Expertise: Constitutional Law

Akande, Rabiat

Professor Rabiat Akande works in the fields of legal history, law and religion, constitutional and comparative constitutional law, Islamic law, international law, and (post)colonial African law and society. Her research explores law’s interplay with global inequality. She investigates this relationship in the historical setting of Europe’s nineteenth and twentieth-century empire, especially in its encounter with Africa and the Muslim World. Her work further grapples with the afterlife of that encounter for law, unveiling legacies that resound far beyond erstwhile colonies.

In her recent book, Entangled Domains: Empire, Law and Religion in Northern Nigeria (Cambridge University Press, 2023), Dr. Akande investigates the case of the British imperial encounter in Colonial Northern Nigeria. In particular, the book chronicles contestations between British colonial officials, Christian missionaries, and indigenous Muslim elites over law’s governance religious difference, and grapples with the postcolonial legacy of those struggles. The book illuminates law’s centrality to one of modernity’s most contested issues–the relationship between religion, the state, and society–while also spotlighting law’s complex relationship with power, political theology, identity, and socio-political change.

Beyond Entangled Domains, Dr. Akande’s work has appeared in the American Journal of International Law (forthcoming), the Law and History Review, the Journal of Law and Religion, the Supreme Court Law Review, Die Welt des Islam (forthcoming), and in co-edited volumes published by or forthcoming with the Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Edward Elgar Publishing, University of Toronto Press, and the University of Virginia Press. Dr. Akande is currently at work on “Malcolm X, Black Globalism, and the Human Rights Critique of Imperialism,” a book project that investigates the globalist critique of imperialism that was central to Malcolm X’s thought in his last years and inspired by his visits to Africa and the Muslim World. She is also at work on a volume interrogating histories of the idea of the “international” in pre-colonial Africa.

Dr. Akande chairs the international legal history project at the African Institute of International Law in Arusha with the support of the African Union and the Gerda Henkel Foundation, among other institutions. Before Osgoode Hall Law School, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies as an Academy Scholar from 2019-2021. She received her Doctor of Juridical Science (SJD) degree from Harvard Law School in 2019 with her dissertation, “Navigating Entanglements: Contestations over Religion-State Relations in British Northern Nigeria, c. 1890-1978” receiving the Law and Society in the Muslim World Prize. At Harvard University, Dr. Akande held the Clark Byse fellowship at the Law School and was a Dissertation Fellow and Graduate Student Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. She also served on the editorial board of the Harvard International Law Journal. Dr Akande taught courses at Harvard in the Law School and the Department for African and African American Studies. She also taught at Northeastern University School of Law. Prior to her graduate work, Dr. Akande obtained her Bachelor of Laws from the University of Ibadan, graduating with First Class Honors and at the top of her class. She later studied at the Nigerian Law School, from which she also graduated with First Class Honors.

Dr. Akande’s research has been supported by fellowships and grants, including from the US National Science Foundation (as part of a Law and Society Association International Research Collaborative), the Gerda Henkel Foundation, the Cravath International Research fellowship, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs fellowship, the Program on Law and Society in the Muslim World research grant, among others. She serves on the International Journal of Law in Context editorial board. She is the co-chair of the American Society of International Law’s Africa Interest Group. She is also active in the American Society for Legal History, the Law and Society Association, and the African Studies Association.

Research Interests:  legal history, law and religion, constitutional and comparative constitutional law, Islamic law, international law and the global south, and (post)colonial African law and society.

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

Hewitt, Jeffery G.

Jeffery G. Hewitt joined Osgoode Hall Law School in 2019 as an Assistant Professor. After graduating from Osgoode with an LLB in 1996, Professor Hewitt returned to complete his LLM in 2015. He focuses a lot on matters starting with “I” – such as Indigenous, Interdisciplinary and Iconic. Professor Hewitt’s research interests include Indigenous legal orders and governance, constitutional law, human rights, legal education, business law, as well as art + law and visual legal studies. He mainly teaches constitutional law and Indigenous-related courses and seminars.

Professor Hewitt has also presented his research work nationally and internationally to a range of audiences. He is mixed-descent Cree, was called to the Bar in Ontario in 1998 and works with Rama First Nation as well as various Indigenous Elders, leaders and organizers in the promotion of Indigenous legal orders. He has done a mix of other things as well, serving as past-President of the Indigenous Bar Association of Canada, director of Aboriginal Legal Services of Toronto, and he once wore an iconic NASA space suit. Currently, Professor Hewitt is on the Executive of Legal Leaders for Diversity, and serves as a director of both the Indigenous Bar Association Foundation as well as the National Theatre School of Canada.

Somehow, along the way Professor Hewitt has managed to collect a few acknowledgments including a 2019 Law Society of Ontario Medal; a 2019 Excellence in Research Award, University of Windsor; a 2017 Teaching Award from the University of Windsor; the 2015 Charles D. Gonthier Fellowship from the Canadian Institute for the Administration of Justice; a 2014 Teaching Award from Osgoode; a 2013-14 McMurtry Fellow at Osgoode Hall Law School; and a 2011 Canadian General Counsel Award for Social Responsibility.

White, Emily Kidd

Professor Emily Kidd White’s areas of teaching and research specialization are in legal and political philosophy, constitutional law, and public international law. Professor Kidd White completed her doctoral studies at New York University School of Law as a Trudeau Foundation Scholar, having previously graduated from the LLM in International Legal Studies with the Jerome Lipper Prize for distinction. Kidd White holds a JD from the Faculty of Law at Queen’s University (Dean’s Honour List) and a BAH (Politics/Philosophy) from Queen’s University (First Class Degree).

Professor Kidd White began her association at Osgoode Hall Law School as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Jack & Mae Nathanson Centre on Transnational Human Rights, Crime and Security.  Prior to joining the faculty at Osgoode Hall Law School, Professor Kidd White held a two-year research fellowship at the Jean Monnet Center for Regional and International Economic Law and Justice, and a teaching position with the Institute for International Law and Justice. Professor Kidd White is a faculty member of the Ontario Legal Philosophy Partnership

Professor Kidd White Kidd White is a General Editor of the Supreme Court Law Review Annual Osgoode Constitutional Cases Review. Previously, she served as the Associate Editor of the European Journal of International Law, a world-leading peer-reviewed international law journal.

Professor Kidd White’s current research interests consider legal argumentation, and the public nature and promise of law. A particular focus is on the ways in which political communities interpret the legal values and principles embedded in legal texts and judgements, and the ways in which they draw upon local, regional, or international histories and experiences to provide these legal values and principles with shape and clarity.

Professor Kidd White is an emerging scholar in the field of law and emotions, holding an extensive international and interdisciplinary network on the subject. Her manuscript on Judicial Emotions is under contract with Oxford University Press, and has been accepted into its distinguished Law and Philosophy Series. Along with Susan Bandes, Jody Madeira, and Kathryn Temple, Professor Kidd White is editing the Edward Elgar Research Handbook on Law and Emotions.

Professor Kidd White has presented her research at leading institutions around the world, including Oxford University, Yale Law School, UNAM, the Allard School of Law at the University of British Columbia, New York University School of Law, Cardoza Law School, Georgetown Law School, the London School of Economics, and Melbourne Law School.

Research Interests: Legal and Political Philosophy, Constitutional Law, Comparative Constitutional Law, Human Rights, Discrimination Law, Public International Law, Law and Emotions, Law and Literature, Legal Reasoning.