Expertise: Administrative Law

Berger, Kate Glover

Professor Kate Glover Berger joined the faculty at Osgoode Hall Law School in 2020.  From 2015-2020, Professor Berger was an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law at Western University, where she was co-director of Western Law’s Public law research group and taught Administrative Law, Constitutional Law, and specialized seminars in Public Law.  Professor Berger earned her doctorate in law from McGill University as a Vanier Scholar and held the O’Brien Fellowship in Human Rights and Legal Pluralism.  She earned her masters in law from the University of Cambridge, where she was the Rt. Hon. Paul Martin Senior Scholar. In 2009-2010, she served as law clerk to the Honourable Justice Rosalie Abella of the Supreme Court of Canada.  Professor Berger has appeared as counsel before all levels of court, including the Supreme Court of Canada, and has served as an expert witness before the Senate, providing testimony to the Special Senate Committee on Senate Modernization. She is the academic chair of the Annual National Forum on Administrative Law and chair of the Advisory Board of the Canadian Association of Law Teachers.

Professor Berger’s scholarly and teaching expertise lies in administrative and constitutional law. She researches and publishes widely in these areas, with an emphasis on administrative law and its relationship to the constitution; the nature of the administrative state; the design of institutions and fair process; judicial review of administrative action; and constitutional principles, architecture, and amendment. Her research appears in leading Canadian and international journals and edited collections, and has been translated for inclusion in international publications.  She is the author of “The Principles and Practices of Procedural Fairness” in Administrative Law in Context, 3d ed (Toronto: Emond, 2018) and the chapter on Canada in Foundations and Traditions of Constitutional Amendment (Oxford: Hart, 2017). Professor Berger has been invited to present her scholarship across Canada and around the world, including at the Frontiers of Public Law Conference (University of Melbourne & University of Cambridge), the Colloque sur la modification constitutionelle dans tous ses états (Palace des Académies, Brussels), and the Comparative Public Law Workshop (American Society for Comparative Law & University of Ottawa). In 2017-18, Professor Berger held the inaugural Dean’s Research Fellowship at Western Law.  In 2017, her research was awarded the Prix d’Excellence de L’Association des Doyens des Études Supérieures au Québec.

A recipient of multiple teaching awards, including the Western Law Award for Teaching Excellence (2015-16) and the J. McLeod Professor of the Year Award (2016-17), Professor Berger teaches JD courses and seminars in administrative law, constitutional law, and advanced public law. She is also active in graduate legal education, and in addition to supervising graduate research at both the masters and doctoral level, she has taught graduate courses on research methods and legal inquiry.  Committed to ongoing legal education, Professor Berger also lectures on specialized topics of public law in professional development programs.

Research interests: Administrative Law, Constitutional Law, and Public Law

Van Harten, Gus

Gus Van Harten joined the faculty in January 2008 and teaches Administrative Law, Constitutional Law, International Investment Law, and Governance of the International Financial System. Previously he was a faculty member in the Law Department of the London School of Economics. He has received the William Robson Memorial Prize from LSE, a Scholar in Residence fellowship from the Law Commission of Ontario, a doctoral fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, an Overseas Research Award from Universities UK, and a Research Award from the Canadian International Development Agency.

Van Harten’s most recent book is The Trouble with Foreign Investor Protection (OUP, 2020). His previous books include Investment Treaty Arbitration and Public Law (OUP, 2007); Sovereign Choices and Sovereign Constraints (OUP, 2013); and Sold Down the Yangtze: Canada’s Lopsided Investment Deal with China (Lorimer, 2015). He also co-edits a leading Canadian text: Administrative Law — Cases and Materials (Emond Montgomery, 2010, 2015, and 2021). His academic articles have been published in the Canadian Yearbook of International Law, European Journal of International Law, International and Comparative Law Quarterly, International Journal of Evidence and Proof, Journal of International Dispute Settlement, Osgoode Hall Law Journal, Queen’s Law Journal, Review of International Political Economy, Supreme Court Law Review, University of Toronto Law Journal, Yearbook of International Investment Law and Policy, and other journals. Most of his academic articles are freely available here.

Van Harten participates in policy debates with a view to providing accessible information on issues of public importance, especially on trade agreements and investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS). He has made submissions to parliamentary committees in Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Germany and has advised various governments and non-governmental organizations. He has also appeared in media in Canada, such as L’actualité, CBC, CTV, Canadian Press, The Globe and Mail, Radio Canada International, The Toronto Star, and TV Ontario; and in international media such as American Lawyer, ARD (Germany), Ariran Korea TV, Austrian Public TV, Bloomberg, CCTV News (China), Channel 2 (Netherlands), Der Spiegel, L’Echo, The Guardian, Japan Broadcasting Corporation, National Public Radio (USA), Reuters, and Telesur.

Before becoming an academic, Van Harten worked for two judicial inquiries in Canada – the Arar Inquiry of 2004-06 and the Walkerton Inquiry of 2000-02 – and as a law clerk at the Ontario Court of Appeal. He is also proud of his past work as a teaching assistant, lifeguard and swimming instructor, dishwasher, temporary labourer, and grocery clerk.

Research Interests: Administrative Law; International Investment Law and Arbitration; International Monetary Law and Policy; Inquiries and Investigations

Research website on International Investment Arbitration and Public Policy

Blog

 

Scott, Dayna N.

Professor Dayna Nadine Scott was appointed as York Research Chair in Environmental Law & Justice in the Green Economy in 2018. She is cross-appointed with York’s Faculty of Environmental Studies & Urban Change. Professor Scott is a Co-Director of Osgoode’s Environmental Justice and Sustainability Clinic and a Co-Coordinator of the joint MES/JD program.

Professor Scott joined Osgoode’s faculty in 2006 after completing a SSHRC Post-Doctoral Fellowship at McGill’s Faculty of Law and a Hauser Global Research Fellowship at NYU. Professor Scott’s research interests focus on contestation over extraction; exercises of Indigenous jurisdiction over lands and resources; the distribution of pollution burdens affecting marginalized communities and vulnerable populations; gender and environmental health; and the justice dimensions of the transition to a greener economy.

Professor Scott is currently the co-Principal Investigator, with Professor Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark of the University of Victoria’s Center for Indigenous Research and Community-led Engagement (CIRCLE), of a project funded by the SSHRC New Frontiers in Research Fund called “Jurisdiction Back: Infrastructure Beyond Extractivism”. In a partnership between the Yellowhead Institute, the University of Toronto’s Department of Geography and Planning and York University, this project includes 14 academics and land defenders from across the country pursuing research oriented towards how the “just transition” to sustainable economies can be imagined and infrastructured to restore Indigenous jurisdiction, laws and governance systems.

Professor Scott has been the Primary Investigator on several SSHRC-funded projects, including “Consent & Contract: Authorizing Extraction in Ontario’s Ring of Fire” with colleagues Andrée Boisselle, Deborah McGregor and Estair Van Wagner, and the Partnership Development Grant, “Reconciling Sovereignties: New Techniques for ‘Authorizing’ Extraction on Indigenous Territories” led by Professor Shiri Pasternak, in partnership with the Indigenous Network on Economies and Trade (INET) and MiningWatch Canada.  She also completed research in partnership with environmental justice activists from the Aamjiwnaang First Nation, near Sarnia`s Chemical Valley, that applied a critical, feminist perspective to the examination of law’s treatment of the risks of long-term, low-dose exposures to pollutants, and another SSHRC-funded project (“Investigating Regulatory Chill”) that examined constraints on regulation to protect the environment, with a focus on investor rights in the resource extraction context.

Professor Scott and collaborators recently completed a major report for the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada entitled, “Implementing a Regional, Indigenous-Led, and Sustainability-Informed Impact Assessment in Ontario’s Ring of Fire.” This project was undertaken in partnership with Chief and Council of Neskantaga First Nation, a remote Anishinaabe community in Ontario’s far north..

Recent publications explore impact-benefit agreements in “Extraction Contracting: The Struggle for Control of Indigenous Lands” (2020) in a special issue of South Atlantic Quarterly, co-edited with Shiri Pasternak; “Extractivism” in Mariana Valverde, Kamari Clarke, Eve Darian-Smith and Prabha Kotiswaran, eds, The Routledge Handbook of Law and Society (Abingdon: Routledge, 2021); the resurgence of Indigenous law in Treaty 9, with Andrée Boisselle (2019 UNB Law Review); the dynamics of “sacrifice zones” in the context of the emerging green energy economy (McGill Law Journal 2017, with Adrian A. Smith); anti-toxics politics (“Wanna-be Toxic Free? From Precautionary Consumption to Corporeal Citizenship” in Environmental Politics 2016); and the tactics of activists resisting tar sands extraction in Peace River Alberta (“‘We are the Monitors Now’: Experiential Knowledge, Transcorporeality and Environmental Justice” (2015) in Social & Legal Studies).

Professor Scott is the co-editor with Professor Deborah Curran, of a new journal of Canadian Environmental Law scholarship, the editor of Our Chemical Selves: Gender, Toxics and Environmental Health (UBC Press, 2015) and the past Director of the National Network on Environments and Women`s Health. Among other awards, Professor Scott has been a recipient of a York-Massey Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship, and the Law Commission of Canada’s “Audacity of Imagination” Prize.