This seminar will provide an overview of U.S. securities regulation, with the goal of developing students’ understanding of the regulation of the U.S. capital markets from both a doctrinal and policy perspective, and understanding differences and similarities with Canadian market regulation and their respective
regulatory structures and approaches.
Particular emphasis will be put on current regulatory issues, such as enforcement approaches,
perspectives and initiatives and the relationship between securities law and corporate law. The Sarbanes-Oxley reforms of 2002; regulators’ responses to, and regulatory initiatives introduced in light of, the credit crisis in 2007-2008; concerns about the continuing global competitiveness of the U.S. securities markets; as well as the theme of increasing international cooperation and coordination in regulatory policy making will also be explored.
Topics to be covered include a history of American securities regulation; principles of materiality and ongoing disclosure; the regulation of the public offering process; the prospectus system and exemptions
from public offering requirements; mergers and acquisitions; the increasing role of shareholder activism, proxy battles and governance oversight; key players in the American enforcement environment; insider trading, manipulation and foreign corruption; debates over securities class actions under Section 10(b)
and Rule 10b-5 of the ’34 Act; new and emerging issues, such as cryptocurrency and the role of public markets; and international cooperation and derivatives. Reading materials will combine theory (law review articles, reports of blue-ribbon commissions) with practice (statutory materials applied to problems distributed in advance).
In the aftermath of World War II, various States saw the compelling necessity of collective action “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war,” which in the words of the preamble to the United Nations Charter “twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind” The establishment of the UN is principally, to quote Article 1 of the UN Charter designed to “maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace.”
Notwithstanding this grand objective, violent conflicts including civil wars, wars for democracy, and liberation struggles, amongst many others, have ravaged global peace. The Security Council of the UN is often paralyzed by political gridlock. In addition, the collective action envisioned by the founders of the UN has often yielded to geopolitical and sectionalist forces. The result is that the UN seems to struggle with maintaining international peace and security. This course interrogates the structure and processes by which the UN grapples with the task of maintaining international peace and security, especially, in the age of state failure and state-building. In 2025-2026, the course will use the case of Libyan civil war as a template for studying the mechanics, politics, legality, and normativity of UN roles in peace maintenance, good governance, and state-building.
By the end of the course, students are expected to have gained a fuller understanding of:
1. The role and function of the UN in peace maintenance;
2. The geo-political calculations and economic considerations that often influence decision-making by permanent members of the UN Security Council;
3. The successes and failures of the UN Security Council in peace-maintenance across the globe;
4. The structure and processes of peace-making since 1945;
5. The root causes of state-failure, especially in Africa;
6. State-building and the geo-politics of multilateral efforts at peace maintenance;
7. The theoretical frameworks of international institutions committed to peace maintenance;
8. And, the need for reform of the UN Security Council.
This seminar will explore in depth the many ways in which modern computing systems — including the data they ingest, the decisions made by the folks who develop them, and their myriad and nearly ubiquitous applications — may enable, encourage, or prevent societal discrimination and surveillance capitalism of various types. Students will learn how algorithms and artificial intelligence (“AI”) systems work, how such algorithms and systems may provide differential treatment and/or outcomes for different populations, and how they may invade privacy and cause other harms to people. Students will also consider the potential legal/regulatory, technical, and social/policy interventions that could ameliorate the harms caused by such algorithms and systems and will weigh the advantages and disadvantaged of each.
At the end of the seminar, students should be able to (i) discuss with colleagues and others the positive and negative consequences of various current AI innovations, and (ii) suggest different approaches to address systemic bias and surveillance capitalism — including legal/regulatory or social/policy changes, as well as technical solutions — and explain why certain of these approaches might or might not work in specific circumstances.
This seminar is intended to provide students with an introduction to Jewish Law as a self-contained, comprehensive, dynamic and evolving legal system. The seminar will examine the sources and development of Jewish law, its precedents and principles of adjudication. It will focus on the relationship between the rights of the individual and the needs of the community in the Jewish legal tradition. The seminar will explore contemporary topics in Jewish law pertaining to the status of the individual, issues of human rights and dignity and bioethics. The only text required for this seminar will be a readings package.
Climate change and disruption is attributable to historical and current day modes of production and consumption. Enduring solutions will require significant shifts in how modern societies are governed. Governance, in this context, is unlikely to succeed without attention to related priorities of sustainability, justice, and cohesion. Yet there is ample evidence that many leaders and institutions are unable or unwilling to address the challenge effectively.
This seminar explores legal and policy issues related to efforts to control the causes and respond to the impacts of climate disruption. It approaches the topic from an interdisciplinary perspective that considers law, science, politics, economics, and history. The seminar is concerned with how these perspectives can support pragmatic strategies in different areas of law and policy and at different levels of decision-making.
The seminar has two thematic segments. The first segment will examine the historical, political, economic, and scientific background within which the modern problem of climate disruption has arisen. This segment will also provide a broad survey of the major international legal regimes that have been developed to address the problem.
The second segment will focus on analyzing legal and institutional barriers to pragmatic action towards forestalling climate disruption and mitigating its impact on society. Particular attention will be paid to core societal functions such as food production, land management, water and wastewater infrastructure, energy, and transportation. Students will have the opportunity to do their research in a relevant area.
The Comparative Labor Law & Policy Journal publishes peer reviewed scholarly works, book reviews, and recent development dispatches, focusing on comparative and international labour law issues. Students enrolled in this seminar may receive credit to the value of four credit hours each academic year and not more than eight credit hours in total. Students must enroll in the Journal for at least two semesters in order to earn credit. Meetings are generally held every other week throughout the fall and winter semesters.
Transnational law is a field that encompasses a large and ever-growing variety of legal actors, situations, and issues that span national borders. This course will introduce the students to the history and concept of the transnational as a form of law beyond the state through a series of illustrative examples and critical case studies. It is designed to deepen students’ understanding of the nature, operation and impact of international law and international organizations alongside transnational law and transnational actors as a dynamic set of interactions rooted in history, competing normative perspectives, and unequal power relations. A further goal is to foster the development of perspectives from which to critically assess and think constructively about such law and institutions’ impact on society, both globally and locally.
Learning objectives will include an introduction to regimes that are identified as “transnational,” “global,” “supranational” and that claim respect or enforcement in the name of law, as well as a critical consideration of emerging trends and practices in these regimes. Students should be able to identify, map and critically engage with a variety of legal regimes beyond the state. In addition, students will be invited to consider the mechanisms by which state/national “domestic” legal systems are subject to international and transnational influences and to what ends. Students will improve their reasoning and argumentation skills through presenting and defending fundamental ideas about law when considered through more legal-pluralist and beyond-the-state lenses than is the norm in much of the general law school curriculum.
Transnational corporations (TNCs) are powerful economic and even political actors that operate across the globe in every imaginable industry including oil and mining, textiles, finance, technology, and even private military and security forces and prisons. This course focuses on the ways that TNCs (through their employees, contractors, and affiliates) commit physical, financial, and environmental harm against natural persons (particularly in developing countries) and how the law attempts to prevent and respond to that harm. We trace the law around TNCs from its colonial roots through the industrial revolution and into the contemporary era of globalization. We cover sources of domestic and international law that touch on TNCs with a view to sustainable solutions around, for instance, modern slavery, forced labour, child labour, Indigenous property rights, natural resource contamination, and climate change.
The seminar will begin with an introduction to corporate theory. Students will then explore some of the key issues in the debate. For example, whether transnational corporations can properly be included under the international law of state responsibility; mechanisms for self-regulation (e.g. voluntary corporate codes of conduct); the utility of the U.S. Alien Tort Statute and recent Canadian litigation; the advantages and disadvantages of U.N. initiatives (e.g. the work of the former U.N. Special Representative on Business and Human Rights); and the relevance of domestic corporate and securities law mechanisms (e.g. shareholder proposals and social disclosure).
This course introduces students to basic concepts of foreign, comparative, and international law in the context of legal research. It teaches them to identify, select, evaluate and analyze sources and tools for researching foreign, comparative and international law. This is a hands-on skills oriented course with practical exercises and projects to help students understand the available tools and the appropriate research methodologies for given types of research projects. Students will learn to use a variety of resources including essential print collection and electronic databases to research foreign law of other jurisdictions. They will also learn to use available tools to identify applicable sources for public and private international law.
Was NATO’s military intervention in Libya legal? What about Afghanistan? Or the imprisonment of America’s detainees in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba? Is Russia’s military overrun of Ukraine lawful? What is the legal status of killing by drones? What happens to people who commit war crimes? What are the remedies for an illegal war? This seminar examines the international law governing war, including both questions of when war is legal (so-called ‘jus ad bellum’) and how even legal wars must be conducted (so-called ‘jus in bello’ or the laws and customs of war) and the relationship between the two types of law. It also examines the various judicial institutions that have jurisdiction over these issues, from the World Court, to the ad hoc tribunals (Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone), to national courts exercising ‘universal jurisdiction’ (Belgium, Canada), to the new International Criminal Court.
Case studies on the armed conflicts over Kosovo, in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, Ukraine, and between Israel and the Palestinians, provide the settings for concrete legal analysis and also for critical evaluation of the role of law in war.