Type: Faculty

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.

Bhatia, Amar

Amar Bhatia joined Osgoode’s full-time faculty on July 1, 2014, after serving as a Catalyst Fellow and Visiting Professor at Osgoode for the 2013-14 academic year. He has undergraduate and graduate degrees in English and postcolonial literature (Queen’s; Sussex) and received an LLB from Osgoode in 2005. While an LLB student at Osgoode, he worked and volunteered with CLASP, the Innocence Project, Duty Counsel’s office, and Parkdale Community Legal Services. He then articled and worked in union-side labour and employment law in Toronto before returning to graduate school. He subsequently obtained an LLM from the University of Toronto Faculty of Law (U of T), where he received the Howland Prize for most outstanding performance in the program.

Professor Bhatia was awarded a SSHRC CGS Doctoral Scholarship to pursue his SJD, which he obtained from U of T. His dissertation looked at issues of status and authority of migrant workers and Indigenous peoples under Canadian immigration law, Aboriginal law, treaty relations, and Indigenous legal traditions. In addition to his research, Professor Bhatia has also been active at Osgoode by co-editing the Journal of Law Social Policy, serving on the Admissions Committee, sitting on the Board of Directors for Parkdale Community Legal Services, and being a member of the Third World Approaches to International Law Review’s editorial collective.

Professor Bhatia has taught a variety of courses at Osgoode, including property law, refugee law, globalization & the law (focused on migrant work), and co-directing the Intensive Program in Indigenous Lands, Resources and Governments.

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

Ben-Ishai, Stephanie

Professor Stephanie Ben-Ishai is a Distinguished Research Professor and Full Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, where she engages in research and teaching on bankruptcy, contract, commercial law, and financial crises. She has authored or co-authored nine books and more than 50 refereed articles, including seminal and innovative texts on bankruptcy and contract law. She holds her LLB from Osgoode Hall Law School, and her LLM from Harvard Law School, where she studied as a Fulbright Scholar and SSHRC Doctoral Scholar as well as receiving the American Bankruptcy Institute Medal of Excellence on graduation.

Professor Ben-Ishai has been nationally and internationally recognized as an expert in each of her research areas. She has been consulted by private actors, governments and self-regulatory institutions, and served as a Scholar in Residence with the Law Commission of Ontario. Her work has been cited by every level of Canadian court and she has given expert testimony to Canadian and American courts. Professor Ben-Ishai’s research has been consistently funded by research grants, including four major Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) grants as Principal Investigator; other significant grants have been provided by the Law Foundation of Ontario, the Law Commission of Canada, Industry Canada, and the Schulich School of Business National Research Program in Financial Services and Public Policy.

An active participant in domestic and international professional committees, research networks and law reform efforts, Professor Ben-Ishai also serves as Co-Founder and Editor of the Insolvency Institute of Canada Law Journal, established in 2011. To date, she has held visiting professorships at eight law schools in four countries, and has served as an INSOL International Scholar, Distinguished Fulbright Fellow, Sprout Fellow in Canadian Studies and the Thomas Feeney Visiting Professor of Business Law. Her research contributions have been presented at conferences around the world to lay audiences, lawyers, judges and academic colleagues from a wide range of academic disciplines.

Professor Ben-Ishai has taught courses across the private law curriculum in multiple formats (online, video conference, seminar, lecture and small group) of varying lengths and intensity across Canada, in the United States, Europe, Australia and New Zealand at the undergraduate law and social science and graduate levels. She also serves as the Academic Director of the Osgoode Business Clinic, which provides legal advice to small businesses which might not otherwise be able to afford legal services.

At Osgoode, Professor Ben-Ishai has held a number of senior administrative responsibilities, including as Director of the graduate programs in Bankruptcy and Banking and Finance Law. She has chaired almost every major Law School committee, including, most recently, the Faculty Recruitment Committee and Faculty Council, served on the University Senate and as a Director of Parkdale Community Legal Services.

Professor Ben-Ishai has supervised graduate level research in bankruptcy, banking, contracts, corporate/commercial law, and financial regulation. She is willing to read novel proposals in this area from strong students interested in working with her.

Research Interests: Corporate/Commercial Law