Type: Emeritus Faculty

Hay, Douglas C.

Professor Emeritus Douglas Hay was cross-appointed to Osgoode Hall Law School and York’s Department of History in 1981, teaching the comparative history of criminal procedure, punishment, and crime, and the history of private law in the common law world. He was co- director of an international project on the evolution of the contract of employment: Hay and Craven, Masters, Servants and Magistrates in Britain and the Empire, 1562-1955 (2004) and other titles, most recently ‘Working Time, Dinner Time, Serving Time: Labour and Law in Industrialization’ in Law With Class: Essays Inspired by the Work of Harry Glasbeek (2019) and ‘The Master and Servant Statute of 1823: Enlarging the Powers of Justices Act’, Historical Studies in Industrial Relations, 43 (2022), 3-23.

Other work includes the English high court’s criminal jurisdiction (Criminal Cases on the Crown Side of King’s Bench 1740-1800 (2010); ‘Hanging and the English Judges: The Judicial Politics of Retention and Abolition,’ in America’s Death Penalty: Between Past and Present (2010); D. Hay, P. Linebaugh, E.P. Thompson (eds.), Albion’s Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England (2nd edition, with new introductions, 2011); ‘E.P. Thompson and the Rule of Law: Qualifying the Unqualified Good’, in The Cambridge Companion to the Rule of Law (2021), 202-220; and the ‘Preface’ to the concluding volume of Canadian State Trials, vol.5 (2022).
Professor Hay is presently writing about the administration of the criminal law in Georgian England, the role of the judiciary in King’s Bench, and the comparative history of criminal procedure in the British Empire. He has published books and articles on the history of English and Quebec criminal law; history of criminal procedure; social history of crime; judicial biography; courts and their political significance; and the history of employment law. He has been a visitor at Yale, Warwick, and Columbia law schools, and has been on the boards of the Canadian Historical Review, Law and History Review, the Law and Society Association, and the American Society for Legal History. He has given the Chorley Lecture (London School of Economics), the Iredell Lecture in Legal History (University of Lancaster), The Hugh Alan Maclean Lecture (University of Victoria Faculty of Law), the Weir Memorial Lecture (University of Alberta School of Law), the Annual Lecture for the American Society of Legal History, the Hugh Fitzpatrick Lecture in Legal Bibliography (Dublin), and the Richard Youard Lecture in Legal History (Oxford University). He was elected an Honorary Fellow of the American Society for Legal History in 2013, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (Social Sciences) in 2016.

Girard, Philip

Philip Girard joined the faculty of Osgoode Hall Law School on July 1, 2013. He had previously visited Osgoode as the James Lewtas Visiting Professor in 1993-94 and 2011-12. Professor Girard is one of Canada’s most distinguished legal academics and legal historians. In 2011, he was made an honorary fellow of the American Society for Legal History, the first Canadian to be so recognized, and in 2021 was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

Prior to joining Osgoode, he was University Research Professor, and Professor of Law, History & Canadian Studies at Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University.  At Dalhousie, he served as the Law School’s Acting Dean, 1991-93, and Associate Dean (Graduate Studies and Research), 2002-06. In 2010-11 and 2017-18, he was Visiting Scholar, Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies, University of Toronto. He enjoys a richly deserved reputation for collegial and professional service including service as Chair, Law, Criminology & Socio-legal Studies Adjudication Committee, Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada, 2008-11, and President, Canadian Association of Law Teachers, 2003-04.

His current work is a co-authored (with Jim Phillips and Blake Brown) three-volume History of Law in Canada. This is the first synoptic overview of the history of law in Canada, one that includes Indigenous law, civil law, and common law. Vol. I, beginnings to 1866 (Toronto:  University of Toronto Press for the Osgoode Society, 2018) received a Walter Owen Prize from the Foundation for Legal Research and honourable mention for the Wesley Pue Canadian Law and Society Association Prize. Vol. II, Law for the New Dominion (1867-1914) appeared in 2022 and won the Wesley Pue Canadian Law and Society Association Prize, while vol. III (1914-2000) is expected to appear in 2026. Other publications include Lawyers and Legal Culture in British North America: Beamish Murdoch of Halifax (Toronto: University of Toronto Press for the Osgoode Society,  2011), winner of the Clio-Atlantic Prize awarded by the Canadian Historical Association; and Bora Laskin: Bringing Law to Life (Toronto: University of Toronto Press for the Osgoode Society, 2005), for which Prof. Girard was awarded the  Champlain Society’s Floyd S. Chalmers Award 2006, for best book published on Ontario history in previous year, and shortlisted for the John A. Macdonald Prize 2006, for best book published on Canadian history in 2005.

He is also editor (with Jim Phillips) of two collections on Nova Scotia legal history: The Supreme Court of Nova Scotia, 1754-2004: From Imperial Bastion to Provincial Oracle  (2004), and Essays in the History of Canadian Law: Volume III, Nova Scotia (1990), both published by the University of Toronto Press for the Osgoode Society. Professor Girard is the author of numerous refereed journal articles and book chapters, and is Associate Editor of the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History.

Gilmour, Joan M.

Professor Gilmour joined Osgoode Hall Law School’s faculty in 1990, after practising civil litigation and administrative law.  She teaches Health Law, Legal Governance of Health Care, Torts, and Disability and the Law in the JD program. She developed and is the founding Director of Osgoode’s part-time LLM program specializing in Health Law, and teaches graduate courses on Professional Governance, and Legal Frameworks of the Canadian Healthcare System.  She is past Director of Osgoode’s Institute for Feminist Legal Studies, and past Acting and Associate Director of York University’s Centre for Health Studies. Professor Gilmour’s research and publications in health law span some of the most debated issues in contemporary society.  She completed a major study on the effects of tort law (negligence) on efforts to improve patient safety and reduce medical error.  Other research projects include an examination of the legal and ethical issues in decision-making about health care for children, and a study of the interrelationship of disability, gender, law and inequality.  She served as a member of the Expert Panel convened by the Council of Canadian Academies on medical assistance in dying, has acted as a consultant to Health Canada, and completed a study for the Ontario Law Reform Commission on assisted suicide, euthanasia, and foregoing life-sustaining treatment.  She has also completed studies on health care restructuring and privatization, professional regulation of complementary and alternative medicine, and the interrelation of poverty, health and access to justice.

Emond, D. Paul

Paul Emond began his law teaching and research career at Dalhousie University’s Faculty of Law in 1973. He joined Osgoode Hall Law School in 1976, where his teaching subjects have included: Property Law; Environmental Protection Law; Environmental Assessment Law; Land Use Planning; Administrative Law (and two advanced administrative law seminars); Native Rights; Resources Law and several courses in the field of negotiations, conflict and dispute resolution. Since 1994, Professor Emond has been the Director of Osgoode’s Professional LLM in Alternative Dispute Resolution, the first program of its kind in North America and one that has been offered for 14 consecutive years through Osgoode Professional Development.

Since the mid-1990s, Professor Emond’s research and teaching interests have been in the dispute resolution field. He edited and contributed to Commercial Dispute Resolution (1989); co-authored Mediation Advocacy (1998) and, most recently, contributed a chapter to Representative Negotiation (2007). Professor Emond has supervised more than 150 MPRs (graduate level major research papers and projects) and regularly supervises two to three PhD students per year, all in the dispute resolution field. In 2000, Professor Emond was the co-recipient of the OBA Award of Excellence in Alternative Dispute Resolution.

In addition to his teaching, research and graduate supervision, Professor Emond has served as a member of the Environmental Appeal Board; co-chaired the Working Group on the Environment and Taxation for the Fair Tax Commission; and organized conferences and workshops on topics as diverse as dispute resolution, collaborative law and legal expert systems. Professor Emond is much in demand as a workshop leader, trainer and conference speaker on topics in the conflict management, dispute resolution and negotiation fields. From time to time, Professor Emond is retained as a mediator or negotiation tactician on disputes ranging from highly complex multi-party public disputes to two-to-three party commercial disputes.

Research Interests: Public Law, Legal Process, Environmental Law

Davis, John N.

Professor John Davis joined the Osgoode faculty in 2000, and teaches Intensive Legal Research and Writing.  He is a co-author of the Legal Research Handbook, 5th ed. (2003), and the author of “The Digital Storage, Retrieval and Transmission of Case Reports in Canada: A Brief History”, in Law Reporting and Legal Publishing in Canada: A History (1997).  He was the Law Librarian from 2000 to 2005.  From 1987 to 2000, he was an Associate Professor and the Law Librarian at the University of Victoria.  From 1981 to 1987, he was the reference librarian and a sessional lecturer at the University of Manitoba.  He also practised law for a time in Cayuga, Ontario.  His pre-law studies were in computer science.  Professor Davis’ research interests include conveyancing law; the law of remedies, legal, constitutional, and first nations history; administrative law; legal language and interpretation; information technology law; and copyright.

Research Interests: Public Law

 

Daum Shanks, Signa A.

Signa A. Daum Shanks, who was born and raised in Saskatchewan, joined Osgoode’s full-time faculty on July 1, 2014 from the University of Saskatchewan College of Law where she had been an Assistant Professor since 2009 and had taught Torts, Law and Economics, Aboriginal Self-government, Canadian Legal History, and the Kawaskimhon Aboriginal Rights Moot. At Osgoode, she teaches Torts, Law and Economics, Game Theory and the Law (via Monash University Law School), and Indigenous Peoples and Canadian Law. She has taught at the summer program hosted at the Wiyasiwewin Mikiwahp Native Law Centre, and she is an instructor in the law program at Nunavut Arctic College. Professor Daum Shanks was Osgoode’s inaugural Director of Indigenous Outreach from 2014 to 2018.
Prior to working in law schools, Professor Daum Shanks was on the faculty at the University of Alberta’s School of Native Studies and had regularly taught at the University of Saskatchewan’s Department of Native Studies and First Nations University of Canada. She also previously worked with Ontario’s Office of the Attorney General (Criminal Appeals Division), Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada (formerly DIAND), the federal Department of Justice, and the Toronto office of Heenan Blaikie.

Brooks, Neil

Professor Neil Brooks taught tax law and policy at Osgoode Hall Law School for over 35 years.  His research interests include tax law and policy, corporate and international tax, and financing the welfare state.  He published extensively on income tax issues and was been the editor of Canadian Taxation, Osgoode Hall Law Journal and the Canadian Tax Journal.  He co-authored The Trouble with Billionaires (2010) with Linda McQuaig.  He has been a consultant on tax policy and reform issues to several departments in the government of Canada, and to the governments of New Zealand, Australia and several Canadian provinces. He was Co-Vice Chair of the Ontario Fair Tax Commission and has been on several advisory committees for the Auditor-General of Canada and Revenue Canada.  In 2002 he was awarded the Canadian Association of Law Teacher’s Award for Academic Excellence.  He is a frequent speaker and public commentator on current public finance issues.  Over the past few years he has participated in capacity-building projects relating to taxation in a number of low-income countries including Lithuania, Vietnam, China, Mongolia, South Africa, Bangladesh, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka and Botswana.