor Mosher has served as the editor-in-chief of Osgoode’s Journal of Law and Social Policy, as the English language editor of the Canadian Journal of Women and the Law, and on the boards of several community-based social justice organizations.

Research Interests: Gender-based violence and legal interventions, access to justice for marginalized populations, welfare policy, poverty law, homelessness, legal aid, and clinical legal education

Teaching Areas: Feminist Advocacy: Ending Violence Against Women, Legal Process, Law & Poverty, Legal Ethics.

Recent Publications:
Domestic Violence and Access to Justice: A Mapping of Relevant Laws, Polices and Justice System Components Across Canada, co-authored ebook (CanLii)

“Domestic Violence, Precarious Immigration Status, and the Complex Interplay of Family Law and Immigration Law” (2023) 35:1 Canadian Journal of Family Law 297-358

“Introduction: Domestic Violence and Access to Justice within the Family Law and Intersection Legal Systems,” co-authored, (2023) 35:1 Canadian Journal of Family Law 1-32

“A Comparison of Gender-Based Violence Laws in Canada: A Report for the National Action Plan on Gender-Based Violence Working Group on Responsive Legal and Justice Systems,” commissioned by Women’s Shelters Canada for the Roadmap for the National Action Plan on Violence Against Women and Gender-Based Violence report (appendix F), co-authored, 30 April 2021

“COVID-19, the Shadow Pandemic, and Access to Justice for Survivors of Domestic Violence,” co-authored, (2020) 57:3 Osgoode Hall Law Journal 739-799

“The Costs of Justice in Domestic Violence Cases – Mapping Canadian Law and Policy,” co-authored, in Trevor CW Farrow & Lesley A Jacobs, eds, The Justice Crisis: The Cost and Value of Accessing Law (UBC Press, 2020) 149-172; version with extended footnotes on SSRN at

“Introduction” to “Reimagining Child Welfare,” a special volume of the Journal of Law and Social Policy, co-authored (2018) 28 JLSP

“Grounding Access to Justice Theory and Practice in the Experiences of Women Abused by Their Intimate Partners,” (2015) 32:2 Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice 149-176

“Accessing Justice Amid Threats of Contagion,” (2014) 51:3 Osgoode Hall Law Journal 919-56 (refereed), reprinted in Kristy Buccieri and Rebecca Schiff, eds, Pandemic preparedness & homelessness: lessons from H1N1 in Canada (Toronto, ON : Canadian Observatory on Homelessness, 2016)

“From Research to Action: Four theories and their implications for knowledge mobilization,” (2014) 5:4 Scholarly and Research Communication 1-17 (lead author with Uzo Anucha, Henry Appiah & Sue Levesque) (refereed)

Graduate Research Supervision (LLM, PhD): Professor Mosher is particularly interested in supervising projects related to how law is implicated in gender-based violence; community-grounded conceptions of access to justice; law and social change; and poverty law. She welcomes qualitative projects, including those deploying community-based participatory action methodologies. Her current research grants include domestic violence and access to justice at the intersections of various areas of law and legal processes (family, child welfare, criminal, immigration, etc.) and the criminalization of women victims of domestic violence.

Professor Mosher is willing to read preliminary proposals from strong students in the areas of interest listed, and comment on interest in supervision prior to submission of an official application.

Lawrence, Sonia

Professor Sonia Lawrence joined Osgoode’s faculty in 2001. She graduated from the University of Toronto’s joint LLB/MSW program, went on to serve as law clerk to Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin of the Supreme Court of Canada, and pursued graduate work at Yale Law School. Her work centers on critical analyses of legal conception of equality.

Sonia has served in a number of administrative roles at Osgoode including Assistant Dean of First Year and Director of the Institute for Feminist Legal Studies.  Her current teaching includes a first year public and constitutional law, a seminar in critical race theory, and serving as the academic director/instructor for Feminist Advocacy, a clinical legal education opportunity offered in partnership with the Barbara Schlifer Commemorative Clinic in Toronto.  In the past she has served as the academic director for Osgoode’s Anti-Discrimination Intensive Program (offered in partnership with the Human Rights Legal Support Centre (Ontario), and taught seminars in gender equality, graduate research and research methods, among others. Sonia is serving two terms as the President of the Canadian Association of Law Teachers / Association Canadienne des Professeurs de Droit.

Research Interests: Public Law, Gender, Race, Critical Race Feminism, Feminism, Equality Law, Charter of Rights and Freedoms

Gilmour, Joan M.

Professor Gilmour joined Osgoode Hall Law School’s faculty in 1990, after practising civil litigation and administrative law.  She teaches Health Law, Legal Governance of Health Care, Torts, and Disability and the Law in the JD program. She developed and is the founding Director of Osgoode’s part-time LLM program specializing in Health Law, and teaches graduate courses on Professional Governance, and Legal Frameworks of the Canadian Healthcare System.  She is past Director of Osgoode’s Institute for Feminist Legal Studies, and past Acting and Associate Director of York University’s Centre for Health Studies. Professor Gilmour’s research and publications in health law span some of the most debated issues in contemporary society.  She completed a major study on the effects of tort law (negligence) on efforts to improve patient safety and reduce medical error.  Other research projects include an examination of the legal and ethical issues in decision-making about health care for children, and a study of the interrelationship of disability, gender, law and inequality.  She served as a member of the Expert Panel convened by the Council of Canadian Academies on medical assistance in dying, has acted as a consultant to Health Canada, and completed a study for the Ontario Law Reform Commission on assisted suicide, euthanasia, and foregoing life-sustaining treatment.  She has also completed studies on health care restructuring and privatization, professional regulation of complementary and alternative medicine, and the interrelation of poverty, health and access to justice.

Gavigan, Shelley A. M.

Shelley Gavigan is Professor Emerita and Senior Scholar at Osgoode Hall Law School, having retired as Professor of Law from Osgoode Hall Law School, York University in January 2017. She is a retired member of the Law Society of Ontario and the Law Society of Saskatchewan. She was a member of the Osgoode faculty for 31 years and taught courses in criminal law, family law, poverty law and children and the law. She was appointed Osgoode’s Associate Dean twice and served four terms as Academic Director of Osgoode’s Intensive Program in Poverty Law at Parkdale Community Legal Services. She began her legal career as a lawyer in community legal clinics in Saskatchewan and was the first Director of Complaints/ Compliance with the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission.

Her research and scholarship are significantly interdisciplinary, located primarily in legal history, socio-legal studies, feminist legal studies, clinical legal education, and social justice.  She is the author of  Hunger, Horses, and Government Men: Criminal Law on the Aboriginal Plains, 1870-1905 (Osgoode Society with UBC, Press, 2012), which won the Canadian History Association’s 2013 CLIO Prize – The Prairies (awarded for meritorious publications or for exceptional contributions to regional history) and was short-listed and received Honourable Mention for both the CHA’s 2013 prize awarded annually to the best scholarly book in Canadian history and the 2012 Canadian Law & Society Association’s Annual Book Prize for “an outstanding contribution to the study of law and society.”

Professor Gavigan’s research into the criminal and civil court records of nineteenth century North West Territories continues, as does her work focussed on ‘historicizing criminalization’ of Canada’s indigenous peoples.  Her recent scholarship includes, “Getting Their Man: The NWMP as Accused in the Territorial Criminal Court in the Canadian North-West, 1876-1903” in Lyndsay Campbell, Ted McCoy & Melanie Méthot, eds., Canada’s Legal Pasts:  Looking Forward, Looking Back (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2020) 179.

Research Interests: Socio-Legal Studies, Legal History, Criminal Law, Feminist Legal Studies, Family Law, Clinical Education