Type: Emeritus Faculty

Watson, Garry D.

Professor Garry Watson joined Osgoode’s faculty in 1966 and has been a Visiting Professor at universities in Canada, the United States, Israel and (his native) Australia. He taught Trial Practice and Class Actions. His teaching of these courses was been augmented by his experience in private practice with a Toronto law firm and his appearances before the Ontario Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada. From 1991 to 1994, he was Director of Professional Development at the firm of Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP.
Professor Watson research interests include civil procedure, class actions and civil justice reform. He is widely known for his civil procedure books: Watson & McGowan, Ontario Civil Practice (2 volumes), Holmested & Watson, Ontario Civil Procedure (6 volumes). His numerous papers and articles deal with various aspects of civil litigation and civil justice reform. His current research is focused on the operation of Canada’s class action legislation and the comparative study of similar regimes in other countries.

He was a member of the Ontario Civil Rules Committee (1983-2005), and continues to be a member of its research arm, the Rules Secretariat. He was also a member of New Brunswick’s Civil Procedure Advisory Committee as well as Manitoba’s Queen’s Bench Rules Revision Committee.

He is the founder and Director of Osgoode Hall Law School’s Intensive Trial Advocacy Workshop held every summer since 1979. This is a NITA style program that brings 120 young lawyers into the law school for 8 days of trial advocacy training with a faculty of more than 60 lawyers and judges.

Professor Watson established the National Class Action Symposium (for the Osgoode Professional Development Program) and chairs the Planning Committee and the Symposium, which is held in Toronto each spring.

Vaver, David

David Vaver was a member of IP Osgoode and Emeritus Professor of Intellectual Property & Information Technology Law in the University of Oxford, Emeritus Fellow of St Peter’s College, Oxford, and former Director of the Oxford Intellectual Property Research Centre. He was previously a faculty member at Osgoode (1985-98), UBC (1978-85), and the University of Auckland (1972-78). He rejoined Osgoode in 2009.

Professor Vaver’s main field is intellectual property law and policy. Besides authoring Intellectual Property Law: Copyright, Patents, Trade-marks (2nd ed. 2011), Copyright Law (2000), and (as co-editor) Competition Policy and Intellectual Property Law (2009), all published by Irwin Law, he has edited a five-volume compilation, Intellectual Property Rights: Critical Concepts in Law (Routledge, 2006). He founded the Intellectual Property Journal in 1984, from which he retired as editor-in-chief in 2016 but remains on the advisory board.

Professor Vaver is an associate member of the Chambers of Iain Purvis QC (11 South Square, Gray’s Inn), a former board member of the Intellectual Property Institute (London), and a former member of the UK government’s IP Advisory Committee. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and was appointed in 2016 to the Order of Canada for his “leadership in intellectual property law as a scholar and mentor.”

Tucker, Eric M.

Professor Eric Tucker has been teaching at Osgoode Hall Law School since 1981 and served as Graduate Program Director from 1998 to 2001. He has published extensively in the fields of occupational health and safety regulation and labour and employment law. Professor Tucker has been involved in law reform initiatives through his participation on the boards of Ontario community clinics focused on occupational health and safety and workers compensation.  He was a co-investigator on a partnership grant with the Workers’ Action Centre examining the enforcement of employment standards in Ontario.  He has co-authored a study of the legal definition of employment for the Law Commission of Canada, a study of reproductive hazards in the workplace for the Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies and a study of employment standards complaints and their resolution for the Changing Workplaces Review.  He has acted as an expert witness for unions challenging the constitutionality of legislation that excludes or limits workers’ rights.  He has authored or co-authored Closing the Enforcement Gap: Improving Employment Standards Protections for People in Precarious Jobs (with Leah Vosko and others); Self-Employed Workers Organize: Law, Policy and Unions (with Cynthia Cranford, Judy Fudge, and Leah Vosko) (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005); Labour Before the Law: Workers’ Collective Action and the Canadian State, 1900-1948 (with Judy Fudge) (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2001); and Administering Danger in the Workplace: The Law and Politics of Occupational Health and Safety Regulation in Ontario, 1850-1914 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990).  He has also edited or co-edited a number of volumes including, The Class Politics of Law (with Judy Fudge); Canadian State Trials, Volume 4: War Measures and the Repression of Radicalism, 1914‐39 (with Barry Wright and Susan Binnie), Property on Trial (with Bruce Ziff and James Muir) and Working Disasters: The Politics of Recognition and Response.

Slattery, Brian

Professor Brian Slattery joined Osgoode Hall Law School in 1981, having previously held positions at the University of Saskatchewan, the University of Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), and McGill University.

Known for his foundational work on Aboriginal rights and constitutional theory, Professor Slattery has devoted much of his scholarship to overhauling the standard conception of the Canadian Constitution in a way that takes account of the distinctive rights and historical contributions of Aboriginal peoples.

In other scholarly work, Professor Slattery has explored the philosophical foundations of human rights and the continuing vitality of the natural law tradition. In the 1990s, Professor Slattery served as a senior advisor to the Federal Royal
Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. He was elected to the Royal Society of Canada in 1995 and was named a York University Distinguished Research Professor in 2009.

Pilkington, Marilyn L.

Marilyn Pilkington is Associate Professor and former Dean (1993-98) of Osgoode Hall Law School (York University). She joined the faculty in 1980 and retired in 2013. She is co-author (with Frank Iacobucci and Robert Prichard) of Canadian Business Corporations Law (Canada Law Book 1977), co-author of Evidence: A Canadian Casebook (2nd edn. 2006), and author of articles and reports on constitutional law, constitutional litigation, evidence, legal education and enforcement of securities laws. Prior to joining the Osgoode faculty, she served as law clerk to The Hon. Mr. Justice Judson, Supreme Court of Canada, and practised civil litigation with Tory Tory DesLauriers & Binnington (now Torys LLP).  She teaches mainly in the fields of constitutional law, constitutional litigation and evidence. She has also taught trial advocacy, civil procedure, legal profession and a seminar on the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Professor Pilkington has broad experience as a member of university policy bodies, professional regulatory bodies, public policy research institutes, search committees and boards of not-for-profit organizations.  She has served as an elected Bencher of the Law Society of Upper Canada (1999 to 2003), Chair of its Specialist Certification Board, Chair of its Discipline Appeal Panel, and a member of various policy committees and task forces.   She was appointed by the provincial government to the Ontario Council on University Affairs (advising the Minister of Colleges and Universities) and to the Commission on the Future Role of Universities in Ontario. She served for 16 years as a Director and Trustee of the Institute for Research on Public Policy, and she was a  member of the founding taskforce of the Ontario Justice Education Network.  She is a past Director of the Toronto City Mission, a former Governor of the Shaw Festival and a recently retired Trustee of the Royal Ontario Museum. In each of these capacities, she served as chair of the governance committee. She currently serves as a member of the three-person Independent Review Committee of Vanguard Investments Canada.

Ms. Pilkington is experienced as a litigator, adjudicator, and consultant. She has served as an international consultant on the reform of legal education, as an external reviewer of Canadian law school programs, as a consultant to the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee (on constitutional and dispute resolution issues pertaining to the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement), and as a consultant to the Law Society of Upper Canada, governments and law firms. She has contributed to law reform projects on Crown Liability and Commissions of Inquiry. She has adjudicated in the fields of human rights (federally and provincially), professional discipline and university discipline, and is appointed to the roster of candidates to serve on panels established under chapter 19 of the North American Free Trade Agreement.  She is also called upon from time to time to serve as independent chair of corporate and public meetings and to mediate or arbitrate disputes.   She has served as counsel to The Hon. Peter de C. Cory on his review of the Medical Audit System in Ontario and as his co-author on a study of Critical Issues in the Enforcement of Securities Law in Canada for the Task Force on the Modernization of Securities Law in Canada.

Under Marilyn Pilkington’s leadership as Dean, Osgoode Hall Law School restructured in response to significant government funding cuts. Enrolment in the LLB program was reduced to facilitate improvements to the program, and significant new initiatives and enrolments were developed at the graduate level, including the Osgoode Professional Development program for practising lawyers.  The OPD is a unique program responding to the need for advanced and specialist education beyond the JD and, in addition to a range of continuing legal education programs, offers part-time LLM programs in more than fifteen specialist fields.   During her deanship, substantial external funding was attracted to the Law School to support program development, facilities renewal, bursaries and new research initiatives.  Despite the deep financial cuts, no deficits were incurred and the academic budget was significantly expanded. This strategic development of the law school emerged from the prior work of the Special Committee on Academic Planning, which Professor Pilkington had chaired.

Mossman, Mary Jane

Professor Emerita Mary Jane Mossman joined the faculty at Osgoode Hall Law School in 1976-77, after several years as a faculty member in the Faculty of Law at the University of New South Wales. At Osgoode, she served as Associate Dean, Assistant Dean, Chair of Faculty Council, and Director of the Institute for Feminist Legal Studies, as well as numerous positions on Boards and committees at York University. Her research interests focus on women lawyers/legal professions; family law and economic dependency; property law and trusts; and access to justice and legal aid.

She has authored numerous scholarly articles and reports for governments and other organizations, and has been a Visiting Professor at a number of universities in Canada, the United States, Australia, France and Japan. In 2006, she published The First Women Lawyers: A Comparative Study of Gender, Law and the Legal Professions (Hart Pub 2006); and is currently authoring a study of women lawyers in Ontario 1890s to 1960s, as well as other writing projects. Her co-authored books include Families and the Law (2nd Captus ed 2015); Property Law: Cases and Commentary (3rd ed Emond Pub 2014); and Reconsidering Knowledge: Feminism and the Academy (Fernwood 2012).

Professor Mossman was awarded the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Medal for work with the Vanier Institute of the Family (2012); the Lexpert Zenith Award: Leadership for Change (2012); appointment as “University Professor” at York U (2007); the Bora Laskin Fellowship in Human Rights (SSHRC 2007); the Ontario Government Leadership in Faculty Teaching  Award (2007); an honorary doctorate by the Law Society of Upper Canada (2004); the Award of Excellence of the Canadian Association of Law Teachers (2004); the Medal of the Law Society of Upper Canada (1990); the Supporter of the Year award by the Advocacy Resource Centre for the Handicapped (1988); and the CBAO Distinguished Service Award (1987).

She has received research grants from SSHRC and the Canadian Bar Association Foundation for Legal Research, and was appointed the Gordon Henderson Chair in Human Rights (University of Ottawa 1995) and the Walter L Gordon Fellowship (York University 2004). She was admitted as a Barrister in New South Wales in 1975 and a member of the Bar of Ontario in 1977; and served as junior counsel in an Australian appeal to the Privy Council in 1978. From 1979-1982, she was on leave from Osgoode as the first Clinic Funding Manager for the Ontario Legal Aid Plan, and she has provided ongoing support to community legal clinics, including serving on several clinic Boards. Since 1997, she has chaired the Administrative Committee of the Unifor/CAW Legal Services Plan.

McNeil, Kent

Kent McNeil is an Emeritus Distinguished Research Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, where he taught from 1987 to 2016.  His research focuses on the rights of Indigenous peoples in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States.  In 2007, he received a Killam Fellowship to pursue this research. In 2019, he was the Law Foundation of Saskatchewan H. Robert Arscott Chair at the University of Saskatchewan College of Law, his alma mater.

In addition to his academic work, Professor McNeil has acted as a consultant for numerous Indigenous organizations and has been an expert witness in court cases in Canada and Belize. He is currently working on sovereignty issues in relation to the European colonization of North America and the development of international law in this context.  He will be pursuing this research as a Fulbright Canada Distinguished Chair in International Area Studies at Yale University in 2021-22.

McCamus, John D.

John D. McCamus has been a Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School since 1971.  Prior to his faculty appointment, he served as Law Clerk to the Honourable Mr. Justice Laskin of the Supreme Court of Canada.  He teaches Contract, Commercial and Consumer Transactions, Contract Remedies, and Restitution. Professor McCamus is the author of The Law of Contracts, The Law of Restitution, editor of Freedom of Information: Canadian Perspectives, and co-editor of National Security:  Surveillance and Accountability in a Democratic Society, and Cases and Materials on Contracts, 3d ed.  Additionally, he has written several articles covering various aspects of the law of restitution, contracts, freedom of information, and the protection of privacy.  He is a member of the Advisory Committee for the Restatement of Restitution 3d.  Professor McCamus has a notable history of contribution to law reform efforts.  He has produced a number of research monographs for the Ontario Law Reform Commission and served as its Chair from 1992 to 1996.  In 1996-97, he chaired the Ontario Legal Aid Review.  Professor McCamus served as Dean of the Law School from 1982 to 1987.  His academic service also includes former positions as Assistant and Associate Dean, and Director of Osgoode Hall Law School’s Graduate Program.

Johnson, Tom

A member of the Osgoode Hall Law School faculty since 1987, Professor Tom Johnson served as Co-Director of the Schulich and Osgoode joint JD/MBA Program, Director of Osgoode’s Intensive Program in Business Law, Director of the Osgoode Business Clinic, and Co-Director of Osgoode’s LLM Program in Bankruptcy and Insolvency.

Professor Johnson’s areas of teaching included contract law, commercial law (secured transactions, bankruptcy and insolvency, capital market regulation, and international business transactions), international development, and project finance. He was a recipient of the Osgoode Teaching Excellence Award.

Professor Johnson has more than 30 years of experience as a consultant to the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, working on access to finance and land tenure reform projects in developing countries. In that role, he advised governments in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East.

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.