This course begins with an overview of the Canadian immigration system and international migration patterns. The basic features of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and the Regulations will then be discussed including: temporary residence, family sponsorship, economic immigration, humanitarian applications, removal and inadmissibility. Embedded in this discussion will be an overview of how immigration decision-making takes place and the reviewability of immigration administrative decisions. A portion of the course will be devoted to looking at current topics in immigration law.
Course or Seminar Category: International Comparative and Transnational Law
Indigenous Peoples and Canadian Law
This course provides a critical survey of state law as it relates to Indigenous peoples and lands in what is now known as Canada.
Topics may include but are not limited to: historical context and constitutional framework; the laws of Indigenous peoples, especially as they interact with Canadian law; Aboriginal rights and title; self-government; treaties and treaty rights; the Indian Act; the obligations of the federal and provincial governments; and Indigenous belonging and identity.
This course fulfills the prerequisite requirement for the Intensive Program in Indigenous Lands, Resources and Governments. This course also satisfies the Indigenous and Aboriginal Law Requirement.
Public International Law
This course provides an introductory survey of public international law as a discipline and a political enterprise through the lens of the function of international legal system, its norms, processes, institutions, actors and participants. We will tackle a few legal doctrinal questions ranging from sources of international law to regulation of the use of force, humanitarianism, forceful intervention, and more with an eye on the shrinking lines between the domestic and the international and another on the changing notion of the ‘international’. Throughout, our doctrinal investigation will take aid from both theoretical literature and historical and contemporary state of international political life to weigh the possibilities and limitations of international law in global affairs.
Refugee Law
Refugee protection is in a perpetual state of crisis, both domestically and abroad. Many refugee law practitioners and scholars argue that states are retrenching from their duty to provide refugees with the protection to which they are entitled under international law. At the same time, some government actors, media figures and civil society groups contend that existing refugee determination processes are excessively generous and are subject to widespread “abuse” by economically motivated migrants. Still others suggest that refugee protection regimes either distract from or help reinforce a deeper problematic: control over migration that serves to entrench global disparities in income, wealth and security.
This course offers students an opportunity to engage critically with these and other debates over refugee law at the level of theory, policy and practice. This critical engagement will occur through a collaborative examination of refugee law instruments, institutions and jurisprudence in international and domestic forums, with a heavy emphasis on Canada.
The course will be offered through online modules, lectures and class discussions. The course will also include several weeks of student-led teaching in the second half of the term. There will be two written assignments. The course requires consistent and active student participation throughout the term, including participation in evaluated group work. There is no final exam or final paper. The course, including all evaluated work, will be complete by the final day of class.
Note that the course will be offered in a hybrid remote/in-person format (hyflex). Students can attend classes either on campus or remotely via Zoom.
Law & Social Change: Corporate Responsiblity
This course provides students with perspectives into corporate social responsibility both as a governing mechanism for businesses as well as a form of business practice. The course will examine the theoretical paradigms surrounding the corporate objective and corporate accountability, international movements in corporate social responsibility led by organizations such as the OECD and the UN, as well as the legal frameworks in human rights protection and corporate risk management. The course will devote a significant proportion of time to the role of corporations in human rights and furthering social welfare and will discuss key critical perspectives on other social rights, including labour and the environment. This course will challenge students into viewing the role and responsibility of the corporation from perspectives beyond the traditional paradigm of shareholder primacy and is well placed to complement traditional corporate law and regulation courses as well as courses in international law.
Law & Social Change: Indigenous Law Camp
This course includes both academic and in-field elements. All students in this course are required to attend Osgoode’s Anishinaabe Law Camp at Rama First Nation from September 11th – 14th (inclusive).
Students will be depart via bus from Osgoode on September 11th to Rama First Nation and return to Osgoode on September 14th. Attendance at the Law Camp is a required component of the course for which there is no alternative option. Students must also attend the pre-Law Camp mandatory meeting at Osgoode, which is scheduled usually the week prior to Law Camp.
The course will include in-person weekly classes prior to and following Law Camp as well as an enhanced Law Camp schedule. The course is of interest to students looking to attend Anishinaabe Law Camp, as well as engage more deeply with Indigenous legal orders.
There are no prerequisites beyond 1L courses. Of note: Anishinaabe Law Camp will include Osgoode students who have applied to attend without credit. However, those enrolled in this course will attend Law Camp for credit with additional classes pre- and post-Law Camp and additional time during Law Camp. Students in this course will be automatically enrolled in Anishinaabe Law Camp. However, once it is available online, students in this class must also complete the Anishinaabe Law Camp application.
Indigenous Peoples and Canadian Law
This course will provide a critical survey of state law as it relates to Indigenous peoples in Canada. The focus will be on the following topics: the historical context and constitutional framework; Aboriginal rights and title; self-government; treaties and treaty rights; and introduction to the Indian Act; and the authority and obligations of the federal and provincial governments.
This course fulfills the prerequisite requirements for the Intensive Program in Indigenous Lands, Resources and Governments.
International Commercial Arbitration
As the preferred means of resolving international commercial disputes, arbitration embodies the pursuit of excellence in dispute resolution. This course examines the theory and practice of international commercial arbitration from its foundation in the New York Convention and the parties’ agreement to the way that efficiency and fairness are achieved through innovation across the legal traditions. We look at arbitration from delivery of the notice of arbitration through constitution of the tribunal and design of the arbitral process on to the hearing, the award and recourse against it. Through a combination of lectures and discussions, guest presentations, and exercises based on mock scenarios, you will gain insight into a growing area of practice in Canada that is critical to the functioning of the world economy.
International Criminal Law
Law in the face of political violence and mass atrocity reveals some of the most pressing issues in global politics and international law today. With the Russia/Ukraine war, the Israel/Palestine conflict, the broader destabilization of the Middle East and Donald Trump’s second term as U.S. President, many experts warn that the foundations of the post-World War II system of international law and the liberal ‘rules-based international order’ are not only under attack but are at risk of disintegrating.
Against the backdrop of current events in global politics this course will provide students with an introduction to the main concepts, rules and institutions of the field of International Criminal Law. It will explore the core international crimes of aggression, war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, as well as peripheral or emerging international crimes including terrorism and ecocide. Students will gain a foundational knowledge of the field, including how it is situated in the broader contexts of public international law, international human rights law and Canadian criminal law.
While the core structures of the field are now well-established, the goals of international criminal prosecutions are more elusive. The figure of the international criminal has come to stand in, often at one and the same time, for the human rights violator, the political enemy, and the social, philosophical and theological scapegoat. International criminal law is said to, variously: subject the use of force to the rule of law; punish the worst crimes and deter their future commission; create an accurate historical record of mass atrocity; provide redress and reparation to victims; address threats to international peace and security; facilitate transition from totalitarian regimes to democratic systems; and provide a common vocabulary through which to articulate the legal regulation of acts that ‘shock the conscience of mankind.’ But these objectives do not sit easily together, from either a theoretical or a practical perspective.
We will explore the sometimes-contradictory objectives of the field with a view to equipping students with a critical toolkit with which to assess the effectiveness of strategic and tactical international criminal law interventions in global politics. This conversation will be rooted in both the regulation of present-day violence and the broader history of the field, including the Nuremberg trials and domestic prosecution efforts like the Eichmann trial. We will look at International Criminal Law as a global criminal justice project deployed by specific actors for specific purposes. Students are invited to engage these questions as active political agents, asking whether, and how, this body of law and set of institutions and practices could be deployed to secure substantive policy objectives.
Using case studies and interactive learning, students will be asked to concretely evaluate the stakes of international criminal justice across a variety of jurisdictional contexts, asking how—and for whom—international criminal law might be a good thing or a bad thing. Various theoretical lenses will be deployed throughout, challenging students to evaluate doctrine and case law considering fundamental questions of global jurisdiction, constituency, and legitimacy.
International Trade Regulation
This introductory course surveys the laws of international trade regulation from a Canadian perspective. The course focuses on the public international law and domestic public law regimes regulating the conduct of international trade to and from Canada, with a particular focus on the multilateral World Trade Organization (WTO) and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). An additional focus will be on some of the many preferential trade agreements relevant to the international trade of Canada such as the Canada-US-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA, renegotiation of the NAFTA), the Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), and the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). Finally, this fall’s course will consider the nature of international trade regulation in a time of assertive unilateralism, including for reasons of national security and economic strategy, especially associated with the second Trump administration in the United States.
The course has an express objective of providing all students with an introduction to some basic policy aspects of international trade regulation drawn from economic theory, international relations theory, and international legal theory. No background is expected of students in terms of prior legal or other disciplinary knowledge (such as economics), just an interest in learning about some relevant policy tools from other disciplines.
Particular subjects for discussion include: the relation of international law to national laws of trade regulation; WTO/GATT treaties and institutions; preferential trade agreements such as the Canada-US-Mexico Agreement; trade in goods; trade remedy law such as antidumping duties; trade in services; trade and intellectual property; trade and investment. This course will also discuss important themes of contemporary international economic relations including the relation of trade to matters of national security and economic sanctions, and the relation of trade to social regulation, such as environmental or labour regulation.