Expertise: Clinical Education

Smith, Adrian A.

Professor Adrian Smith joined the Osgoode Hall Law School faculty in July 2018 as Associate Professor and will serve a term as Academic Director of Parkdale Community Legal Services (PCLS), teaching the intensive seminar in poverty law.  He arrives from Carleton University’s Department of Law and Legal Studies where he enjoyed cross-appointment to the Institute of Political Economy and the Institute of African Studies.  Prior to his appointment in 2011, he completed a Bachelor of Arts (BA, Honours) in Political Science and History at Western, a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) and Master of Laws (LLM) at Osgoode, and doctoral studies at McGill Faculty of Law, for which he received a SSHRC ‘CGS’ Doctoral Scholarship.

His areas of interest broadly relate to law, political economy and development.  He researches the regulation of labour in colonial and settler colonial contexts, including temporary labour migration in Canada.  He also has interests in popular legal education in social movements, anti-imperialism, anti-racism, and visual legal studies — among other areas.  His research projects have taken him to northern Africa, western Europe, South America, the Caribbean, Australia, Mexico and throughout the U.S. and Canada.  He has been privileged to work with youth environmental justice activists from Aamjiwnaang First Nation, near Sarnia’s Chemical Valley, and has undertaken research in relation to renewable energy in the territory of Batchewana First Nation, near Sault Ste. Marie.  He is a researcher in the SSHRC Partnership Development Grant, “Reconciling Sovereignties: New Techniques for ‘Authorizing’ Extraction on Indigenous Territories” in partnership with the Indigenous Network on Economies and Trade (INET) and Mining Watch Canada (led by Professor Shiri Pasternak).

Professor Smith’s work can be found in a range of journals and edited collections.  He is co-editor of Unfree Labour? Struggles of Migrant and Immigrant Workers in Canada (PM Press, with Professor Aziz Choudry).

While at Carleton, Professor Smith taught Regulating Work in the Global Economy, Settler Colonialism and Belonging In Canada (Research Methods), Historical Perspectives on Law and Society, Law and Development, and Labour Law.  For two years he also co-taught the core doctoral seminar in political economy.  Following his term at PCLS, he will teach labour law.

Professor Smith is a youth basketball coach, with Toronto Triple Threat Basketball Club and Ontario Basketball’s Summer Development and Centre for Performance (CP) Programs.

Research Interests: regulation of labour, law and development, critical political economy approaches to law, temporary labour migration, racism, settler colonialism, social movements and law.

Young, Alan N.

Alan Young is the Co-Founder and former Director of Osgoode’s Innocence Project, which is a clinical program that guides JD students through the process of investigating suspected cases of wrongful conviction and imprisonment. He also maintains a small practice specializing in criminal law and procedure that is primarily devoted to challenging state authority to criminalize consensual activity.

He has brought constitutional challenges to our gambling, obscenity, bawdy-house and drug laws, and for nearly two decades has provided free legal services to those whose alternative lifestyles have brought them into conflict with the law.  He has represented countless numbers of people suffering from AIDS, cancer and multiple sclerosis who were charged after using marijuana for medicinal purposes, and as a result of these cases, the Federal Government was compelled to create a regulatory program authorizing the use of medical marijuana.  In addition to his work in the area of consensual crime, Professor Young has also provided free legal services to victims of violent crime and to individuals attempting to sue the government for malicious prosecution.

Canadian Lawyer magazine has recognized the contributions Professor Young has made to the law, and named him one of the “Top 25 Most Influential” in the justice system and legal profession in 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2014. He is the author of Justice Defiled: Perverts, Potheads, Serial Killers and Lawyers (Toronto: Key Porter, 2003).

Imai, Shin

After he became a lawyer in 1980, Shin Imai practised at Keewaytinok Native Legal Services in Moosonee and later had his own practice in the areas of human rights, refugee law and indigenous rights. He joined the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General in 1989 to work on the development of Alternative Dispute Resolution programs and to initiate justice projects in indigenous communities.

He was appointed to faculty at Osgoode in 1996 and is currently a director of the Justice and Corporate Accountability Project. He has served as Academic Director at Parkdale Community Legal Services, the Director of the Intensive Program on Aboriginal Lands, Resources and Governments, Director of Clinical Education, and Co-director of the Latin American Network on Research and Education in Human Rights (RedLEIDH).

Imai was awarded the Excellence in Teaching Award at the Law School in 2004 and 2007, and the University-wide Teaching Award in 2010.

Gavigan, Shelley A. M.

Shelley Gavigan is Professor Emerita and Senior Scholar at Osgoode Hall Law School, having retired as Professor of Law from Osgoode Hall Law School, York University in January 2017. She is a retired member of the Law Society of Ontario and the Law Society of Saskatchewan. She was a member of the Osgoode faculty for 31 years and taught courses in criminal law, family law, poverty law and children and the law. She was appointed Osgoode’s Associate Dean twice and served four terms as Academic Director of Osgoode’s Intensive Program in Poverty Law at Parkdale Community Legal Services. She began her legal career as a lawyer in community legal clinics in Saskatchewan and was the first Director of Complaints/ Compliance with the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission.

Her research and scholarship are significantly interdisciplinary, located primarily in legal history, socio-legal studies, feminist legal studies, clinical legal education, and social justice.  She is the author of  Hunger, Horses, and Government Men: Criminal Law on the Aboriginal Plains, 1870-1905 (Osgoode Society with UBC, Press, 2012), which won the Canadian History Association’s 2013 CLIO Prize – The Prairies (awarded for meritorious publications or for exceptional contributions to regional history) and was short-listed and received Honourable Mention for both the CHA’s 2013 prize awarded annually to the best scholarly book in Canadian history and the 2012 Canadian Law & Society Association’s Annual Book Prize for “an outstanding contribution to the study of law and society.”

Professor Gavigan’s research into the criminal and civil court records of nineteenth century North West Territories continues, as does her work focussed on ‘historicizing criminalization’ of Canada’s indigenous peoples.  Her recent scholarship includes, “Getting Their Man: The NWMP as Accused in the Territorial Criminal Court in the Canadian North-West, 1876-1903” in Lyndsay Campbell, Ted McCoy & Melanie Méthot, eds., Canada’s Legal Pasts:  Looking Forward, Looking Back (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2020) 179.

Research Interests: Socio-Legal Studies, Legal History, Criminal Law, Feminist Legal Studies, Family Law, Clinical Education

Bhabha, Faisal

Faisal Bhabha is an Associate Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto, Canada. He also serves as the Faculty Director of the Canadian Common Law LLM degree program. He has researched and published in the areas of constitutional law, multiculturalism, law and religion, disability rights, national security and access to justice. He teaches constitutional law, human rights, legal ethics, and appellate advocacy. Previously, he sat as Vice-chair of the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario (2008-2011). He maintains a varied public and private law practice, appearing before administrative boards and tribunals and at all levels of court, including the Supreme Court of Canada. He advises and represents a variety of individuals and public interest organizations in matters pertaining to constitutional law and human rights. He has appeared as an expert witness before Canadian parliamentary committees and served as a member of the Equity Advisory Group of the Law Society of Ontario. He has lived and worked in the Middle East and South Africa, and has lectured and taught in many countries. He is currently a senior editor with the International Review of Human Rights Law.

Research Interests: constitutional law; equality and anti-discrimination; administrative law; legal ethics and professionalism; legal process; dispute resolution; legal education