Type: Faculty

Williams, Cynthia

Professor Cynthia Williams joined Osgoode Hall Law School on July 1, 2013 as the Osler Chair in Business Law, a position she also held from 2007 to 2009. Before coming to Osgoode, she was a member of the faculty at the University of Illinois College of Law and, prior to that, she practised law at Cravath, Swaine & Moore in New York City.

Professor Williams writes in the areas of securities law, corporate law, corporate responsibility, comparative corporate governance and regulatory theory, often in interdisciplinary collaborations with professors in anthropology, economic sociology, and organizational psychology.

Her book The Embedded Firm: Corporate Governance, Labor, And Finance Capitalism, co-edited with Osgoode Professor Peer Zumbansen, was published in 2011 by Cambridge University Press and was featured at the Society for Socio-Economics (SASE) Annual Conference in 2012 at MIT.

Professor Williams’ work has been published in the Georgetown Law Journal, the Harvard Law Review, the Journal of Corporation Law, Theoretical Inquiries in Law, the University of New South Wales Law Journal, the Virginia Law Review, the Academy of Management Review, the Corporate Governance International Review, and the Journal of Organizational Behavior, among others.

Professor Williams has lectured and taught in China, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Scotland, South Korea, Spain, the UK and throughout Canada and the United States.

Professor Williams also engages in policy work through her board membership in the Network for Sustainable Financial Markets, a think-tank of academics and financial market participants; the Climate Bonds Initiative, an NGO established to create a new asset class, Climate Bonds, in order to finance the transition to a low-carbon economy; and as a member of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Finance Advisory Board.

Walker, Janet

Janet Walker is a full professor and past Associate Dean. She currently teaches private international law, international commercial arbitration and complex litigation in the JD and the professional LLM programs and is Director of the Professional LLM in Civil Litigation and Dispute Resolution. She has also taught Civil Procedure, Professional Responsibility and International Business Transactions and has served as Convener of the Litigation, Dispute Resolution and the Administration of Justice Stream, and Director of the Mooting Program.

Professor Walker is the author of Castel and Walker: Canadian Conflict of Laws, and the Halsbury’s Laws of Canada volume on the Conflict of Laws; she is the General Editor of The Civil Litigation Process, and of Class Actions in Canada, and co-editor of Common Law, Civil Law and the Future of Categories. She is also a co-author of Irwin Essentials: Civil Procedure, Private International Law in Common Law Canada, and A Practical Guide to Mooting.

Professor Walker has lectured in Wuhan and Xi’an, and she has taught Conflict of Laws as a visitor at Monash, University of Haifa and University of Toronto, as a Hauser Global Visiting Professor at NYU in New York and in its joint program with NUS in Singapore, and at Monash University’s Prato Campus. She taught comparative procedure as Leverhulme Visiting Professor at Oxford, and advocacy at University of Zagreb’s Zadar Program, and for the past thirteen years, she has taught private international law as a Foreign Research Professor at Tunis II, where she has also led the International Lawyers for Africa Tunisian National Committee. Professor Walker has led the Osgoode summer program at Hebrew University of Jerusalem on five occasions, and served as faculty advisor to the Osgoode Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot for the past thirteen years and the Tunis team for four years.

Professor Walker has lectured at The Hague Academy of International Law Summer Program and co-chaired the 72nd Biennial Conference of the International Law Association and the International Association of Procedural Law’s Toronto Conference; and she led the Project on Teaching Procedure, which produced the OHLJ Special Issue on Teaching Procedure.

Professor Walker has served as an International Advisor to the American Law Institute in its project with Unidroit to develop Principles and Rules of Transnational Civil Procedure; and as a member of the Uniform Law Conference of Canada Committee on National Class Actions, of the IBA Task Force on Guidelines on Recognition and Enforcement of Collective Redress Judgments, of the ILA Committee on International Civil Litigation, the ABA Canada/US Class Working Group on Protocols for Parallel Class Actions and the Uniform Law Conference of Canada’s Project on Uniform International Arbitration Legislation. She has served as President of the Canadian Branch of the International Law Association, Chair of the Toronto Chapter of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, and she is Secretary General of the International Association of Procedural Law. Professor Walker was the Law Commission of Ontario’s first Scholar in Residence, she has been the Common Law Advisor to the Federal Courts Rules Committee since 2006, and she is currently serving as Academic Advisor to the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators.

Professor Walker is a member of the American Law Institute and a Senior Fellow of Massey College. She is a member of the University Club of Toronto, the Athenaeum Club in London.

Professor Walker has served as an ICC and ICDR arbitrator in various matters and she consults and serves as expert in matters of international litigation and arbitration and complex litigation. She is a member of the panel of foreign arbitrators of the ICDR, CIETAC, SHIAC, KLRCA and a member arbitrator of Arbitration Place, Toronto, and Outer Temple Chambers, London.

Research Interests: International Litigation and Arbitration, Comparative Procedure, Advocacy.

Wai, Robert S.

Robert Wai has been a member of the faculty at Osgoode Hall Law School since 1998, where he researches and teaches in various areas of international economic law including International Trade Regulation and International Business Transactions. His teaching has also included Contracts, Ethical Lawyering in a Global Community, and Law and Economic Relations.  He has served in a number of governance roles including as Associate Dean, as a member of the Osgoode Hall Faculty Association executive and the Board of Trustees of the York University Pension Plan, and as chair of Faculty Council and a number of its standing committees.

Professor Wai has been a Jean Monnet Fellow and Fernand Braudel Senior Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, Senior Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics, and a visiting professor at other international institutions including the University of Hong Kong, Sciences Po Law School in Paris, and Brown University. Since 2010 Professor Wai has served on the Academic Council of the Harvard Law School Institute for Global Law and Policy (IGLP) and as a regular core faculty at its workshops. Professor Wai graduated with a BCom in economics from McGill University (Beatty Gold Medalist), and an MPhil degree in international relations at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. After completing an LLB from the University of British Columbia, he clerked at the Supreme Court of Canada for Justice Gérard La Forest, and worked at law firms in Vancouver and New York.  He completed his doctorate at Harvard Law School, where his dissertation critically examined structures of policy argumentation in private international law.

Professor Wai’s research explores how the contemporary global economy is constituted and regulated by plural regimes of transnational law including public and private law, domestic and international law, substantive and procedural law, and state and non-state norms. In 2019, he was the Donald Mawhinney Lecturer in Professional Ethics at UBC, and in the summer of 2021 he will deliver a course on Liberalism and Private International Law at the Hague Academy of International Law.

Van Harten, Gus

Gus Van Harten joined the faculty in January 2008 and teaches Administrative Law, Constitutional Law, International Investment Law, and Governance of the International Financial System. Previously he was a faculty member in the Law Department of the London School of Economics. He has received the William Robson Memorial Prize from LSE, a Scholar in Residence fellowship from the Law Commission of Ontario, a doctoral fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, an Overseas Research Award from Universities UK, and a Research Award from the Canadian International Development Agency.

Van Harten’s most recent book is The Trouble with Foreign Investor Protection (OUP, 2020). His previous books include Investment Treaty Arbitration and Public Law (OUP, 2007); Sovereign Choices and Sovereign Constraints (OUP, 2013); and Sold Down the Yangtze: Canada’s Lopsided Investment Deal with China (Lorimer, 2015). He also co-edits a leading Canadian text: Administrative Law — Cases and Materials (Emond Montgomery, 2010, 2015, and 2021). His academic articles have been published in the Canadian Yearbook of International Law, European Journal of International Law, International and Comparative Law Quarterly, International Journal of Evidence and Proof, Journal of International Dispute Settlement, Osgoode Hall Law Journal, Queen’s Law Journal, Review of International Political Economy, Supreme Court Law Review, University of Toronto Law Journal, Yearbook of International Investment Law and Policy, and other journals. Most of his academic articles are freely available here.

Van Harten participates in policy debates with a view to providing accessible information on issues of public importance, especially on trade agreements and investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS). He has made submissions to parliamentary committees in Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Germany and has advised various governments and non-governmental organizations. He has also appeared in media in Canada, such as L’actualité, CBC, CTV, Canadian Press, The Globe and Mail, Radio Canada International, The Toronto Star, and TV Ontario; and in international media such as American Lawyer, ARD (Germany), Ariran Korea TV, Austrian Public TV, Bloomberg, CCTV News (China), Channel 2 (Netherlands), Der Spiegel, L’Echo, The Guardian, Japan Broadcasting Corporation, National Public Radio (USA), Reuters, and Telesur.

Before becoming an academic, Van Harten worked for two judicial inquiries in Canada – the Arar Inquiry of 2004-06 and the Walkerton Inquiry of 2000-02 – and as a law clerk at the Ontario Court of Appeal. He is also proud of his past work as a teaching assistant, lifeguard and swimming instructor, dishwasher, temporary labourer, and grocery clerk.

Research Interests: Administrative Law; International Investment Law and Arbitration; International Monetary Law and Policy; Inquiries and Investigations

Research website on International Investment Arbitration and Public Policy

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Tanguay-Renaud, François

Professor François Tanguay-Renaud has been a professor at Osgoode since 2008. He is currently the Program Director of the Osgoode Certificate in the Laws of Emergency, and of the Professional LLM in Canadian Common Law. From 2012 until 2021, he was Director of York’s Jack & Mae Nathanson Centre on Transnational Human Rights, Crime and Security  (a position he shared with Professor Heidi Matthews from 2018 to 2021). He is also one of the founders and first Director of York’s Juris Doctor/Master of Arts (JD/MA) combined program in law and philosophy, and a former Associate Dean Research, Graduate Studies, and Institutional Relations.

Professor Tanguay-Renaud holds degrees in both civil and common law from McGill University, where he was both a Loran Scholar and a Greville-Smith Scholar. He also studied at the National University of Singapore, and completed his graduate work (BCL, MPhil, DPhil) at the University of Oxford, where he was in turn a Rhodes Scholar, holder of the Studentship of the Centre for Ethics and Philosophy of Law, as well as doctoral fellow of the Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la société et la culture (FQRSC) and of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

Prior to joining Osgoode, Professor Tanguay-Renaud was a Lecturer in Law at Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford. He also served as a law clerk to Justice Marie Deschamps of the Supreme Court of Canada, and worked with the Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development and the Asian Network for Free Elections in Thailand, as well as with the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. Since starting at Osgoode, he has held Visiting Professor appointments at the University of Minnesota Law School (Robina Institute for Criminal Law and Criminal Justice), the University of Oxford (H.L.A. Hart Fellow), the National University of Singapore, the University of Toronto Centre for Ethics and Faculty of Law, Massey College, and the National Law School of India University (NLSIU). He currently also holds an appointment as Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy of McMaster University.

His current academic interests span a wide range of subject areas — but notably, criminal law, criminal procedure, constitutional and public law, emergency law, AI and the law, and public international law — viewed mostly through the lens of analytical legal theory. He is editor of Rethinking Criminal Law Theory: New Canadian Perspectives in the Philosophy of Domestic, Transnational, and International Criminal Law (with James Stribopoulos, Hart Publishing, 2012), From Morality to Law and Back Again: Liber Amicorum for John Gardner (with Michelle Madden Dempsey, Oxford University Press, 2023), and has published articles in leading journals such as Ethics, Legal Theory, Res Publica, Law and Philosophy, Criminal Law and Philosophy, the UBC Law Review, the Asian Yearbook of International Law, as well as in many leading edited collections.  He currently holds an Insight Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for a research project on “Reconceiving Procedural Fairness” in light of the advent of Artificial Intelligence (with Vincent Chiao).

Professor Tanguay-Renaud regularly teaches courses on criminal law, criminal procedure, emergency law, the philosophical foundations of criminal law, jurisprudence, and the rule of law. He was the recipient of the Osgoode Hall Law School Teaching Award in 2017, and of the Osgoode Hall Law School Faculty Service Award in 2020.

Research Interests: Theory of criminal law, criminal procedure, constitutional and public law, international law, and associated areas of political and moral philosophy; the regulation of state surveillance; artificial intelligence and the law (with a focus on criminal law); emergencies and the law; jurisprudence; the rule of law; collective, corporate, and state responsibility; war ethics; Canadian, American and South Asian constitutional law and politics.

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

Slinn, Sara

Sara Slinn joined the Osgoode faculty in 2007, after five years at Queen’s Faculty of Law. Professor Slinn’s research interests are in the areas of labour and employment law, focusing on different approaches and impediments to collective employee representation, and the intersection of Charter rights and labour law. Reflecting her interdisciplinary graduate work, including a PhD in Industrial Relations from the University of Toronto, Professor Slinn’s research is interdisciplinary and uses empirical methods of analysis. She has also practised labour and employment law with both the British Columbia Labour Relations Board and a private law firm in Vancouver.Research Interests: Labour Law, Employment Law, Industrial Relations, Constitutional Law, Contracts

Slattery, Brian

Professor Brian Slattery joined Osgoode Hall Law School in 1981, having previously held positions at the University of Saskatchewan, the University of Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), and McGill University.

Known for his foundational work on Aboriginal rights and constitutional theory, Professor Slattery has devoted much of his scholarship to overhauling the standard conception of the Canadian Constitution in a way that takes account of the distinctive rights and historical contributions of Aboriginal peoples.

In other scholarly work, Professor Slattery has explored the philosophical foundations of human rights and the continuing vitality of the natural law tradition. In the 1990s, Professor Slattery served as a senior advisor to the Federal Royal
Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. He was elected to the Royal Society of Canada in 1995 and was named a York University Distinguished Research Professor in 2009.

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.

Scott, Craig M.

Professor Scott’s teaching and research have been primarily in the fields of public international law and private international law, with a focus on the place of international human rights law in both of these fields. His most recent work draws on all three of these fields, including in the areas of human rights torts across borders, transnational corporate accountability and transitional justice.  He has also written on constitutional rights protection in Canada and abroad. Much of his work has been on the theory and doctrine of economic, social and cultural rights. His work and teaching is strongly influenced by his interests in legal theory and in policy responses to globalization. He is series editor of Hart Monographs in Transnational and International Law, and is Founding Editor of Transnational Legal Theory.

Professor Scott has sought to create productive linkages between his academic work and various external commitments, particularly engagement with civil society. On the Canadian scene, he was one of the drafters of the Alternative Social Charter put forward during the Charlottetown constitutional round. He has been closely involved in advising equality-seeking, notably anti-poverty, groups on Canadian Charter of Rights litigation and on preparing interventions before various UN human rights bodies on Canada’s record of treaty compliance. He has been involved in appeals or interventions in the Supreme Court of Canada in major cases which have dealt with the interface of international law and Canadian law (Pushpanathan, Reference re Secession of Quebec, Baker). He advised in the formulation of the statement of claim in the civil lawsuit of Maher Arar against the Government of Canada and provided an expert report on Arar’s travel security during the settlement process.

Professor Scott was closely involved in the development of key aspects of the current South African constitution, beginning with his role advising the African National Congress on these matters while the ANC was still in exile. In 1993-1994, he served as co-counsel for the government of Bosnia in a case before the International Court of Justice, with responsibility for developing arguments on the limits of the powers of the UN Security Council. He has given academic opinions on international law to various governments and international organizations on issues related to such matters as the law of the sea, territorial claims and adjudicative procedures; he has also given opinions to non-governmental organizations and aboriginal government representatives on matters ranging from the legality of economic sanctions on Iraq to inland fisheries jurisdiction to transfer of environmental technology to counter global climate change. More recently, he was heavily involved with the London-based Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice and with the civil-society truth commission in Honduras known as the Comisión de Verdad, on which he served as a Commissioner.

Professor  Scott was a member of the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, from 1989 to 2001. He joined Osgoode Hall Law School in 2000 following a term as a Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence.  From 2001 to 2004, he was Osgoode’s inaugural Associate Dean (Research and Graduate Studies). During the 2010-2011 academic year, he was an Ikerbasque Fellow with the Basque Government’s Foundation for Science, based in Bilbao at the Universidad de Deusto. He was Director of the Jack and Mae Nathanson Centre on Transnational Human Rights, Crime and Security from 2006 until the end of 2011.  He served in 2020-21 as the Graduate Program Director for Osgoode’s PhD and research-stream LLM programs.

Prior to starting his academic career, Professor Scott served as law clerk to the former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, Brian Dickson. He attended the Universities of Oxford and London on a Rhodes Scholarship.

From March 2012 to October 2015, he served as Member of Parliament for Toronto-Danforth in Canada’s House of Commons, and was the New Democratic Party’s Official Opposition Critic for Democratic and Parliamentary Reform.

Proud to be banned for life from Russia, as of August 31, 2022.

Research Interests: Transnational Law, Legal Theory, Law and Social Justice, Democratic Theory and Institutions, Law and the Arts, Constitutional Law