Type: Faculty

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.

Geva, Benjamin

Dr. Benjamin Geva is a Professor of Law at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto. He specializes in (domestic, comparative and international) commercial, financial and banking law, particularly in payment and credit instruments, fund transfers, electronic transferable transport documents, letters of credit, electronic banking, central banking, money & currency, digital currencies, and assets, and the regulation of the payment system. He obtained his LLB (cum laude) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1970) and his LLM and SJD at Harvard, and was admitted to the Ontario Bar in 1982. He has been on the Osgoode faculty since 1977. He practised with Blake, Cassels and Graydon in Toronto and is now (part-time) counsel with Torys where he is a member of the Payments and Cards Practice Group.

He was awarded prestigious competitive grants among others by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Foundation of Legal Research of the Canadian Bar Association and has written extensively in his areas of expertise, including a monograph on Financing Consumer Sales and Product Defences in Canada and the US (Toronto: Carswell, 1984), a treatise on the Law of Electronic Funds Transfer (New York: Matthew Bender, 1992, kept current with annual updates (since 1997 with contributors) until 2020, a comparative law text on Bank Collections and Payment Transactions (Oxford: OUP, 2001), a monograph on The Payment Order of Antiquity and the Middle Ages – A Legal History (Oxford and Oregon: Hart Publishing, 2011), and a text co-written with Dr. Sagi Peari on International Negotiable Instruments (Oxford: OUP, 2020).  As well, he is the founding editor in chief of the Banking and Finance Law Review (BFLR) (1986- 2018) and is now Chair of its Advisory Board.

He held visiting positions, in the United States at the University of Chicago, the University of Illinois, the University of Utah and Northwestern University as well as in the summer program of Duke University in Hong Kong; in Israel at Tel Aviv University; in Australia in Monash, Deakin, Melbourne and Sydney Universities; in Singapore at the National University of Singapore, in Germany in the University of Hamburg, and in France at the faculté de droit et de science politique d’Aix-Marseille. He has been a Visitor at the law faculties of Oxford and Cambridge Universities in England and at Max-Planck Institute for Comparative and Private International Law in Hamburg (Germany), as well as a Senior Global Research Fellow at the Hauser Global Visitors Program at New York University School of Law, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Vienna (Austria), and Visiting Scholar at the International Trade Law Division of the United Nations Office of Legal Affairs, (the substantive secretariat of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) in Vienna).

Under the IMF technical assistance program he has advised and drafted key financial sector and payment systems legislation for the authorities of several countries, particularly, on missions for Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Haiti, Serbia, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Timor-Leste, and Sri Lanka. For UNCITRAL he has been working on electronic transferable transport documents.  Both  in Canada and  the United States and  also in the international arena he has been either a member or an observer in legislative committees and drafting working or study groups in the areas of personal property security, securities transfers, letters of credits & independent guarantees, and payment laws.

His current research is on digital currencies and assets, payment and settlement laws and systems,  electronic transferable transport documents, and a text on General Principles of Canadian Law on Negotiable Instruments and Payment Transactions (to be published by Irwin Law)

Farrow, Trevor C. W.

Trevor Farrow is Dean of Osgoode Hall Law School.

Research. Professor Farrow is internationally recognized as a leading scholar on access to justice, legal process and the profession. He is regularly consulted and invited to participate at conferences, expert panels, policy initiatives and justice projects in Canada and around the world, including as a research expert on the OECD’s Advisory Justice Research Consortium. Professor Farrow has been awarded numerous Canadian and international grants to conduct innovative and ground-breaking research, including his $1 million SSHRC “Costs of Justice” grant, which was the first national study of its kind to look at financial and other costs associated with access to justice in Canada. Professor Farrow is consistently ranked in the top 10% of authors on SSRN by all-time and annual downloads and his research is widely cited and relied on by researchers, policy makers, governments, judges and the media in Canada and around the world.

Teaching. Professor Farrow’s undergraduate, graduate and professional teaching focuses on the administration of civil justice, including access to justice, legal process, legal and judicial ethics, advocacy and globalization. He has taught and lectured at universities across Canada and around the world. Professor Farrow has received teaching awards from Harvard University and Osgoode Hall Law School.

Administration. Professor Farrow has held numerous administrative and leadership appointments at Osgoode Hall Law School, including Associate Dean, Associate Dean (Academic), Associate Dean (Research & Institutional Relations), and Faculty Council Chair. He is the Chair of the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice, the founding Academic Director of the Winkler Institute for Dispute Resolution, and was the Director of the York Centre for Public Policy and Law. He also serves on numerous research and policy panels and committees, including Canada’s Action Committee on Access to Justice in Civil and Family Matters (he was credited as “the holder of the pen” on the Action Committee’s ground-breaking and often nationally and internationally cited Roadmap for Change report). Professor Farrow was formerly a litigation lawyer at the Torys law firm in Toronto.

Research Interests. Access to justice; legal process and dispute resolution; professional and judicial ethics; advocacy; legal education; political theory and globalization.

Drummond, Susan G.

Professor Susan Drummond joined Osgoode’s faculty in 1999, and specializes in the areas of legal anthropology, comparative law, civil law, family law, and wills and estates. She was the first student in Canada to graduate with both a civil and common law degree as well as a Master’s in Social Work. She has a doctorate in law from McGill University. Her BA in philosophy and her postgraduate Diplôme d’Etudes Approfondies from the Université d’Aix-Marseille, specializing in legal theory and legal anthropology, make her a truly interdisciplinary scholar. Beyond her publications in scholarly journals, she has published three books, Incorporating the Familiar: An Investigation into Legal Sensibilities in Nunavik, based on fieldwork on the interactions between state and non-state criminal law sensibilities in Inuit communities in northern Quebec; Mapping Marriage Law in Spanish Gitano Communities, based on field work on non-state family law in Andalucia, which won the Canadian Law and Society Association/Association canadienne droit et société 2006 Book Prize; and Unthinkable Thoughts; Academic Freedom and the One State Model for Israel and Palestine, based on fieldwork on the intersections between politically controversial ideas and the Canadian academy, was published in November, 2013.

Professor Drummond is currently engaged in an extensive, fine-grained ethnographic study of elder law, elder financial abuse, and estates and trust law and litigation in Ontario, with a focus on legal practice, legal ethics, and legal professionalism in the associated bar.

Research Interests: Family Law, Estates and Trusts, Legal Theory, Comparative Law, Legal Anthropology

D’Agostino, Giuseppina

Professor Pina D’Agostino is a law professor, lawyer, public speaker, board director and internationally-recognized scholar at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University specializing in copyright law, intellectual property (IP), emerging technologies, innovation law and policy. She joined Osgoode in 2006 and is regularly called by Canadian and international governments for advice, has testified before the Canadian Parliament, is a widely published author, regularly serves as a consultant and expert witness and is a cited authority at the Supreme Court of Canada and in various media. She serves as the Editor-in-Chief for the Intellectual Property Journal and in 2022 has been recognized as the Top 25 Most Influential Lawyers in Canada by Canadian Lawyer Magazine and Top 5 in Business Law and in 2024 she is the recipient of Woman of the Year from the Canadian Italian Business Professional Association (CIBPA) and is the recipient of the recently announced 2024 Ontario Minister of Colleges and Universities Award of Excellence in Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

Dr D’Agostino brings her creativity and passion to trailblaze new initiatives and to serve in new roles as the overall Director of the $318M CFREF-funded Connected Minds: Neural & Machine Systems for a Healthy, Just Society; co-Founder and co-Director of the new Centre for Artificial Intelligence & Society (CAIS) for York University; Founding Director of IP Osgoode and the award-winning IPilogue, Founder & Director of the IP Intensive and the IP Innovation Clinic, the first and largest and first legal clinic of its kind helping inventors and start-ups in Ontario and across Canada commercialize their IP and, more recently, founded the AI-powered IP Innovation ChatBot allowing underrepresented groups and the general public greater access to IP information.
She began her legal career at a large Toronto law firm, was a Lecturer in Law at the University of Oxford, and was later recruited into the Canadian Government by the Recruitment of Policy Leaders (RPL) as a Senior Policy Analyst working on copyright policy. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Ontario Centre of Innovation (OCI) and Alectra Inc. and is the founding Chair of its GRE&T Centre Advisory Committee advancing innovation and sustainable energy solutions. She held an Order in Council Appointment at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection where she served on its Board of Directors, and currently sits on its Art Advisory Committee.

Dr D’Agostino served as an IP expert to Canada’s First Nations Information Governance Centre (FNIGC) and served as the co-chair of the York University AI & Society Task Force culminating in the Fostering the Future of Artificial Intelligence report, was appointed to the City of Vaughan Smart City Task Force and is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI). She spent her last sabbatical as a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University. Dr D’Agostino is the recipient of various government and tri-council grants, honours and awards and is currently working on the second edition of Copyright Law (with Prof David Vaver, Irwin Law). Her peer-reviewed articles and her three books Copyright, Contract, Creators: New Media, New Rules, The Common Law of Intellectual Property: Essays in Honour of Professor David Vaver and Leading Legal Disruption: Artificial Intelligence and a Toolkit for Lawyers and the Law are widely available and is currently working on a forthcoming book on AI and Society (with Cambridge University Press 2025).

She holds a MSt and DPhil (University of Oxford) with distinction in copyright law, an LLB (Osgoode Hall Law School), an HonBA, summa cum laude, in English and Political Science and a specialization in French (York University), holds an ICD.D from the Rotman School of Management (University of Toronto) and is a member of the Law Society of Ontario (2001 call).

Research Interests: Intellectual Property, data governance & ownership, Innovation law & policy,  emerging technologies (ie Artificial Intelligence, IoT, robotics, 3D printing, Blockchain etc)

Craig, Carys J.

Dr. Carys Craig joined the faculty at Osgoode Hall Law School in 2002. She is the Academic Director of the Osgoode Professional Development LLM Program in Intellectual Property Law, a founding member of IP Osgoode (Osgoode’s Intellectual Property Law & Technology Program), and recently served as Osgoode’s Associate Dean (Research & Institutional Relations). In 2018, she held a MacCormick Research Fellowship at the University of Edinburgh.

A recipient of multiple teaching awards, including the 2015 President’s University-Wide Teaching Award, Dr. Craig teaches JD, graduate and professional courses in the areas of intellectual property, copyright and trademark law, and legal theory. She researches and publishes widely on intellectual property law and policy, with an emphasis on authorship (drawing on critical and feminist theory), users’ rights and the public domain. She is the author of Copyright, Communication & Culture: Towards a Relational Theory of Copyright Law (2011), and the co-editor of Trade-marks and Unfair Competition Law: Cases and Commentary, 2nd ed. (Toronto: Carswell, 2014) and Copyright: Cases and Commentary on the Canadian and International Law, 2nd ed. (Toronto: Carswell, 2013). Her award-winning work has been cited with approval by the Supreme Court of Canada.

Dr. Craig holds a First Class Honours Bachelor of Laws (LLB Hons) from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, a Master of Laws (LLM) from Queen’s University in Kingston, and a Doctorate in Law (SJD) from the University of Toronto, where she was a graduate fellow of Ontario’s Centre for Innovation Law and Policy.

Condon, Mary G.

Mary Condon served as Dean of Osgoode Hall Law School from July 1, 2019 to August 31, 2023.  She served as Interim Dean from May 1, 2018 to June 30, 2019 and as Associate Dean (Academic) from July 2016 to June 2018. Professor Condon teaches Securities Regulation and Advanced Securities in Osgoode’s JD program and also directs and teaches in the Professional LLM in Securities Law program. Her research interests are focused primarily on the regulation of securities markets, investment funds, online investing, and pensions. She is co-author of Business Organizations: Practice, Theory and Emerging Challenges (with Robert Yalden, Janis Sarra, Paul Paton, Mark Gillen, Carol Liao, Michael Deturbide, Mohamed Khimji, Bradley Bryan and Gary Campo). She is co-author of Securities Law in Canada: Cases and Commentary (with Anita Anand, Janis Sarra and Sarah Bradley), [3rd edition, 2017]. She is the author of Making Disclosure: Ideas and Interests in Ontario Securities Regulation (UTP). She has also written articles, book chapters and policy papers on topics related to securities regulation and pensions policy and has given invited lectures on these topics in Canada and internationally.

In October 2023, she was appointed as a part-time adjudicator of the Capital Markets Tribunal (Ontario). In January 2024, she was appointed a member of the Central Bank of Ireland Commission. Between 2018 and 2021, she was appointed a member of the board of the Capital Markets Authority Implementation Organization (CMAIO), an interim body set up to assist with the establishment of a Capital Markets Regulatory Authority for co-operating jurisdictions in Canada. Between 2008 and 2016 she was appointed by the Ontario government as a Commissioner and Board Member of the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC). For three of those years (2011-2014) she served as one of two full-time Vice-Chairs of the OSC. In that capacity she was executive sponsor of a number of policy initiatives. She also issued numerous adjudicative decisions as a member of the OSC’s tribunal.

In 2018, she was named one of the top 100 Most Powerful Women in Canada (Public Sector Category) by Women’s Executive Network.  Between 2014 and 2016 she served as a member of Canada’s National Steering Committee for Financial Literacy. She was a member of the Board of Trustees of the York University Pension Fund between 2005 and 2014.  In the 2009 winter term, she was awarded the Walter S. Owen Chair at the Faculty of Law, University of British Columbia, where she was also the co-director of the National Centre for Business Law. She joined the Osgoode faculty in 1992, having been the first recipient of the Alan Marks Medal for her doctoral thesis at the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto.

Research Interests: Corporate/Securities Law, Pensions, Feminist Legal Studies

Buchanan, Ruth

Ruth Buchanan joined Osgoode Hall Law School as an Associate Professor in 2006 and was promoted to Full Professor in 2016. Prior to joining the Osgoode faculty, Professor Buchanan taught at the law schools of the University of British Columbia and the University of New Brunswick. Professor Buchanan also holds an ongoing appointment as a Senior Fellow at Melbourne Law School, where she teaches in the Melbourne Law Masters program.

Professor Buchanan holds an SJD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an LLB from the University of Victoria and an AB from Princeton University. In 2011, Professor Buchanan founded the Law.Arts.Culture Colloquium, to create a vibrant forum for the discussion of emerging interdisciplinary work on law and humanities. Since that time, Professor Buchanan, through LAC, has hosted more than two dozen speakers, events and installations. She is also a past Director of the Graduate Program (Research), and a past co-Director of the Institute for Feminist Legal Studies.

An interdisciplinary legal scholar whose work spans critical legal theory, sociology of law and cultural legal studies, Dr. Buchanan’s scholarship has engaged with a range of topics including NAFTA and labour rights, the WTO and global constitutionalism, social movements and resistance to globalization, Indigenous law and legal pluralism, law and film. She has published widely and collaborates frequently with legal scholars in Canada and internationally. Professor Buchanan co-edited the collections Law in Transition: Human Rights, Development and Transitional Justice (2014) with Peer Zumbansen and Reading Modern Law: Critical Methodologies and Sovereign Formations (2012) with Sundhya Pahuja and Stewart Motha. She has published widely, including in the Journal of Law, Culture and Humanities; Miami Law Review; Leiden Journal of International Law; Law,Text,Culture; Journal of Legal Education, Nordic Journal of International Law; Osgoode Hall Law Journal, and the Journal of Law and Society. She has been involved in the editorial boards or editorial advisory boards of the Canadian Journal of Women and Law, Journal of Law, Culture and Humanities, Transnational Legal Theory.

In 2015-16, Professor Buchanan was awarded an Osgoode Hall Research Fellowship for her ongoing project, “Visualizing Developments,” which considers the variety of visual mechanisms through which knowledge about development is produced and disseminated by international institutions. Professor Buchanan is also currently writing a book on International Development with Sundhya Pahuja and Luis Eslava as part of the Routledge-Cavendish Critical Approaches to Law series.

Professor Buchanan has taught courses in the areas of: Globalization and Law, Law and Social Change, Trade, Human Rights and Development, Law and Film. In the Osgoode Graduate Program, she has taught the Legal Research seminar and convened the Study Group on Law in a Global Context. Professor Buchanan has supervised many LLM and doctoral students in the areas of law and development, legal theory, legal sociology, or visual legal studies and law and film.

Research Interests: Law and Development, Legal Theory, Law and Film

Boisselle, Andrée

Andrée Boisselle’s research interests are in the areas of indigenous law, comparative and constitutional law, pluralism and postcolonial legal theory.  She is currently completing her doctorate in the Faculty of Law at the University of Victoria.  Her doctoral research on Stó:lõ constitutionalism and the Coast Salish legal tradition has been supported by scholarships from the Trudeau Foundation and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.  Her master’s thesis critically examined the development of the duty to consult First Nations in Canadian law.  It received the Quebec Association of Law Professors Prize in 2008.  Before pursuing graduate studies, she practised litigation in Québec with McCarthy Tétrault LLP and did contractual work with the Supreme Court of Canada.