The development of digital and network technologies has posed both opportunities and challenges for creators, publishers, and users of intellectual works. For the most part, copyright law has evolved to address these challenges by extending to embrace new media. But how well do traditional copyright principles and doctrine, developed in the heyday of the printing press, apply in the digital era when works can be created, shared, and transformed more easily than ever before? What considerations should be brought to bear by policymakers as they respond to urgent calls for copyright to “catch up.”
The objective of this seminar is to examine some of the key copyright policy questions currently before Canada’s Federal Government Departments of Innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED) and Canadian Heritage. The seminar exposes students to the complicated process of crafting public policy and proposing law reform, and is uniquely designed to build on (and perhaps even feed into) ongoing public consultations on amendments to Canada’s Copyright Act. Students will tackle issues such as Technological Neutrality and the Copyright Balance; Authorship and Artificial Intelligence; Reproduction for Informational Analysis (Text & Data Mining); Digital Locks and the Right of Repair; Intermediary Liability and Website-blocking; the Regulation of Digital News Intermediaries; Non-Fungible-Tokens and Digital Art; User-Generated Content and Fair Dealing; Controlled Digital Lending and e-Books; Crown Copyright; and Copyright Term Extension. We will critically examine recent policy reports, bills, statutory amendments, treaties, and case law, as well as emerging industry and consumer practices, stakeholder demands, and the political dynamics of the copyright lawmaking scene. Copyright policy implicates, in addition to the letter and spirit of Canada’s Copyright Act, issues of constitutional law and fundamental rights, international and comparative law, and socio-legal theory.
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.
The Workshop, also known as the Osgoode Society Legal History Workshop, takes place on Wednesday evenings via Zoom (only) throughout 2025-2026. It meets approximately seven times in each term, on roughly alternate Wednesdays. The schedule for the first term will be arranged during the summer of 2025 and will be available by August. The schedule for the second term will be arranged during the first term and will be available by the end of November. Students must enroll in the course for the full year.
For each session, a different presenter will circulate a draft paper in advance. The topic may encompass any aspect of legal history, from any jurisdiction or time period. Most will involve Canadian or American topics. Students enrolled in the course for credit are not expected to present a paper, but to read the papers, participate in the discussion and critique the work at each session. Through exposure to diverse topics and approaches in legal history, students will develop an appreciation for the methodologies and modes of analysis employed in the study and writing of legal history.
In addition to JD students, workshop attendees include graduate students and faculty from the University of Toronto and York, as well as members of the profession and other interested parties. Most will come from faculties of law or departments of history.
All members of the law school community are welcome to attend any session. JD students or graduate students may register for credit. Although no prior background in history is required, some exposure to historical studies at the university level will be beneficial.
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.
This course introduces the use of rhetorical techniques in advocacy, bearing in mind the core orientations of judges, advances in cognitive science and psychology, the use of narrative, the margins of manoeuvre open to judges in our legal system, and the constraints imposed by the rule of law and by the modes of judicial responsibility.
Advances in cognitive science and psychology have led to more sophisticated persuasive techniques. In response, the task of judges is to detect the use of these rhetorical techniques and avoid being lured away from doing justice according to law.
This course will familiarize students with these areas of thought, using an excellent and short text: Linda L. Berger and Kathryn Stanchi, Legal Persuasion: A Rhetorical Approach to the Science (Routledge, 2018), supplemented by excerpts form relevant articles and cases.
To these techniques is added the filter of ethics – judicial and lawyerly. How do judges and lawyers meet their obligations, in the course of a lawsuit, to first, do no harm; then, do the right thing, for the right reason, in the right way, at the right time, and in the right words, while resisting the lure of cognitive biases and personal prejudices? Do rule of law constraints work to ensure principled advocacy and adjudication?
By the end of the course, students will be familiar with and competent in identifying the use of the rhetorical techniques in decided cases, and in developing strategies for their use in advocacy within the constraints imposed by a good understanding of the judicial function and the rule of law.
Section 7 has emerged as one of the Charter’s most important and challenging provisions. This seminar provides students the opportunity to examine s. 7 in depth, from historical, theoretical, doctrinal and jurisprudential lenses. Topics to be addressed include: the historical origins of s. 7; the nature of the entitlements (life, liberty, security of the person); engagement; principles of fundamental justice (including the “instrumental rationality” principles of arbitrariness, overbreadth and gross disproportionality); s. 7 and the Criminal law (e.g. right to silence, full answer and defense); the role of s. 7 outside of the criminal law (e.g. immigration, extradition); and positive & social rights (e.g. housing, healthcare, environmental rights). Wherever possible, students will be exposed to emerging s. 7 issues, including through the examination of recent and ongoing litigation.
This seminar will introduce students to non-state Indigenous legal orders. Using a transsystemic pedagogical model and a wide range of reading materials (legal cases, methodology, pedagogy, anthropology, theory) students will critically explore the theories and practices of indigenous legal traditions through analysis and substantive treatment of: indigenous sources of law; oral histories and traditions (as legal archive); legal cases and precedent; modes of reasoning and interpretation; and authority and legitimacy.
This course offers an introduction to the role of empirical reasoning in legal analysis, legal practice, and policy development. As empirical methods increasingly inform judicial decision-making, litigation strategy, and legislative design, the ability to engage critically with empirical claims has become an essential competency for legal professionals.
The course does not require prior training in mathematics or statistics, or any familiarity with empirical methodology. Rather, it is designed to equip students with the conceptual tools necessary to understand, evaluate, and effectively engage with empirical research in legal contexts. Students will examine how empirical questions are formulated, how data is gathered and interpreted, and how empirical evidence is mobilized – both persuasively and problematically – within legal reasoning.
Course materials include landmark empirical studies spanning areas such as access to justice, gun control, environmental regulation, and consumer behaviour, alongside parts of foundational texts in empirical methodology. Students will develop the ability to assess the strengths and limitations of empirical research, to situate such research within broader legal and institutional contexts, and to reflect critically on the implications of data-driven approaches to law. The course will be of interest to students seeking to hone their analytical capacities and prepare for legal practice in an increasingly data-driven world.
This course will provide a framework for students to explore contract law and contract theory at a more advanced level. It will explore contract doctrines that are not usually covered in the first-year curriculum or are covered only briefly. Topics may include: electronic contract formation; the parol evidence rule; warranties, conditions and implied terms; exclusionary clauses; mistake; frustration; illegality; contract review and interpretation of contracts; restitutionary and punitive remedies for breach of contract; contract dispute settlement provisions; and the intersections between contract and tort in negligent misrepresentation and inducing breach of contract. This course will also ask students to return to what they studied in first year and re-think it in a deeper, more theoretical way, asking questions such as: How should we understand the doctrine of consideration and is the doctrine justified? How should contract law approach boilerplate contracts? Why is there a separate requirement of “intention to create legal relations”? How can we understand the difference between the common law and equitable doctrines of contract law?
This course is an introduction to the law governing administrative and regulatory decision-making and its interaction with the courts.
The administration (essentially the executive branch of government) implements legislative policy and delivers government services in fields such as public health and safety, immigration, labour relations, social benefits, securities regulation, business licensing and approvals, communications and broadcasting, and environmental protection. The administration also incorporates numerous ‘court like’ tribunals, such as land tribunals, labour arbitrators, immigration appeals boards, or human rights commissions, which adjudicate disputes and implement policy outside of the courts.
The course does not focus heavily on a single substantive area of law or policy but more on the role of the courts in reviewing administrative and tribunal decision-making in various fields. It examines judicial oversight of administrative decision-makers based on doctrines of procedural fairness (how administrative decisions are made, the entitlement of individuals to participate in decision-making that affects them, and impartiality and independence of decision-makers) and substantive review (the degree to which courts will review the merits or outcomes of administrative decisions). The course also explores policy debates about the rules and principles in the field as well as theoretical themes arising from the relationship between the courts and other branches of the state. In these respects, the course examines foundational rules and principles applying across many areas of practice and policy-making.
Students are expected to read the assigned materials each week, typically including excerpts from a textbook or from statutes and prominent cases, and to be prepared for class. Problem-solving scenarios may be used in class to allow students to assess and track their understanding of the subject as we proceed.