It’s the hottest case in Canadian tax law right now – and this week some of Canada’s foremost tax law experts will offer new insights at a special event hosted by Osgoode Professional Development (OsgoodePD).

The June 28 afternoon symposium will be led by Professor Jinyan Li and Torys LLP tax partner John J. Tobin, the co-directors of OsgoodePD’s respected LLM in Taxation Law program. It is sponsored by the Canadian branch of the International Fiscal Association.

The Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Deans Knight Income Corp. v. Canada (2023 SCC 16), written by Justice Malcolm Rowe ’78, was released on May 26, instantly stirring up speculation about its impact on the Income Tax Act’s general anti-avoidance rule (GAAR). It is the sixth time that Canada’s highest court has rendered a tax ruling related to the GAAR – with the last one coming two years ago in Canada v. Alta Energy Luxembourg S.A.R.L. (2021 SCC 49).

“It’s getting people’s attention,” said Li, “because case number 5, Alta Energy, went in a way where the outcome was in favour of the taxpayer and could have rendered the GAAR meaningless.

“Deans Knight,” she added, “goes beyond the letter of the law to look at the purpose of the original legislation. It’s good in a way because it says that rationale matters, in effect changing the court’s direction.”

Justice Suzanne Côté, who wrote the majority decision in Alta Energy, was the sole dissenting opinion in Deans Knight. Justice Rowe’s decision in Deans Knight cited research by Professor Li.

Along with Li and Tobin, the OsgoodePD symposium will include analysis from former Supreme Court Justice Marshall Rothstein, BLG LP tax lawyer Steve Suarez, who was counsel for intervenor the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Osler LLP partner Pooja Mihailovich, Osler LLP partner Mark Brender and EY Law LLP partner Angelo Nikolakakis. Rounding out the afternoon lineup will be Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP senior counsel Jeffrey Trossman and Thorsteinssons LLP partner Matthew Williams.

Topics up for discussion during the three sessions will include whether the Supreme Court’s analysis in Deans Knight is consistent with a taxable Canadian property (TCP) approach to object, spirit and purpose of the Income Tax Act, and how to square the Supreme Court’s 1998 tax decision in Duha Printers with Parliament’s choice of de jure control. Panellists will also discuss the language of the decision to examine what it means for the legal standards and tests applied to GAAR litigation and the implications of the decision for proposed amendments to the GAAR regime.

Li said opinion is divided in the tax law community about the significance of the Deans Knight decision. “Some people say this is a big change and others say no,” she added. “That’s why we’re having this symposium.”

Some tax law experts argue that the Supreme Court’s change in direction on the GAAR now relieves the pressure on Parliament to amend the Income Tax Act to strengthen the anti-avoidance rule.

“I think many people will be interested in coming and hearing what people have to say,” added Li.

To register to attend in person or online – or for an online replay on August 9, 2023 – click here.

It is a special honour to introduce the Chief Justice of Ontario, Michael H. Tulloch, to receive the degree of Doctor of Laws, Honoris Causa at this Convocation of Osgoode Hall Law School of York University.

I first met Chief Justice Tulloch when he was one of three Black law students in first year at Osgoode in the fall of 1986. An immigrant to Canada from Jamaica at the age of nine, he faced challenges in Canada — and at Osgoode — but with diligence and determination, he graduated in 1989 and was called to the Ontario bar in 1991. As a lawyer, he practised as a Crown prosecutor and in a successful private practice before he was appointed to Ontario’s Superior Court in 2003 and then to the Court of Appeal in 2012. In December 2022, when he was appointed Ontario’s Chief Justice, he became the first Black Chief Justice in a Canadian province.

While these are all important accomplishments, this Chief Justice is special for other reasons. He has led systemic reviews of the justice system, and significantly recommended more, not less, education for police in Ontario. His 300-page report about policing of Blacks, especially young males, concluded that “Police stops must be based on more than … a Spidey sense.” He provided leadership on legal and judicial committees and lectured about international justice reforms. At Osgoode, he was a member of the committee that designed the new and ground-breaking “Holistic” Admissions Policy to advance Osgoode’s commitment to “opening doors” to the legal profession for unrepresented communities. He was also the unanimous choice to receive the first Lincoln Alexander Award, presented by Osgoode’s Black Law Students Association.

But beyond these important accomplishments, the Chief Justice is a proud father of five children who is active in charitable and community activities. He is also a man of principle and a passionate, sometimes outspoken, defender of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. He believes strongly in mentoring, especially for young lawyers, and his efforts to create connections between and among friends, colleagues and students reflect this commitment. As a trailblazer in Ontario’s legal profession, the Chief Justice stands on the shoulders of earlier Black lawyers, both men and women, who pursued their dreams, undaunted by the setbacks of racism. Like them, the Chief Justice understands that success is not a destination – but a continuous journey of learning and growth. In continuing his life work as a lawyer and judge, and now as Chief Justice Michael Tulloch, he understands that “inclusion is not about bringing people into what already exists; it is making a new space, a better space for everyone.” Congratulations!

In the world of legal studies, it’s an impressive accomplishment that relatively few achieve: a PhD in Law. The entire Osgoode community celebrates this year’s PhD graduates, who received their degrees during convocation on June 23. Congratulations to Tamera Burnett, Robert Clifford, Vanisha Sukdeo and Summaiya Zaidi! 

Tamera Burnett

A fundamental question occurred to Tamera Burnett in the course of doing her master’s degree in law at the University of British Columbia from 2013 to 2014: No one really knew what sexual assault survivors themselves wanted in terms of justice. So as a PhD student at Osgoode under the supervision of Professor Janet Mosher, she set about to study that. The result is her doctoral dissertation: The Elusive Pursuit of Justice: Sexual Assault Survivors Speak About Redress in the Aftermath of Violence. The Ottawa-based Burnett, who, in addition to her UBC LLM holds a JD degree from the University of Ottawa and an undergraduate degree from McGill University, has combined her research at Osgoode with teaching legal processes to first-year law students. She decided to pursue her PhD in law, she said, because “I figured out early in my law school career that I was more interested in working on systemic issues of injustice through research rather than helping clients in private practice.” She also took time at Osgoode to pursue some of her other passions. In 2018, for example, she was the co-organizer of a conference on speculative fiction and the law. With her PhD completed, she is now looking ahead to building her own research and consulting practice. For the past year, she has been working on a project for the Toronto-based Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF) on restorative and transformative justice and sexual assault.

Robert Clifford

As an assistant professor the University of British Columbia’s Peter A. Allard School of Law, Robert YELḰÁTŦE Clifford is focused on the revitalization of Indigenous legal traditions, specifically as they relate to his own W̱SÁNEĆ Nations, located along the north coast of B.C.’s Gulf and San Juan Islands, southern Vancouver Island and the southern edge of the Lower Mainland. During the year he spent at Osgoode, he continued to develop his dissertation, titled The Old People are the Song and We are Their Echo: Resurgence of W̱SÁNEĆ Law and Legal Theory. “The highlight for me is easily the people I met and became friends with while I was here,” he recalled of his time at Osgoode. “My supervisor, Professor Andrée Boisselle, and committee member, Professor Dayna Scott, are such amazing people and scholars. I feel so fortunate to have had their guidance and friendship.” But returning to B.C. was important, he said, because of the extent to which his research and methodology are rooted in place and community. His PhD research, for example, used community participation methodologies to explore the ways WSÁNEĆ laws are generated by and reflect the values, philosophies, lands and worldviews of the WSÁNEĆ people. At Allard, he is teaching Indigenous Law and Climate Change and Aboriginal & Treaty Rights to JD students.

Vanisha Sukdeo

Even before she arrived at Osgoode to pursue her PhD, Vanisha Sukdeo had a history of making change. As an undergraduate political science student at York University, she was already developing an interest in working environments, worker protections and how corporations can be held accountable for their treatment of workers. And as a law student at Queen’s University in 2004, she played a key role in Queen’s declaring itself a “no sweat” campus by boycotting products made by sweatshop labour. Her passion for workers’ rights and her fascination with corporate governance came together in her doctoral dissertation, Regulating the Corporation from Within and Without: Corporate Governance, Codes of Conduct and Workers’ Interests. In carrying out her PhD research, Professor Poonam Puri served as her supervisor. But she has worn two hats at Osgoode – as both a doctoral student and an adjunct professor, teaching legal processes and legal research and writing. With Osgoode’s location in Canada’s largest city, she said she’s been grateful for all the opportunities that the law school offers to network and develop as both an instructor and a student. And for the near-term at least, she plans to stay in the big city, continuing her work as an adjunct law professor at both Osgoode and Toronto Metropolitan University.

Summaiya Zaidi

As an award-winning legal historian, Summaiya Zaidi sometimes enjoys turning her writing talents to more current topics, especially when it comes to her native Pakistan. In May, for example, she co-wrote a piece for the English website of Pakistan’s Aaj 24-hour news channel that cast a critical eye on the Pakistani government’s decision to tax imported condoms, even as it confronts a population explosion. Her doctoral dissertation digs deep into legal education in Pakistan, exploring its practice-focused approach and a landmark intervention by the Supreme Court of Pakistan in August 2018 that approved structural reforms to legal education in the country. Supervised by Professor Philip Girard, her research brought together law, history and sociology to understand the colonial context of legal education in Pakistan and made use of archival sources, legislative and case law reviews, focus groups and interviews. With law degrees from Lahore University of Management Sciences and SOAS University of London, Zaidi has also combined her research with teaching and numerous international conference presentations. She is the recipient of several awards for her work, including Osgoode’s Sidney Peck Scholarship Award in 2020, the MITACs Research Award that same year, and the Harry W. Arthurs Fellowship Grant in both 2017 and 2018.

It’s a day that this year’s Osgoode grads will never forget: On June 23, they will cross the stage to collect their degrees, bringing to an official close years of hard work and transformative personal growth at law school. Osgoode congratulates them on their tremendous achievement. Here are the stories of three members of the JD class of 2023: Frank Nasca, Bunisha Samuels and Justin Thompson.

Frank Nasca (2023 Gold Medal Winner)

It took a little time, but Frank Nasca finally found their calling at Osgoode.

The route wound from rural New York state, where they were born, to New Mexico and Peterborough, Ont., where Nasca earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in environmental and sustainability studies from Trent University. After working at an environmental non-profit for a few years, the decision to pursue a law career came as a revelation.

“I found that law school was the first time where I was able to find an academic program that provided the challenge that I wanted and kept me stimulated,” they said.

“I think I’ve found something,” they added, “where my set of skills and the way my mind works and the types of things that make me excited will come together in my legal practice.”

At Osgoode, Nasca’s burgeoning passion for the law was unleashed through an impressive array of achievements – culminating in the law school’s top academic prize, the Gold Medal, which is awarded annually at spring convocation to the student in the graduating class with the highest cumulative grade point average over all three years of law school.

Those accomplishments also included a Dean’s Gold Key Award last March for exceptional contributions to the law school, four trophies for outstanding mooting performances, an award for an original research project that examined decisions by the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, and enthusiastic contributions to the Anti-Discrimination Intensive Program (ADIP).

But Nasca, who is transgender, said perhaps their proudest accomplishment was helping a friend, Nathaniel Le May, prepare an appeal to the Health Services Appeal and Review Board challenging a decision of the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP) to refuse Nathaniel coverage for a gender-affirming surgery. Before the appeal moved forward, OHIP reversed its stance and has agreed to fund the operation.

In the course of their studies, Nasca developed a particular passion for public, constitutional and human rights law, especially as it relates to the trans community. But despite all their accomplishments, some classmates may remember them most of all for their adorable dachshund Frankfurter and his visits to Osgoode.

“When people were stressed,” they recalled, “he would bring little bursts of joy to them.”

And now there’s even more joy on the horizon. In November, Nasca and their partner will welcome their first child. And on the professional front, a clerkship with the Court of Appeal for Ontario over the next year will provide lots of additional stimulation.

To incoming students, they recommended trying to find a mentor or mentors among Osgoode’s caring faculty. Nasca attributes their success, in part, to guidance from mentors like Professor Sonia Lawrence, Emily Kidd White and Bruce Ryder. And, they added, try not to let law school completely take over your life.

Bunisha Samuels (President, Black Law Students’ Association, Osgoode Chapter)

Bunisha Samuels will always regard it as one of the proudest moments of her law school career. At a special ceremony last November, before an audience of Black high school students, the president of the Osgoode chapter of the Black Law Students’ Association stepped on to the stage to help launch Raise the Black Bar, a partnership with the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) designed to break down barriers to legal education for Black students.

It was an emotional moment for Samuels, who reflected in her remarks on the challenges of her youth in the Toronto suburb of Scarborough. “I wish I had had this when I was in high school,” she said.

The program, which was initiated by BLSA Osgoode, will rely on special events and small group mentorship to support Black students in Grades 10, 11 and 12 across the TDSB’s 110 secondary schools who are contemplating careers in law. It is considered the first program of its kind focusing specifically on the needs of Black high school students – and it’s at the heart of the kind of change that prompted Samuels to originally pursue her own career in law.

“Growing up, I always knew I wanted to go into law,” she reflected. “For me, it was an important avenue for change since it shapes and governs our rights and protections within society.”

While her role in launching Raise the Black Bar was a signatory achievement, it was far from her only accomplishment during her three years at Osgoode. In addition to serving in various leadership and fundraising roles with BLSA Osgoode, including president, she was a student caseworker with Parkdale Community Legal Services, associate editor at the Osgoode Hall Law Journal, a research assistant and an active mooting participant.

“My time at Osgoode was one of immense growth and learning,” she said. “It was a critical steppingstone in learning how to be an advocate on a community or systemic level.

“Osgoode,” she added, “has provided me with the key support and resources I needed to help effect broad positive change.”

She encourages incoming students to similarly embrace the many opportunities available at the law school. “Authentically pursue your passions at Osgoode,” she advised, “and know you have a place to create your own legacy.”

Samuels, who earned her undergraduate degree in political science and global development from Queen’s University in Kingston, will continue building on the expertise and experience she’s gained at Osgoode when she begins articling this summer for the Borden Ladner Gervais LLP (BLG) in Toronto. She said her hope is to eventually build a career that combines both her interests in international law and community advocacy.

“As someone passionate about social advocacy,” she added, “even if I am not always pursuing a legal career, the skills that a law career will provide at this point in my life are essential in understanding how legal regimes govern policy domestically and internationally.”

Justin Thompson (Co-Chair, Osgoode Indigenous Students’ Association)

Justin Thompson hopes his Osgoode experience will help inspire other Indigenous youth to pursue their dreams.

As a member of Nipissing First Nation near North Bay, Ont., his thirst for justice began early. As a teenager, he began developing a desire to help his community become more sovereign and to exercise its rights of self-determination, loosening the grip of the Indian Act.

This summer, he will realize his goal of becoming a lawyer when he begins articling in the Toronto office of Olthuis Kleer Townshend LLP, one of Canada’s leading Aboriginal law firms.

As an aspiring Indigenous lawyer, Thompson said, Osgoode was his first choice of law school after he completed undergraduate and graduate studies at Trent University in Canadian and Indigenous studies. His graduate research there focused on the issue of Indigenous over-incarceration and the lasting impacts of the Indian Act related to the criminalization of Indigenous individuals.

“I came to Osgoode specifically for the Indigenous Intensive,” he said. “And the Indigenous faculty here have been an amazing source of support.”

The only program of its kind in North America, the Intensive Program in Indigenous Lands, Resources, and Governments (IPILRG) explores the legal issues related to Indigenous Peoples and Indigenous rights through the combination of a rigorous academic experience with challenging placements in Indigenous, Aboriginal or environmental law.

“The Intensive was my favourite aspect of law school,” said Thompson. “It was a bit disrupted by COVID, but (Professors) Amar (Bhatia) and Jeff (Hewitt) made sure we had all the support we needed.”

Another major highlight came in May, when he was named a recipient of the $10,000 John Wesley Beaver Memorial Award, offered annually by Ontario Power Generation through Indspire, a national Indigenous charity that invests in the education of First Nations, Inuit and Métis people.

“Indigenous students want to see someone like themselves who is achieving things,” said Thompson. “So getting the award helps to show that anything is possible for Indigenous students and the sky is the limit.”

He said other highlights of his Osgoode years included participating in the Kawaskimhon National Aboriginal Moot and his leadership roles with the Osgoode Indigenous Students’ Association (OISA).

“We took on a lot of important initiatives,” he said, citing in his third year the association’s ReDress Week event, its Moose Hide Campaign against domestic and gender-based violence and its Orange Shirt Day, which featured guest speaker and Osgoode alumna Kimberley Murray, the federal government’s Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites associated with Indian Residential Schools.

“There’s definitely no shortage of opportunities to get involved at Osgoode,” he said. “Take advantage of every opportunity that comes your way,” he urged incoming students, “because you might find an area of interest that you didn’t know you had.”

The Canadian Bar Association (CBA) has named Professor Faisal Bhabha as the recipient of its 2023 Touchstone Award, which celebrates the accomplishments of an individual or an organization who has excelled in promoting equality in the legal profession, the judiciary or the legal community in Canada.

The prestigious honour is one of six national CBA Awards of Excellence presented every year to individuals whose outstanding achievements have made significant contributions to the association, the legal profession and to society. They were presented by CBA President Steeves Bujold during the annual CBA President’s Dinner at Ottawa’s Chateau Laurier Hotel on the evening of June 21. The Ottawa-based organization represents about 36,000 lawyers, judges, notaries, law teachers and law students from across Canada.

In a CBA news release, Bhabha was cited for “his excellent work advancing equality in the legal profession, including his exceptional contributions to legal academia, his volunteer work for various equality-driven organizations and his precedent-setting pro bono work.”

“I can only express heartfelt gratitude to you for having selected me for this most distinguished and humbling recognition,” Bhabha said in his acceptance speech, singling out for special thanks his family, his Osgoode colleagues and his law firm associates at Toronto-based PooranLaw.

“The promotion of equality under the law is something I take very personally,” he added, recalling how, as a law student, he watched in horror as two airplanes flew into New York City’s World Trade Centre in September 2001. But in the ensuing months and years, he said, he was equally perplexed by how Canada sacrificed the rights and freedoms of Canadian Muslims with vague justification, making them carry the burden of suspicion.

“In the cases I’ve been involved in over the years,” he said, “I’ve been struck by the plight of people struggling for simple recognition – as subjects in a liberal society who are deserving of equality – in the face of near insurmountable stereotypes and obstacles.

“My hope for the future,” he concluded, “is that the guarantee of equality be realized more broadly for all those members of marginalized communities who still await its promise.”

Osgoode Dean Mary Condon celebrated the CBA’s announcement. “As a recipient of the Touchstone Award, Professor Bhabha follows in the footsteps of some of Canada’s most accomplished legal minds and some of our staunchest defenders of human rights,” she said. “The Osgoode community is very proud of his achievement.”

Previous recipients of the Touchstone Award include Madam Justice Rosalie Abella, Madam Justice Claire L’Heureux-Dubé, Professor Kathleen Mahoney, Chief Justice Catherine Fraser and Professor Laverne Jacobs.

Bhabha, a former vice-chair of the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, teaches constitutional law, human rights, legal ethics and appellate advocacy at Osgoode. He also maintains a varied public and private law practice and has appeared before administrative boards and tribunals and at all levels of court, including the Supreme Court of Canada. He also serves as faculty director for Osgoode Professional Development’s professional LLM in Constitutional Law program.

For PhD student Kenneth Grad, it was a week to remember.

On June 7, he was awarded this year’s Peter Oliver Prize by the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History. A few days later, in the early morning of June 10, he and his wife welcomed their second daughter into the world. Later that same morning, he was notified that he had been named a co-winner of the Osgoode Society’s other major student prize: the R. Roy McMurtry Fellowship in Legal History, valued at $10,000.

Receiving both the Peter Oliver Prize and the R. Roy McMurtry Fellowship – let alone in the same year – is a rare accomplishment. But Grad wasn’t done there. On June 16, he was awarded the Switzer-Cooperstock Student Prize by the Jewish Heritage Centre for Western Canada. In addition, Grad also recently received the Avrom Silver Graduate Research Fund Award from York University’s Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies.

A former criminal lawyer with the prominent Toronto firm Henein Hutchison Robitaille LLP, Grad received the awards for work produced in connection with his doctoral research. His dissertation is entitled Prosecuting Hateful Speech: An Historical Analysis of Zundel, Keegstra, and the Criminal Law’s Ability to Protect Vulnerable Communities.

The Peter Oliver Prize is awarded annually for a published work on Canadian legal history written by a student and is named for the society’s founding editor-in-chief. The R. Roy McMurtry Fellowship in Legal History was created in 2007 to help graduate students or those with a recently completed doctorate to conduct research on Canadian legal history for one year. It is named for the former chief justice of Ontario, attorney general and founder of the Osgoode Society. The Switzer-Cooperstock Prize, established by the Switzer family to honour their parents and grandparents, is awarded for the best student essay on Jewish history in Western Canada. And the Avrom Silver award supports the research of graduate students affiliated with York’s Centre for Jewish Studies.

“It’s a huge honour,” Grad said of the awards. “The Osgoode Society does such great work in legal history and it’s just personally rewarding to be recognized by them. The same goes for the Jewish Heritage Centre for Western Canada and Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies, which do incredibly valuable research in the area of Jewish history

“It’s nice that all the work I’ve put in is paying off,” he added, “and it shows the relevance of my research – especially with the increase in transphobia, racism and hate speech, especially during the pandemic.”

Professor Patricia McMahon, who was on the selection committee for the Oliver Prize, said the society received an exceptional number of strong submissions from students this year, but Grad’s work rose to the top.

“His article, A Gesture of Criminal Law: Jews and the Criminalization of Hate Speech in Canada, stood out not just for its clear prose and excellent research,” she said, “but for telling a compelling story about the role of the Canadian Jewish Congress in the development of Canada’s hate speech laws more than 50 years ago.”

Grad said the award-winning paper and his dissertation both combine his legal interest in criminal law with his personal background as the grandson of Holocaust survivors.

“Issues of racism and empowering minority groups are important to me – and that’s how I landed on this topic,” he explained.

He said his PhD studies at Osgoode have been “incredibly rewarding” but very hectic with the birth of his two daughters and the COVID-19 pandemic. He paid tribute to the support he’s received from his PhD supervisor, Professor Benjamin Berger, and his PhD committee members, Professors Philip Girard and Emily Kidd White.

Berger also paid homage to his accomplished doctoral student.

“Kenneth is already a tremendous scholar, making creative and rich contributions to our understanding of Canadian legal history, pluralism and the complexity of public law,” he said. “I am so proud of the careful, compassionate approach he takes to his work and so pleased that he has received this recognition.”

Grad will teach a course on criminal law at Osgoode in the fall of 2023.

It was the week the world came to Osgoode. And the 21 doctoral students from six countries who participated in the unique international ATLAS Agora Summer School from June 2 to 9 are taking home lessons that will benefit their careers for years to come.

“It was truly invaluable,” said Osgoode PhD student Ọláolúwa Òní. “From the opportunity to share stories with similarly situated doctoral candidates from different parts of the world, to the opportunity to immerse myself in different interdisciplinary fields, I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything.”

The intellectual stimulation was sterling, said participants. But others also remarked on the emotional impact of mingling and exchanging ideas with colleagues again after the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Being engaged in doctoral studies alone can be a very isolating, even without a pandemic, said Kerry Watkins, who chose to pursue doctoral studies at Osgoode after a career as a police officer and investigator.

“Attending the Agora allowed me to connect with other people engaged in the same process,” he said. “I found it to be a value-added experience, particularly having the opportunity to hear about other people’s work and their related challenges.”

The Agora was also a welcome relief for doctoral student Odelia Bay, who said she found pursuing her studies extremely difficult during the pandemic in her role as a single mother with a disability.

“This was an important way of coming back to the academic community and my work,” she said, “and it was nice to be in a very supportive and welcoming environment.”

“I think it’s terrific that we had the opportunity to meet and work with colleagues from all over the world,” she added, “and I’m really glad that Osgoode hosted it this time because in the past it was out of reach for me.”

Many of the students said the Agora’s PhD dissertation workshops this year were especially valuable because, in a new twist, they presented someone else’s work instead of their own. In the process, they gained new perspectives on their research.

The series of interdisciplinary lectures presented by Osgoode professors throughout the week had a similar impact, said Òní.

“They opened my mind to how different fields and theories of law can inform my PhD dissertation,” she said. “The sessions on writing and book publishing also prompted me to begin to think about future plans for my research.”

Osgoode PhD student Ephraim Ajijola said display of Osgoode’s depth of legal knowledge gave him renewed pride in being a student at the law school.

“That’s one of the reasons I came to Osgoode,” he said. “You feel proud you have these professors around you.”

Looking back on the week, he said, “it was no doubt useful, no doubt impactful and something you’ll carry with you for a long time.”

This year’s Agora Summer School, which has been run since 2008 by the Association of Transnational Law Schools (ATLAS), involved students from Bar-Ilan University Faculty of Law in Israel, Erasmus School of Law in the Netherlands, the University of Antwerp Faculty of Law in Belgium, the Sutherland School of Law at University College Dublin in Ireland, Université de Montréal Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Law at the University of Graz in Austria. The theme for this year’s event was “Interdisciplinary and Public Facing Approaches to Legal Research.”

The director of the Osgoode-affiliated Canadian Forum on Civil Justice (CFCJ) has contributed to a trail-blazing, international book on the difficulties faced by rural residents globally in accessing justice services.

The book, Access to Justice in Rural Communities: Global Perspectives, which was released in May by Bloomsbury Publishing, includes a chapter by CFCJ Director Lisa Moore titled Overcoming Geographic Barriers: Towards a Framework for Facilitating Legal Service Delivery in Rural Communities in Canada. To her knowledge, she said, the edited collection is the first of its kind offering global insights into access to justice in rural communities.

“Access to justice is one of the most pressing legal issues today,” said Moore.

“In addition to many of the obstacles that low- and moderate-income earners, vulnerable and marginalized populations face when trying to resolve legal problems, rural residents often face unique barriers related to their location,” she added. “It is important to understand and work to address these challenges.”

Almost 20 per cent of Canadians live in rural areas, which means a significant portion of the population faces challenges in accessing justice services, noted Moore. While specific issues may differ from region to region, she added, many are common to rural residents across the country and the world. These include the longer distance to legal resources, a lack of lawyers, a mistrust of urban lawyers and poor Internet service, making it harder to access services remotely.

In her chapter, Moore describes one pilot project in southwestern Ontario’s Wellington County that is bringing legal services directly to rural residents. During the warmer months, the Law Van operated by the Legal Clinic of Guelph & Wellington County travels to a different community each day, setting up in parking lots and providing free legal help and advice. In the colder months, the Law Van staff set up indoors in churches and community spaces. The initiative is funded in part by a three-year Connecting Rural Regions grant from The Law Foundation of Ontario.

“If we are talking about location being a major impediment to access legal help,” said Moore, “the fact that the van goes to these various rural communities, bringing legal help to these areas, makes it an interesting model to potentially address unmet legal needs in some rural areas.”

The CFCJ has addressed the rural legal services gap in its previous research. CFCJ Senior Fellow Ab Currie has written extensively on the Law Van project and in 2016 the organization published a Rural and Remote Access to Justice Literature Review.

In addition to her work on rural and remote access to justice, Moore has written extensively on everyday legal problems and the cost of justice in Canada, multidisciplinary resolution of legal problems, investing in justice and other access-to-justice issues in the civil justice context.

The CFCJ is a national non-profit organization that has been dedicated to advancing civil justice reform through research and advocacy since 1998. In 2011, it moved from the Faculty of Law at the University of Alberta to York University, where it is affiliated with Osgoode and the York Centre for Public Policy and Law.

A new book by Professor Rabiat Akande is being hailed as a “novel commentary on the dynamic interplay between law, faith, identity and power.”

The book, Entangled Domains: Empire, Law and Religion in Northern Nigeria, focuses on colonial northern Nigeria, drawing on detailed archival research from two continents to vividly illustrate the constitutional struggles that were triggered by the colonial state’s governance of religion – as well as the legacy of that governance agenda in the postcolonial state. It was published in May by Cambridge University Press.

According to the publisher’s description, the book examines how the colonial state paradoxically insisted on its separation from religion, even as it governed its multi-religious population through what remained of the precolonial caliphate. In the process, the book offers a “provocative account of secularism as a contested yet contingent mode of governing religion and religious difference.”

Samuel Moyn, a professor of law and history at Yale Law School, calls the book an “impressive achievement in a book jacket quotation.

“With the shift away from sponsoring Christian missionary projects, the British empire turned to indirect rule with secularist features,” he is quoted as saying. “In this enterprising history of law and politics in northern Nigeria between past and present, Rabiat Akande illuminates how such secularism intruded on religious and social identity and reshaped it, with profound legacies for the constitutionalism that followed in the postcolony.”

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. In 2019, she graduated with her doctor of juridical science (SJD) degree from Harvard University. She taught courses at Harvard Law School and at Harvard’s Department for African and African American Studies. She also served as adjunct faculty at Northeastern University School of Law. Prior to her graduate work, she was an associate at G. Elias Solicitors and Advocates in Lagos, Nigeria.

Professors Rabiat Akande and Faisal Bhabha and adjunct faculty member Naseem Mithoowani have contributed to a new book on systemic Islamopobia in Canada that they hope will shed light on the enduring problem and provide insight into potential policy and legal solutions.

Systemic Islamophobia in Canada: A Research Agenda was published in April by University of Toronto Press. It was edited by Anver Emon, a professor of law and history in the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto.

“Islamophobia remains a pervasive problem globally and here in Canada,” said Akande, “and the book is an attempt to grapple with that phenomenon, utilizing a variety of interdisciplinary approaches that take nothing for granted, including the term Islamophobia itself.”

Akande is the author of a chapter titled Centring the Black Muslimah: Interrogating Gendered, Anti-Black Islamophobia, which argues that the effects of Islamophobia are not evenly distributed among Muslims and that those marginalized experiences should be centred within the Muslim community, particularly those at the intersection of gender and blackness.

“Personally,” she added, “I wanted to contribute to the book because I felt that so much continues to be elided in current policy discourse and advocacy efforts, particularly as it concerns the intersection of blackness and gender.”

Bhabha, who authored a chapter titled Fighting Antisemitism by Propagating Islamophobia: The Palestine Trope, said the book is the first he knows of to bring together current Canadian scholars to examine the issue of systemic Islamophobia in contemporary society – locally, nationally and globally.

“Most academic study of Islamophobia to date has been focused on theory and definitions and everyday occurrences, from hate crimes to microaggressions, in which the state is either absent or acting as referee,” he said. “However, this study shows how government and large institutions like universities, banks, public schools, etc. are not neutral but rather complicit in the propagation and perpetuation of Islamophobia through systems and institutions.”

Bhabha said his chapter deals with the case of a Toronto imam who was fired from his position as a part-time teaching assistant and exam invigilator at Toronto Metropolitan University in 2017 after a little- known online publication incorrectly reported that he had openly prayed in a prominent Toronto mosque for the killing of Jews.

“My chapter shows how the information the university relied upon was biased and a product of far-right networks,” he said. “The chapter asks what meaning the university’s affirmation of equity, diversity and inclusion can have when the university actively promotes one form of discrimination in the name of combatting another.”

Mithoowani, a Toronto immigration lawyer who authored a chapter titled Immigration and Systemic Islamophobia, said she was drawn to contribute to the book because it is one of the first serious studies of the subtle ways that our societal systems function to perpetuate bias against Muslims or those perceived as Muslims – even if it is largely done without ill intent or motive.

“This book begins that exploration,” she said. “If we are ever going to truly confront Islamophobia, this is a necessary step.”

She said her chapter explores the subtle ways that Muslims are shut out of immigration to Canada, including the uneven application of inadmissibility provisions related to national security and Canada’s disproportionate rejection of study or tourist visa applications from Muslim-majority countries.

“Given the importance of immigration to our society,” she noted, “this is a topic that I think deserves close attention.”

Bhabha said the book does not attempt to offer solutions to systemic Islamophobia but lays the groundwork for future research that may include prescriptive elements.

Akande said the challenge of finding solutions to systemic Islamophobia is addressed by the book’s authors in a variety of ways.

“In my chapter, I argue that a good beginning is to ‘listen’ to unmediated accounts of the experience of Islamophobia,” she noted. “I think this is particularly crucial to understanding voices that remain inadequately represented in policy and legal debates on Islamophobia.”