In its busiest month of the academic year, the Faculty hosted, among many other events: two events to showcase research; visits from human rights leaders Johann van der Westhuizen (South African Constitutional Court judge) and Oren Perez (professor at Bar-Ilan University) and from authors and scholars Tanya Hernandez and Glen Coulthard, as well as a Talmudic Law Moot competition.
Author-meets-readers sessions
Professor Adelle Blackett’s Critical Race Theory seminar hosted two Author-meets-Readers sessions in March, first with Fordham University Professor of Law Tanya Hernandez and then with Glen Sean Coulthard (Yellowknives Dene), assistant professor in the First Nations Studies Program and the Department of Political Science at the University of British Columbia.
Students read Hernandez and Coulthard’s books, (Racial Subordination in Latin America: The Role of the State, Customary Law and the New Civil Rights Response and Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition respectively) and wrote book reviews, which they then presented to the authors and which sparked both a discussion and a question and answer period.
“The students learned to prepare for the dialogue and participated in an informed exchanged,” noted Blackett. “I loved reading the reviews,” added Hernandez. “They were so beautifully written, in English and in French.”
Spotlight on student research
The Faculty’s Research Office hosted Research Week to present and celebrate research by members of the community. The week kicked off with the DCL Research Fair, during which doctoral students introduced their areas of research (photon on right). The students created word clouds to showcase the themes of their research topics, and created an interactive presentation in which the images were posted in the Atrium and participants were invited to add their thoughts to the posters.
The week also featured a session with professors Daniel Weinstock and Kirsten Anker, as well as postdoctoral student Hassan Razavi and doctoral student Eliza Bateman, speaking about academic careers in the law.
At the end of March, the Institute of Comparative Law and the Paul-André Crépeau Centre for Private and Comparative Law presented a student research mini-conference. Sixteen McGill Law undergraduate and graduate students presented their papers, organized into four panels: Examining Regulation; Rethinking Law’s Constructs, Politics and Collectivities, and Pressing at Private Law. A full list of presenters and their papers is available here.
The CHLRP welcomes two new O’Brien Fellows in Residence
The Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism hosts two new O’Brien Fellows this spring.
Bar-Ilan University professor Oren Perez will be at the Faculty throughout the month of April while Constitutional Court of South Africa justice Johann van der Westhuizen visited the Faculty for two weeks in March.
Professor Perez specializes in environmental law as well as legal theory and e-democracy and will speak about the green economy paradox at a lecture entitled “A Critical Inquiry into Sustainability Indexes” on April 22, 2015.
Justice van der Westhuizen’s visit included lunch with the justices of the Supreme Court of Canada in Ottawa, as well as guest lectures with students in Constitutional Law and International Migration Law, as well as a Coffee Hour with doctoral students.
Supported by a generous gift by David O’Brien, the O’Brien Fellows in Residence program aims to provide opportunities for human rights professionals to visit and contribute to the Centre. The program is meant to enrich the intellectual life at the Centre and serve as a professional development opportunity for the Fellows.
Second Bet Din Moot at McGill Law
The Talmudic Law Moot Competition was held again on March 23, 2015, and opposed McGill and Osgoode Hall. The bench was composed of attorneys Gregory Bordan, Doreen Brown, and Azim Hussain.
The Osgoode Hall team was comprised of Gleb Matushansky, Nemetz Nacson, and Maya Pearlston. They were coached by Rabbi Chaim Strauchler, and overseen by Professor Faisal Bhabha. The McGill team was comprised of Michelle Orr Gaucher and Daniel Luxenberg. They were coached by Rabbi Michael Whitman, and overseen by Professor Hoi Kong.
Maya Pearlston won the prize for Best Pleader, while Michelle Orr Gaucher and Daniel Luxenberg received the prize for Best Factum. The Bet Din Moot is the culmination of a course on Talmudic Law offered at the Faculty.
Law student wins SSMU Social Activist of the Year Award
3L student Lillian Boctor has won the Social Activist of the Year award, awarded by the Student’s Society of McGill University’s (SSMU) Community Engagement Committee, for all of her community work during her time at McGill.
In their award, the Committee indicated that Boctor’s nomination “was beyond impressive” and that the range of causes and communities she’d been contributing to “was amazing”. Boctor received her award from Dina El-Baradie, SSMU’s Community Engagement Commissioner on April 11.
McGill student wins CBA IP essay prize
Student Pradeepan K. Sarma has won the National IP Law School Essay Competition, organized by the Canadian Bar Asssociation’s National Intellectual Property Section, for a paper titled “Aereo Dynamics: ‘User Rights’ and the Future of Internet Retransmission in Canada”. The award includes a cash prize and free registration for the CBA’s IP Day 2015 event, which takes place May 28, 2015, in Ottawa.
New Law Journal wins SSMU Award
This week, the McGill Journal of Dispute Resolution (MJDR) received the SSMU’s Publication/Website of the Year Award.
The MJDR is a peer-reviewed, student-run academic journal dedicated to the fields of arbitration, mediation and negotiation. It promote discourses and the exchange of ideas between scholars, practitioners, law students and the public at large.
The MJDR publishes free scholarship from leading scholars in these fields, and has also begun podcasts and a blog. You can find their first edition and more content at http://mjdr-rrdm.ca/
Other Faculty News
Kirsten Anker awarded inaugural Buxbaum Prize
March 31, 2015. The Younger Comparativists Committee (YCC) of the American Society of Comparative Law has selected Professor Kirsten Anker as the inaugural recipient of the Richard M. Buxbaum Prize for Teaching in Comparative Law. [View announcement]
Jaye Ellis Appointed Acting Director of School of Environment
March 24, 2015. Professor Jaye Ellis has been appointed Acting Director of the McGill School of Environment (MSE) for a one-year term beginning in September 2015. [View announcement]
Frédéric Mégret accède à une Chaire William Dawson
Le 24 mars dernier, la Faculté de droit avait le plaisir d’annoncer que le professeur Frédéric Mégret a reçu une Chaire William Dawson de l’Université McGill. Les Chaires William Dawson de McGill encourage les chercheurs qui sont en voie de devenir des leaders dans leur domaine. [Voir annonce]
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