Past Research Grants

Osgoode Hall Law School Research Fellowships

On January 24, 2013, Osgoode's Research and Seminars Committee made their recommendation to the Dean  that Professors Sara Slinn and Robert Wai should receive 2013 Osgoode Hall Law School Research Fellowships.  The fellowship recognizes merit in research by providing individual scholars with an opportunity to complete work requiring a period of intense effort. 

Wai's research project will focus on the concept of transnational private law.  The research will try to address two weaknesses in existing research literature -- one with respect to the parochialism or private law, and the other with respect to the complexity of global pluralism in transnational governance.

Slinn's study titled, "An Empirical Evaluation of the Adjudication of Statutory Human Rights Claims before Labour Arbitrators and Human Rights Tribunal in Ontario", will provide a comparative, empirical and theoretical examination of the handling of human rights claims arising from the workplace by labour arbitration and by the statutory human rights tribunal in Ontario, the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario (HRTO), and the finality of of these decisions with respect to reconsideration and judicial review.

SSHRC Community-University Research Alliance (CURA)

The Canadian Forum on Civil Justice was awarded a five year, $1 million Community-University Research Alliance grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for The Cost of Justice: Weighing the costs of fair andeffective resolution to legal problems. The Cost of Justice will use a cost-benefit analysis to explore and promote a major culture shift in Canada toward a public-centered justice system. This research will serve as the foundation for a new national vision of justice care. The Cost of Justice is lead by Trevor Farrow (Principle Investigator), Les Jacobs and Diana Lowe.

SSHRC Insight Development Grants

                                               Fostering Innovation in Canada through Intellectual Property Law

Professor Giuseppina D’Agostino

Intellectual property laws, in particular the patent system, were developed to promote innovation, research and creativity in all fields of technology and art.  Yet, the patent system is not a green card to innovation.  Indeed, given our progress in science and the increasing rate of technological developments, it is ironic that there is arguably a declining rate of innovation.  From this perspective, it might be contended that the patent system is not meeting its said objectives.  However, the challenges to the patent system are complex and cannot solely be attributed to its laws.  Often more telling are the institutional frameworks and socio-cultural and economic practices at the pre-patent inventive stage and the post-patent commercialization stage and beyond.   The goal of the Project is to investigate the policies and practices inventors face at Canadian universities as they attempt to commercialize their inventions with the assistance of their university’s innovation or technology transfer offices, and ultimately to propose better commercialization solutions for all parties in order to foster a more innovative Canada.


       The State as Criminal Wrongdoer: An Inquiry into the Intelligibility and Legitimacy of Criminalizing the State

Professor François Tanguay-Renaud

                                                                             

It is widely accepted that modern states can perpetrate, or be complicit in, grave wrongdoing. Could criminal law intelligibly and legitimately be used as a means of responding to, and controlling, such wrongdoing? This research project explores the issue from the perspective of analytic criminal law theory, and investigates core possible objections, including: (1) whether states---as opposed to their governments and individuals officials---are a proper target for such inquiry; (2) whether the state is an entity capable of wrongdoing (moral, legal and, finally, criminal); (3) whether there is a need for a category of "state crimes," in addition to existing legal categories such as state violations of human and constitutional rights, civil wrongs, and so on; (4) whether and how the state may be criminalized domestically (where, typically, it is the criminalizing agent itself) as well as internationally (given the general consensual basis of international law and respect for state sovereignty); (4) whether the state is a kind of entity that should benefit from the rights and safeguards characteristic of the criminal process; (5) whether the state may legitimately be criminally punished, despite the possibility of unfair dispersion of its punishment to innocent members; and (6) whether criminalization can be a legitimate means of accountability for state conduct, given more commonly available legal and political alternatives.

SSHRC Insight Grant

Professors Dayna Nadine Scott and Gus Van Harten have received funding from the SSHRC Insight Grant competition for a three-year research project, Investigating Regulatory Chill: Understanding Contemporary Constraints on Regulatory Decision-Making to Protect the Environment ($113, 607).  The research project aims to contribute to the literature in regulation and governance by advancing understanding of regulatory chill through a detailed empirical investigation. The research will focus on trade and investment regimes and how they may affect regulatory decision-making with respect to the environment, primarily in cases of resource extraction.

Foundation For Legal Research

SSHRC Partnership Development Grants

On Friday May 25th, the Government of Canada announced a series of investments that seeks to create research partnerships among the academic, public, private and not-for-profit sectors. The effort will be conducted by the Federal Government through grants administered through the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

	Professor Giuseppina D'Agostino's SSHRC grant is titled “Triggering Transnational Partnership for the Mobilization of Intellectual Property Policy and Practice”.			Professor Obiora Okafor's  SSHRC grant is titled "Canadian-Nigerian Cooperation in the Protection of Human Rights: Nature; Attainments; Problems; and Prospect”.
	Professor Gus Van Harten is a collaborator on a grant held by Professor James Rochlin (UBC). The grant is titled "Human Security and the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement".

Osgoode Hall Law School Research Fellowships 2012

The Osgoode Hall Law School Research Fellowship recognizes merit in research by providing individual scholars with an opportunity to complete work requiring a period of intensive effort.

BLG Research Fellowships 2012