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Academic

University of Toronto Law School Faculty Blog

Discussions by faculty members of the University of Toronto Faculty of Law

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Last Entry: March 26, 2011 at 17:45:30

David Cameron - "Constitutional Crisis or Democracy in Action"

Posted on December 09, 2008
On Friday, Dec. 5, 2008 the University of Toronto Faculty of Law hosted a panel discussion about the Governor-General's decision to prorogue parliament. The following is a summary of the remarks made by panelist David Cameron.I?ll be brief. I see no reason to take more time than Stephen Harper did in his weirdly pointless address to the nation on Wednesday...

Was the Governor General's Decision to Prorogue Parliament Constitutional? Canada's Leading Scholars Weigh in on this Historic Ruling

Posted on December 09, 2008
On Friday, Dec. 5, 2008 the University of Toronto Faculty of Law hosted a panel discussion about the Governor-General's decision to prorogue parliament. The panel included leading constitutional scholars and politicians.Many of the participants have expressed an interest in continuing the discussion, and will be posting a summary of their remarks from the panel directly to the faulty blog...

Canada's Constitutional Black Box

Posted on December 08, 2008
On Thursday, Gov. Gen. Micha??lle Jean granted a request from Prime Minister Stephen Harper to prorogue Parliament until late January. She thus protected the Conservative Government from a confidence voteon Monday that would likely have toppled the minority government and perhaps prompted her to invite a Liberal-NDP coalition supported by the Bloc Quebecois to form a government...

Jacob Ziegel: "Disappointing catch in the Supreme Court"

Posted on November 21, 2008
This commentary was first published in the Financial Post on November 21, 2008.One of the important roles of the Supreme Court of Canada is to resolve conflicts among lower courts on difficult issues of law and, in the commercial sphere and other areas of consensual law, to develop rules and doctrines that promote predictability of outcomes and enhance the free-flow...

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Jacob Ziegel: "Unsecured creditors have the most to lose"

Posted on November 12, 2008
This commentary was first published in the Financial Post on November 4, 2008.Last August, 4,500 Zoom Airlines passengers found themselves stranded across North America, the West Indies and various European countries when the airline ran out of money and grounded its planes...

Prof. Ed Morgan: "Fight Bad Speech With Good Speech"

Posted on November 12, 2008
This commentary was published in the National Post on November 4, 2008. It was originally published in Canadian Jewish News.In recent months, I have been invited to participate in two conferences, one put on by the Ontario Bar Association (OBA) and the other by Osgoode Hall Law School...

Prof. Emeritus David Beatty: "YES: PR is more democratic"

Posted on November 07, 2008
This commentary was first published in the Toronto Star on November 1, 2008.The days and weeks following a national election are invariably a time of reflection and recrimination.The Liberals in particular are in for a period of intense soul-searching as they begin yet another leadership campaign...

Jacob Ziegel: "Promotion of Federally Appointed Judges and Appointment of Chief Justices: The Unfinished Agenda"

Posted on November 06, 2008
The following paper is a chapter in a book on JUDICIAL INDEPENDENCE, edited by Lorne Sossin and Adam Dodek, and expected to be published by the University of Toronto Press in 2009. The paper will also be discussed at a Faculty Seminar to be held on November 24, 2008...

Prof. Lorne Sossin: "Lawyers, Rats and the Future of the Profession"

Posted on November 05, 2008
This commentary was first published in the University of Toronto Bulletin on October 28, 2008.A year ago, a new book entitled Lawyers Are Rats made the cover of Maclean's (the book is about "how lawyers became greedy, unprincipled enablers of the rich")...

Prof. Audrey Macklin: "The Omar Khadr Case: Redefining War Crimes"

Posted on November 04, 2008
This commentary was first published on the Jurist website on October 31, 2008.George W. Bush?s term as president is coming to an end, and he has little to show by way of meting out justice for the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Perhaps this is why his administration seems so desperate to score a victory on the judicial battleground of the...

Does the Credit Crisis Implicate the Need for a National Securities Regulator?

Posted on November 03, 2008
There are strong arguments in favour of a national securities regulator which have been voiced numerous times over the past few decades: greater efficiency in transactions, consistent and coherent presence internationally, single enforcement body, uniform securities legislation, lower costs for issuers and registrants, etc...

Prof. Kent Roach: Guilt by association? Not quite

Posted on October 03, 2008
This commentary was published in the Toronto Star on September 30, 2008. The recent conviction of a young offender in the Toronto terrorism case has raised concerns that his conviction was a form of guilt by association. The Crown's star witness, Mubin Shaikh, was quick to tell reporters that he did not believe the young man was a terrorist...

New Macleans Ranking of Canadian Law Schools

Posted on September 11, 2008
The second annual Macleans ranking of Canadian law schools has been released. Here are the rankings for the common law schools this year, as compared with last year: Common Law School 2008 2007 Change Toronto 1 1 McGill 2 2 Osgoode 3 3 UBC 4 9 +5 Victoria 5 8 +3 Dalhousie 6 6 Ottawa 7 4 -3 Queen's 8...

Prof. Lorne Sossin - "Does Independence Matter?"

Posted on July 09, 2008
Prof. Lorne Sossin has published an essay in the Literary Review of Canada entitled "Does Independence Matter? From Elections Canada to the nuclear watchdog, the Harper government seems to disagree" (July/August 2008). The essay analyzes the implications of the federal government's confrontational relationship with various independent public agencies, from Elections Canada to the Canadian Military Complaints Commission to the Canadian...

Webcast: Seminar on Differing Perspectives on the Gardasil/HPV-Vaccination Program in Ontario

Posted on May 02, 2008
The Faculty of Law, with the University of Toronto's Department of Public Health Sciences and Joint Centre for Bioethics, has initiated a seminar series on "Public Health Ethics, Law and Policy." The inaugural seminar was held on the subject of "Differing Perspectives on the Gardasil/HPV-Vaccination Program in Ontario" at the Faculty of Law on March 20, 2008...

Congratulations to Prof. Ernie Weinrib

Posted on May 01, 2008
I'm delighted to report that Professor Ernie Weinrib has been elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Science. The American Academy of Arts & Sciences is one of the United State's oldest and most prestigious honorary societies and independent policy research centers...

Canadian Law and Economics Association Annual Meeting - Call for Papers

Posted on April 22, 2008
The next Annual Meeting of the Canadian Law and Economics Association will be held on Sept. 26-27, 2008. As usual, the meeting will be held at the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto. More details and Call for Papers here.

Earl Lipson, et al. v. Her Majesty the Queen, et al.

Posted on April 22, 2008
The Supreme Court of Canada will hear an appeal tomorrow in a case called Lipson v. Canada. The appeal may prove to be a significant test of the efficacy of the so-called "general anti-avoidance rule" (the "GAAR") in combatting what is perceived to be abusive tax avoidance...

Upcoming Conference: Developing Aboriginal Economies

Posted on April 22, 2008
On May 1, 2008, the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, in partnership with the Rt. Hon. Paul Martin, will be hosting a summit entitled ?Developing Aboriginal Economies.? The summit is a one-day symposium featuring two roundtables with a diverse group of panelists...

Suicide Bombings: An Act to Amend the Criminal Code

Posted on April 14, 2008
Senator Jerahmiel Grafstein (Lib.) has recently introduced into Parliament a proposed amendment to the anti-terrorism provisions of the Criminal Code, Bill S-210, which is now before the Senate's Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee. The Bill is a short and straightforward one, which provides: Section 83...

Securities law needs more enforcement, not more laws

Posted on March 24, 2008
Originally posted on Lawyers Weekly: http://www.lawyersweekly.ca/index.php?section=article&articleid=640 Many commentators believe that securities law violations are under-enforced and under-prosecuted in Canada. But quite apart from securities regulatory enforcement, what is the role of the criminal law in the enforcement of financial crimes? Criminal prosecutions are necessary not simply as a supplement to the quasi-criminal jurisdiction of securities regulators, but as a first...

Dunsmuir: Can the Standard of Review be Solved?

Posted on March 17, 2008
On Friday, March 7, 2008, the Supreme Court released Dunsmuir v. New Brunswick (2008 SCC 9), a stark reversal of the last decade of administrative law jurisprudence on the issue of the standard of review. This decision seeks to quiet the steady drumbeat of criticism of the Court's Standard of Review jurisprudence while remaining true to the culture of deference...

Collectivizing Rights; Privatizing Taxation: The Unarticulated Function of Copyright Collectives

Posted on March 14, 2008
The recent proposal from the Songwriters Association of Canada to fully legalize peer-to-peer file sharing of music by adding a $5 monthly charge to the cost of Internet access (and similar proposals floating south of the border) has brought renewed attention in the role of levies and tariffs collected by copyright collectives in Canada...

Migrating Same Sex Marriages

Posted on March 12, 2008
I have just posted a new article on SSRN entitled "Betwixt and Between Recognition: Migrating Same Sex Marriages and the Turn to the Private". The paper looks at some parallels between conflict of laws cases and New York Times wedding annoucements in recognizing same sex marriage...

Bill C-10 - When funding becomes Censorship

Posted on March 06, 2008
There is a new censorship kafuffle in town. It?s Bill C-10, which will restrict tax credits to film and television productions deemed offensive and "contrary to public policy" by the Ministry of Heritage. The arts community is rightly up in arms, condemning the Bill as government censorship...

New Articles Available Online: On Competition Law and Intellectual Property, and on Patents and Phramaceuticals Regulation

Posted on March 04, 2008
Two articles of mine have been recently published and are available online. The first article, published in 49 Arizona Law Review is Making Sense of Nonsense: Intellectual Property, Antitrust, and Market Power. Here's the abstract: While the economic rationale for intellectual property ("IP") rights rests on the concepts of "monopoly" or "market power," the U...

Collegiality and Ideological Commitment

Posted on February 19, 2008
I've just posted a new paper on SSRN entitled, "Should They All Just Get Along? Judicial Ideology, Collegiality, and Appointments to the Supreme Court of Canada". My coauthor, Andrew Green, and I argue that the singular focus on the policy preferences of Supreme Court justices is apt to miss an important dimension of Court dynamics--the degree to which the justices engage in cooperative decision-making...

Veils, Isotopes and the Meaning of ?Independence?

Posted on January 13, 2008
There have been a considerable number of allegations of late that the Federal Government has been improperly interfering with independent Federal Agencies, Board and Commissions (or, for short, Federal ABCs). From a dispute about veiled women voting to a dispute about shutting down a nuclear facility, both the diversity and the importance of independent administrative ABCs has been on display...

A Malignant Vestige Of 'Tradition'

Posted on December 18, 2007
This commentary was first published in the National Post on December 14, 2007. The tragic death of Aqsa Parvez has been on my mind incessantly since I heard the news that the Mississauga, Ont., teenager had been killed -- allegedly by her traditionally minded Muslim father...

What else do Canada and Israel have in common (copyright related)?

Posted on December 17, 2007
In my latest post I noted that Canada and Israel share a common copyright heritage. Here's a trivia question: What else, copyright related, do Canada and Israel have in common? Answer below... Answer: The melodies of both countries' national anthems (choose whichever term you like) are inspired borrow build on plagiarize steal pirate previous popular musical works of their time...

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