This seminar is organized into three modules. The first will provide a foundational background that includes an overview of the history, key concepts, and the underlying international law framework of the international human rights law (IHRL) system. The second module will deliver the substantive core of the seminar’s subject matter and include an introduction to major institutions and processes of the system, an overview of some core doctrine and debates related to a selection of protected human rights (e.g. those related to life, health, freedom from torture, non-discrimination), engagement with certain general concepts and debates about individual rights as well as the system as a whole (including criticisms and controversies), and the various ways in which international human rights law can be used as a legal advocacy tool within the domestic system. The third and final module will examine selected current topics in IHRL, including a review of closely related fields of international law such as international criminal law, international humanitarian law, international refugee law, and indigenous peoples’ rights.
The IHRL system is vast, and the goal of the course is not to provide a comprehensive doctrinal understanding of the entire field. Rather, the objective is for students to come away with a basic familiarity with the fundamental architecture of the system, the resources with which to navigate it, and knowledge of the ways in which international human rights law can be used to inform and support human rights advocacy under domestic legal systems. In addition, through the requirement of a major paper, each student will gain more focused knowledge of a specialized topic of the student’s choice.
Student learning will take place by completion of assigned readings, online posting of brief comments by students, and discussion in class, combined with the preparation of a major research paper.
The class meets once a week in a 3-hour time slot. Guests may on occasion be beamed into the class using a classroom internet connection; certain classes may be scheduled to be fully remote on Zoom where a guest or guests cannot attend in person.
Globalization is both a material and conceptual process that acts on and through the law. This seminar critically positions questions of the ‘global’ in conversation with the idea of law, legality and legal thought. Taking a historical approach, we will investigate how legal institutions and concepts evolved, travelled, and were transplanted across the globe in response to specific economic and political events and pressures. Students will critically engage with the process of ‘globalization’ to explore how power is distributed through law across hegemonic and oppressed legal jurisdictions. With an eye towards social and liberation movements, we will explore the extent to which global, local and ‘glocal’ law can be relied on to advance – and restrict – emancipatory projects. Finally, we will look at the recent turn to populism across the world to ask how and why nationalism has been one response to global interconnectedness and ideas of justice.
This seminar will be delivered using a combination of teaching methods including class discussions; mini-lectures; in-class exercises and guest lectures.
This course offers an introduction to and comprehensive overview of employment law, which is the law (common law and statutory) governing the individual employment relationship. More than two-thirds of Canadian workers are not unionized; this course is about them and their employers. The goal of the course is to provide students with fluency in the theory, principles, doctrines and jurisprudence of the employee-employer relationship. Main topics include: the formation of an employment contract; express and implied contractual terms; workplace standards; employee and employer rights and obligations during employment, including human rights; the termination of the employment contract and the rights and obligations upon severance.
This course will provide a framework for students to explore contract law and contract theory at a more advanced level. It will explore contract doctrines that are not usually covered in the first year curriculum or are covered only briefly. Topics may include: the parol evidence rule, warranties and implied terms, exclusionary clauses, promissory estoppel, mistake, frustration, illegality, the restitutionary and punitive remedies for breach of contract, and the intersections between contract and tort in negligent misrepresentation and inducing breach of contract. It will also ask students to return to what they studied in first year and re-think it in a deeper, more theoretical way, asking questions such as: How should we understand the doctrine of consideration and is the doctrine justified? How should contract law approach boilerplate contracts? Why is there a separate requirement of “intention to create legal relations”? How can we understand the difference between the common law and equitable doctrines of contract law?
Administrative decision-makers are delegated authority by statute to implement legislative policy and deliver government services in a wide range of fields including public health and safety, immigration, labour relations, social benefits, securities regulation, business licensing and approvals, tenancies, professional regulation, communications and broadcasting and environmental protection, among others. For most people, interaction with the law is through one, or more, of these administrative decision-making bodies. Administrative law is the study of the rules that regulate the decision-makers exercise of this delegated power, including rules about fairness, transparency, justification, independence and compliance with the constitution and the decision-makers own jurisdiction. This course is an introductory overview of administrative law. The course will provide students with the necessary tools to engage meaningfully with the various statutory schemes and principles governing the administrative state, to think critically about the court’s role in reviewing administrative decisions, to question and compare the manner in which legislative policy is delivered by a variety of different administrative bodies and to reflect on what this communicates about the relative value the state places on different policies and services.
Administrative law is the law of public decision-making. It applies to a diverse group of public officials who exercise delegated power and deliver public programs and services. This group of public officials (i.e. administrative decision-makers) includes the Landlord and Tenant Board, the Ontario Social Benefits Tribunal, the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, the Parole Board, the Canadian Judicial Council, the Benchers of the Law Society of Ontario, Cabinet (at the federal and provincial levels), municipal councils, many university decision-makers, public inquiries, and so on. Administrative decision-makers make countless decisions that impact the daily lives of individuals and communities, and many of these decisions involve a great deal of discretion. Administrative law aims to ensure that these decisions are transparent and justified, are unbiased and made according to fair procedure, are consistent with constitutional demands, and are within the scope of the decision-maker’s power. In this course, we will critically examine whether administrative law achieves these aims. We will explore the following kinds of questions: How and why are certain public powers delegated to administrative decision-makers? What role do these decision-makers play in the structure of Canadian public life and in the lives of individuals? What principles should govern the design of administrative decision-makers to protect against and address individual and systemic bias? How do administrative bodies carry out their mandates and exercise their powers? What legal rules and principles govern administrative decision-making? What legal rights do individuals have when they access public services? Of what relevance is administrative law for Indigenous self-governance? What role does administrative law play in both undermining and advancing reconciliation? What are the principles and who are the actors of Aboriginal administrative law? When are courts justified in intervening in the decisions of public authorities? What remedies are available when public officials act unfairly, unreasonably or unlawfully? In answering these questions, we will seek to examine the rules of administrative law, the experiences of those affected by the administrative state, the ideals of justice that shape the law, the policy debates underlying administrative law, and the realities of practice in the administrative realm.
This course examines disability as a legal category with implications for the rights of persons with disabilities. Students will be introduced to alternative conceptions and theories of disability and impairment, and will examine how law constructs and regulates the lives of individuals with disabilities. Throughout the course we will examine statutory provisions and jurisprudence in different areas including: family, reproduction, death and dying, health, human rights, education, social assistance and economic supports to understand how disability is defined and regulated by law. This course analyzes and evaluates how law can best achieve the goals of social justice, inclusion and equality for individuals with disabilities.
This course offers in-class instruction in an interactive lecture/discussion/presentation format. Students are expected to read the assigned materials before class and to participate in class discussions. From time to time, guests will be invited to speak about their area of expertise and/or their experience of law and disability.
This course begins with an overview of the Canadian immigration system and international migration patterns with the objective of understanding who is coming to Canada and why. The basic features of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and the Regulations will then be discussed including: family sponsorship, economic immigration and inadmissibility. Embedded in this discussion will be an overview of how immigration decision-making takes place and the reviewability of immigration administrative decisions. A portion of the course will be devoted to looking at current topics in immigration law.
Administrative law is the body of law that governs public decision-making. It aims to ensure that all public authorities use their powers legally, reasonably, and fairly.
This course will be both theoretically rigorous and highly practical. We will study a set of foundational administrative law concepts (grants of authority, the limits of discretion, the duty of procedural fairness, the right to an unbiased decision maker, standards of review, and public law remedies) as well as their real-world applications including in the courtroom.
Each of the four Adjunct Professors maintains a broad public law practice. As such, case studies will include ministerial decisions, public inquiries, various administrative tribunals, municipal council decisions, environmental assessments, copyright rate-setting, supply management matters, indigenous elections, and parliamentary proceedings.
This course focuses on the constitutional dimensions of liberty in Canada. We will examine laws that restrict fundamental freedoms (such as emergency restrictions on freedom of movement during the COVID-19 pandemic, the proposed Online Harms Act, limitations on pro-Palestinian expression and peaceful assembly during the Israel-Gaza war, limitations on collective bargaining rights and the right to strike). We will also examine laws that aim to enhance the exercise of fundamental freedoms (such as anti-SLAPP legislation), and assess them from the perspective of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. We will focus on the Charter provisions that protect freedom of conscience and religion (s.2(a)), freedom of expression and the press (s.2(b)), freedom of peaceful assembly (s.2(c)), freedom of association (s.2(d)), international and interprovincial mobility (s.6), and the right not to be be deprived of liberty except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice (s.7). The course aims to establish a theoretical and doctrinal foundation for each of the rights and freedoms studied, and to consider how they relate to each other. Through a series of case studies focused on current controversies, ongoing litigation and legislative debates, the course will consider the appropriate scope of civil liberties, and what limits on them can be upheld as reasonable and demonstrably justifiable pursuant to s.1 of the Charter. We will also evaluate the increasing resort by provincial legislatures to s.33 of the Charter to insulate legislation from judicial invalidation based on violations of fundamental freedoms, legal rights and equality rights. The approach throughout will be contextual and critical, with an eye to Canada’s international human rights obligations and comparative lessons.