Alyssa Clutterbuck wins writing prize

alyssa-clutterbuck-7410Third year BCL/LLB student Alyssa Clutterbuck has received a writing prize for an article she submitted to the University of Victoria’s APPEAL: Review of Current Law and Law Reform journal. Her paper, “Rethinking Baker: A Critical Race Feminist Theory of Disability”, was selected by the journal’s editorial board as the 2015 winner of its McCarthy Tétrault Prize for Exceptional Writing. The prize also comes with a 1000$ award.

In their review, the selection committee board underscored how her “paper navigates a complex area of law and theory deftly and offers an original perspective on a unique subject” and commended [it] “for making the most substantial contribution to the existing literature.”

Alyssa Clutterbuck completed her BA at McGill in 2008 and her Master’s degree in Africana Studies at Cornell University in 2011. She has worked in Accra, Ghana, for women’s rights organizations and was a participant in the School of Criticism and Theory in 2010. Alyssa has presented her research in Canada, the United States, and the Caribbean, and has edited several publications. She will be working as a ‘student at law’ at Osler’s in Toronto next summer.

The Faculty congratulates Ms Clutterbuck on this wonderful recognition of her legal scholarship!

Hot Cities Tour 2015

Brooke Goosen, 2L (pictured below, on left), spent the March break taking part in an innovative course offered by McGill Desautels professor Karl Moore. Called the Hot Cities of the World Tour, the course takes students out of the classroom and into cities around the world for a look at the political, economic and legal issues that make these cities tick. Brooke shares her experience in her own words, below.

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This Reading Week, I got outside of New Chancellor Day Hall to experience law within rapidly emerging markets and in the global environment. Professor Karl Moore, of the Desautels Faculty of Management started the “Hot Cities of the World Tour” program in 2007, intent on bringing millennials to emerging hotbeds of economy, commerce and culture.

This year’s 11-day trip brought together a group of 39 diverse students and alumni from the faculties of Management, Arts, Agriculture and Law to Doha, Hong Kong, Jakarta and Bali.

The days in-country were filled with meetings with CEOs and other senior executives from leading multi-nationals and local firms as well as key international organizations like the World Food Programme and the Asian Development Bank.

We spent a considerable amount of time at Norton Rose Fulbright Indonesia, where the office’s founding partner and other senior partners met with us and talked about practicing law in a foreign country and advising clients in the face of Indonesia’s corruption and ambiguous civil code. I also learned a lot about the legal profession from Chantal Desjardins (BCL’81/LLB’81), one of the alumni on the trip. She’s been practicing in Montreal since finishing her law degree at McGill nearly 30 years ago.

The tour had a social component in which we partnered with XSProject, a charity working to improve the life of Jakarta’s trash picker communities by buying the waste collected by trash pickers and transforming it into products that are then sold for profits that are reinvested into the charity’s programs (In the photo, Brooke is holding an umbrella made from recycled waste). We have set a goal of raising $5,000 for XSProject to send more than 30 children to elementary school for a year.

Another highlight of the trip was spending time with the other students, a number of whom are undergraduates considering law school. I was able to share my experiences to date and answer questions about the program and these conversations reminded me why I am studying at McGill and how I grateful for the doors it’s already opened—like spending reading week literally on the other side of the world.

For more details about this project and about the tour, check out our traveller’s blog and our other social media handles!

Contesting Quebec’s student aid policies

Third-year student Bill Bjornsson has filed a complaint with the Quebec human rights commission for discrimination based on civil status. Bjornsson, who is originally from Halifax, discovered that he must wait three years instead of one to qualify for provincial student aid and tuition rates because he and his common-law partner do not have children. (Provincial legislation passed in 2014 stipulates that student aid and the Quebec tuition rate are available to childless common-law couples after 3 years of living together; for couples with a child, the wait time is just one year.) “The larger picture is that there are those who can’t have a child—whether it’s due to biological reasons or otherwise—they’re in a situation where their neighbour can benefit after one year of a common-law relationship, whereas they can’t,” said Bjornsson.

Read the whole story in the Montreal Gazette (http://montrealgazette.com/news/quebec/quebec-tuition-law-is-discriminatory-says-mcgill-student)