Research @ Allard Law

Professor Jocelyn Stacey’s research investigates how Canadian law perpetuates disaster exceptionalism, a dangerous idea that disasters are temporary, exceptional and disconnected events.

In the curious time of COVID-19, Canadian municipalities have leveled the virus’ spread by enforcing distancing rules, fining non-compliant businesses, and maintaining garbage collection, among other mundane tasks.

Without a doubt, Vavilov is the ‘sexier’ case in the recent Supreme Court administrative law trilogy. It has everything that Canadian readers of law could hope for: espionage, intrigue, injustice, and a feisty disagreement about the standard of review.

Vavilov is an important decision, and one that we can be optimistic about. The discussion around it has also been a glorious coming-together of administrative law nerddom in Canada. But let us remember: Administrative Law belongs to the people.

Canada’s legal response to the pandemic has now reached well beyond immigration law, but its origins in immigration law sheds light on the multivalent nature of borders in pandemic control.

The business sector is no stranger to facing disruptive and destabilizing events in the 21st century. However, Professor Carol Liao points out that in the wake of the global COVID-19 pandemic our world is going to be redefined as the time before and the time after.

Why are we in this planetary mess? How did we end up with the fragmented, partial, and challenging-to-enforce forms of environmental law that we have? And why are environmental protection imperatives still so marginalized from law’s core preoccupations? Professor Natasha Affolder does not shy away from asking tough questions.

Innovation undermines our assumptions – it erodes jurisdictional boundaries, it introduces a high level of uncertainty, and it often proceeds at great speeds, which is not something that our legal institutions are well equipped to manage.

Plus de cinq ans après son entrée en vigueur et plus d’une décennie après le début des travaux de réforme, le Family Law Act (« FLA ») de la Colombie-Britannique est toujours perçu dans plusieurs juridictions comme une loi innovatrice et avant-gardiste. Bien que le FLA ait transformé plusieurs aspects du droit de la famille, ce projet se concentre sur deux aspects seulement : l’accès à la justice et le respect de la diversité familiale.

崔威教授的主要研究领域之一是税法和税收政策。在过去几年中，崔教授一直致力于探索国际税收领域的创新型税收设计， 以及分析现代国家税收管理的基础。

Professor Isabel Grant’s research project examines the history of HIV nondisclosure prosecutions in Canada, and argues that these prosecutions result in the over-criminalization of people with HIV and the distortion of the law of sexual assault generally.

According to Professor Carol Liao, the next few decades will be a critical period of domestic and international corporate legal reform – businesses are adapting to changing consumer demands, and there is global pressure to increase sustainable practices.

Labour and employment law is increasingly failing to protect workers’ rights in the contemporary workplace. According to Professor Bethany Hastie, it is the growing precariousness of labour that is at the heart of this failure.

Today in the United States corporations are formed under state rather than federal law. Corporate law scholars have spent decades debating the policy advantages and disadvantages of this system. Yet the reasons it exists may lie less in current policy rationales than in the vicissitudes of history.

Most recent research by Professor Douglas Harris explores how condominium is transforming not only urban geography, but the way in which we think about property and about ownership of interests in land.

According to Professor Ljiljana Biukovic, we are at a significant juncture in the history of globalization, with newly established Chinese led structures testing the current international status quo and the old Bretton Woods institutions.

Professor Potter’s contribution to scholarship in Chinese law and legal research in general would be difficult to overstate. His fresh perspective and unique approach has impacted local and international policy and influenced the way research is done today.

A new multi-year research project launched by Professors Benjamin Goold, Efrat Arbel and Catherine Dauvergne investigates how borders operate as places of law.

According to Professor Emma Cunliffe, the criminal legal system in Canada is failing to deliver on the Charter guarantee of equal protection and benefit of the law for women – especially for Indigenous women and girls.

Dr. Jeffrey Meyers’ research is concerned with the difference between the formal legal order of the Canadian constitution and what some have termed the material constitution, comprised of the everyday reality individuals face in terms of their particular life conditions.

Professor Michelle LeBaron’s arts-based approach has catalyzed conversations about belonging, community coherence, violence and racism – all factors in broader issues of inclusion and exclusion.

Professor Jocelyn Stacey argues that we can gain important insight about environmental law by thinking about environmental issues as an ongoing state of emergency.

The Allard School of Law’s Professor Gordon Christie has been working with colleagues across the campus for the last two years to initiate discussion about institutional-level change that would enhance the University as a valuable and accessible resource for Indigenous community research.

As Canada Research Chair in Global Economic Governance, Assistant Professor Galit Sarfaty studies the convergence of economic globalization with public law values such as human rights.

Professor Dauvergne argues that one of the toughest things to figure out is whether or not somebody is being persecuted because of their political opinion when they are actually not overtly engaged in a political struggle.

Professor Mary Liston argues that if working optimally, analytic frameworks can guide legal thinking so that interpretive and value choices can be more consciously made, more transparent, and better reasoned.

Why do countries bother taxing state-owned enterprises (SOEs)? Professor Wei Cui now has a theory which stands in contrast with many long-standing views.