50 Years of Faculty Scholarship

Reem Bahdi, Associate Professor

Professor Reem Bahdi’s research focuses on access to justice and human dignity.  She seeks to understand the barriers that prevent law and legal institutions from helping people live dignified lives. She works in both Canada and Palestine.  In Canada, she examines national security laws and Arab/Muslims post 9/11 human rights.  In Palestine, she is interested in dignity in various contexts, including international development.  She co-founded and co-directed the Karamah project (which means “dignity” in Arabic).  Funded in part by CIDA, Karamah developed a new model for judicial education in Palestine and ultimately had a positive impact on access to justice.  Professor Bahdi is also interested in pedagogical innovations and is currently working on a project to teach empathy in law schools using music. 

Research Interests/Expertise:

• Access to Justice/Theories & Practices
• Human Dignity/Theories & Practices
• National Security/Human Rights

Jeff Berryman, Distinguished University Professor and Professor of Law, Associate Vice-President Academic

Professor Jeff Berryman’s research focuses upon the Law of Remedies. His scholarship seeks to identify the tension between rights and remedies, each one influencing the substantive shape of the other. His research has made significant contributions concerning equitable remedies; their history, current application and potential application in novel new settings. His recent scholarship has engaged a study of how we quantify non-pecuniary damages; those forms of loss that defy objective measures of assessment, yet purport to compensate for harms that may strike at a person’s dignity.

Research Interests/Expertise:

• Equitable Remedies
• Unjust Enrichment
• Contract Law

Pascale Chapdelaine, Associate Professor

Professor Pascale Chapdelaine’s research examines the interaction between intellectual property, property and contracts, as well as how new technologies and automated business processes shape consumers' rights and expectations. Her book: Copyright User Rights, Contracts and the Erosion of Property (Oxford University Press, 2017) explores the rights users have to books, articles, software, music, film, and other works protected by copyright, in an ever-changing technological environment. 

Her latest research projects look at:

• The remedies of users of information products on the internet
• How copyright law mediates between the rights of graffiti and street artists, property owners, and the public in a context of (il) legality, marginalization and gentrification.

Research Interests/Expertise:

• Copyright Law
• Contracts, Consumer and Cyber Law
• International Intellectual Property Law

William E. Conklin (Bill), Professor, FRSC

Professor Bill Conklin’s research and publications are preoccupied with the boundary of law, the exclusionary character of law, and the elaboration of an experiential form of legal knowledge as an alternative to contemporary legal thought. He addresses such issues in his work about Hegel’s theory of law, legal positivism, Jacques Derrida, Roman law, the exclusionary character of constitutional and international law, Stateless Peoples, the sense of law in pre-contact Indigenous communities, Nomadic people, victims of banking law, and theories of access to justice.

Research Interests/Expertise:

• Phenomenology
• Legal Culture
• Jurisprudence

Donna Eansor, Professor

Professor Donna Marie Eansor’s research focuses on access to legal education, equitable admission processes, equality issues in legal education and student success and well-being. Many programs including the Academic Success Program of the Faculty of Law and the Peer Mentorship Program were the result of her research and design. More recently her research looks at the success of women in law schools, in the legal profession and specifically at mental health issues in the profession.  Her research and report to the Vice Provost of Teaching and Learning on Teaching Leadership Chairs resulted in the establishment and base funding of Teaching Leadership Chairs across campus. As a Teaching Leadership Chair (2017-2020) her project “Looking to the Future: Open Hearts and Open Minds” provides grants for campus initiatives aimed at contributing to the recommendations from Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.

Research Interests/Expertise:

• Access to Justice
• Student Success and Well-being
• Teaching Pedagogy 

Beverly Jacobs, Assistant Professor

Professor Beverly Jacobs’ research is focused on the revitalization, implementation and application of Indigenous Legal Traditions, specifically Haudenosaunee legal traditions. Her research includes the rights of Indigenous peoples in areas of law where overrepresentation occurs (ie. Criminal Law and Corrections). Her research also includes the rights of victims of violence and decolonizing law. Her current research includes the development of Haudenosaunee research methodologies and theories that support the wholistic healthiness and legal traditions of Haudenosaunee peoples as well as critiquing Canadian Aboriginal law that has an impact upon Indigenous peoples.

Research Interests/Expertise:

• Indigenous Legal Traditions 
• Rights of Indigenous Peoples 
• Rights of Victims of Violence 

Laverne Jacobs, Associate Professor

Professor Laverne Jacobs is an expert on disability rights and human rights, and an advocate for inclusive communities. Her current research explores, qualitatively, the impact of administrative law and regulatory processes on the lives of persons with disabilities. Dr. Jacobs is founding Director of the Law, Disability & Social Change Project, which engages a team of Windsor Law students as research assistants to study contemporary issues of law, disability and public policy.

Research Interests/Expertise:

• Law as it affects people with disabilities
• Human Rights Law
• Administrative Law

Jasminka Kalajdzic, Associate Dean and Associate Professor

Professor Kalajdzic is the Canadian representative in an International Research Collaborative on Collective Litigation. Her current research focuses on the critical analysis and empirical investigations of class action litigation and access to justice.  She speaks frequently here and abroad on these topics, and is widely published, including The Law of Class Actions in Canada, co-authored with the Honourable Warren Winkler, Justice Paul Perell and Alison Warner, published by Carswell in 2015. She was a Visiting Scholar at Tilburg University, The Netherlands, in October 2015 and at Melbourne University in May 2016. As a Visiting Senior Fellow at Melbourne University in July 2017, she taught a course on class actions with Justice Bernard Murphy and Dr. Deborah Hensler of Stanford University. Jasminka is currently co-lead researcher for the Law Commission of Ontario’s Class Action Project.

Research Interests/Expertise:

• Access to Justice
• Class Actions
• Evidence

Muharem Kianieff, Associate Professor

Professor Muharem Kianieff studies Banking Law and Payment Systems.  In particular, his research looks at the role that regulation plays as they apply to innovations in payment mechanisms and financial technology. By using economic and historical analyses, Kianieff seeks to make proposals for reform that make products safer for consumers and increases access to justice. His current research examines the emergence of blockchain technology (the technology behind Bitcoin) to study what impact it will have on established consumer protection doctrines in commercial law. 

Research Interests/Expertise:

• Blockchain
• Financial Technology and Payment Mechanisms
• Financial Reform

Julie Macfarlane, Professor and Distinguished University Professor

Professor Julie Macfarlane’s research over the past 15 years has focused on the changing role of lawyers in the 21st century. She has completed numerous empirical studies of lawyers’ skills and attitudes, in particular in relation to dispute resolution, as well as studied involving legal clients and most recently, self-represented litigants. She has also conducted research on the use of Islamic family processes (marriage and divorce) among North American Muslims, and the relationship between informal shari’a processes and the formal legal system.

Research Interests/Expertise:

• Access to Justice and self-represented litigants
• Changing legal skills and roles for The New Lawyer
• Islamic family law and dispute resolution processes

Richard Moon,  Professor and Distinguished University Professor

Professor Richard Moon’s research focuses on freedom of religion and freedom of expression. He has written and edited several books, and numerous articles, on these topics. His work is often cited or quoted by the Supreme Court of Canada. He is often consulted by human rights organizations and interviewed by print media. He has held a number of academic positions, including President of the Canadian Law and Society Association.

Research Interests/Expertise:

• Freedom of Expression
• Freedom of Religion
• Constitutional Structure

Clarie Mummé, Assistant Professor

Professor Clarie Mummé's research focuses on the laws regulating work. Her research is concerned with issues of economic inequality. She researches distributional questions through the lens of the wage-work exchange, focusing primarily on non-unionized employment. Her work seeks to identify and analyze the legal mechanisms through which resources are distributed and power apportioned at work. She is interested in linking the legal tools that create and/or shape macro-level socioeconomic phenomena with their micro-level affects on the workplace.

She is currently engaged in a number of projects that examine whether, and in what ways, courts and legislators in Canada are adapting the content of legal regimes regulating non-unionized employment to respond to changing forms of work in the post-Fordist era, in the context of the growth of precarious employment and the decreasing regulatory reach of labour law.

Research Interests/Expertise:

• Labour Law
• Employment Law
• Human Rights Law

Paul Ocheje, Associate Professor

Professor Paul Ocheje’s research interest lies in the interface of law and development, i.e. the role of law, broadly conceived, in the social and economic improvement of the human condition.  Using the poor nations of the world as primary focus, his research draws upon sundry articulations in the arts, humanities, and social sciences to construct an understanding of the institutions that undergird poverty and vulnerability. How might law help us to imagine a world of less poverty and more social and economic equality? This is the central organizing question of his research.

Research Interests/Expertise:

• Law and Development
• International Human Rights
• Law, Institutions, and Social Change

Jillian Rogin, Assistant Professor

Professor Jillian Rogin is a practicing criminal defence lawyer and researches and writes in the areas of: criminal law, judicial interim release, Gladue, evidence in sexual assault trials, clinic scholarship including legal ethics and anti-oppression praxis. Her work is informed by critical race and Indigenous scholarship, feminist scholarship, and post-colonial theory.

Research Interests/Expertise:

• Judicial Interim Release
• Gladue
• Evidence in Sexual Assault Trials

Noel Semple, Assistant Professor

Professor Noel Semple studies access to justice. His work analyzes how the law and legal institutions work in real life. It also seeks to improve the ability of law and its institutions to actually create justice for people with legal needs. His recent research focuses on personal plight legal practice and aims to identify sustainable innovations that can make the services of personal plight law firms more accessible to all Canadians.

Research Interests/Expertise:

• Legal Services Regulation 
• Access to Justice in the Practice of Law
• Civil and Family Law Procedure 

Anneke Smit, Associate Professor

Professor Anneke Smit’s research spans global migration law and policy, and urban and land use planning.  Her current research focusses on accountability and transparency in refugee resettlement processes; other recent projects have explored dispossession in the context of land expropriation.

Community engagement runs through Dr. Smit’s research work. This has included consulting work with organizations such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Europe bureau and the Jerusalem Old City Initiative (JOCI).  She is also involved at a national level with Scholars at Risk Canada and was the co-founder of the Windsor Refugee Sponsorship Support Program (Windsor SSP). 

She has engaged in advocacy work on refugee policy including through her work with Canada4Refugees, is the author of several recent op eds and blogs on refugee policy, and is frequently interviewed by national and media. 

Research Interests/Expertise:

• Global Refugee Law and Policy
• Urban Planning Law
• Property Law

Gemma Smyth, Associate Professor

Professor Gemma Smyth researches and writes in the areas of clinic law, dispute resolution, and legal education. She is interested in the intersection of clients' and communities' experiences of law and lawyers and the skills, behaviours and attitudes that result in higher quality relationships. Professor Smyth is the co-author of the first text on clinical legal education in Canada, Clinical Law: Practice, Theory and Social Justice Advocacy, co-authored with Professors Sarah Buhler and Sarah Marsden. She is also the author, director and creator of a widely-used set of free, open source, online tools for work-integrated and clinical legal education. 

Research Interests/Expertise:

• Clinical Legal Education
• Community Lawyering
• Dispute Resolution

David M. Tanovich, Professor, FRSC

Professor David M Tanovich’s critical and praxis scholarship has garnered him a national reputation as one of Canada’s leading legal criminal law, racial profiling and evidence academics. He has written over one-hundred books, articles, case comments and newspaper opinion pieces. His research explores systemic racism, violence against women, legal ethics and evidence law. Recently, Professor Tanovich has turned his attention to the treatment of sexual assault complainants and their evidence by defence lawyers and trial judges. His work has received significant attention from other prominent feminist academics, the bar and in popular media.

Research Interests/Expertise:

• Systemic Racism/Racial Profiling
• Evidence Law  
• Legal Ethics/Cultural Competence/Defence Lawyering in Sexual Assault Cases

Myra Tawfik, Professor

Professor Myra Tawfik’s research lies in the area of intellectual property law (IP), especially copyright law. Her scholarship strives to level the field for those with unequal bargaining power or who are denied access to justice, whether by championing the cause of copyright users and access to knowledge within domestic and international law, or empowering underrepresented Canadian innovators by enhancing their IP literacy and developing models for the delivery of affordable IP legal services. She is currently completing a book on the historical origins of Canadian copyright law that examines the policy behind the first attempts to regulate the book trade in British North America.  

Research Interests/Expertise:

• Intellectual Property Law
• Copyright History
• Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Intellectual Property Strategy

Kristen Thomasen, Assistant Professor

Professor Kristen Thomasen’s research focuses on the legal, social and ethical implications of robotic technologies and artificial intelligence. Professor Thomasen is currently completing her Ph.D. from the University of Ottawa. Her thesis explores drone regulation and the impact of drone technology on privacy in public spaces in Canada. Professor Thomasen is also doing research on the gendered privacy impacts of personal drones, and is co-organizing a workshop on accessibility in autonomous vehicle policy with Professor Laverne Jacobs.

Research Interests/Expertise:

• Canadian Robotics/Artificial Intelligence Law and Policy 
• Drone Regulation
• Privacy Law

Vasanthi Venkatesh, Assistant Professor

Professor Vasanthi Venkatesh’s research focuses on immigration and citizenship law, law and social movements, comparative human rights law, and property and labour. Her expertise lies in the interdisciplinary study of law within its political, economic, global, and historical contexts. It is informed by critical class, race, and feminist theories as well as post-colonial scholarship and uses empirical, comparative, and historical methods.

Her recent scholarship has examined the history of temporary foreign worker programs in agriculture globally, approaches to criminalization of marital rape in international law and in various foreign and customary legal systems, and legal mobilization on behalf of non-citizens in the United States and Canada.

Research Interests/Expertise:

• Immigration and Citizenship
• Rights and Social Change/ Comparative Legal Perspectives
• Law and Political Economy/ Property and Labour

Christopher Waters, Dean and Professor

Dean Waters’ research interests include public international law, international humanitarian law, and urban issues. He is co-editor of the Canadian Bar Review (with Prof. Tanovich), a member of the Board of Governors of the Ontario Law Commission and the Canadian representative on the International Law Association's committee on the recognition of states and governments. Waters is the author or editor of several books and his articles have appeared in journals including the Canadian Yearbook of International Law and the American Journal of International Law.

Research Interests/Expertise:

• Public International Law
• International Humanitarian Law
• Law and Cities

Sara Wharton, Assistant Professor

Professor Sara Wharton’s research focuses on the areas of international criminal law and transnational criminal law. In the area of international criminal law, she focuses on new developments at the International Criminal Court and the development of regional criminal courts. In the field of transnational criminal law, she seeks to investigate whether the assumptions that underlie the current transnational criminal law regime adequately reflect the reality of transnationally criminality today and, thus, whether the current legal regime is adequate. In addition, she interrogates the current dichotomy between these two international law regimes governing accountability for “core international crimes” (genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and aggression) and transnational crimes.

Research Interests/Expertise:

• International Criminal Law
• Transnational Criminal Law
• Canadian Criminal Law

Sujith Xavier, Assistant Professor

With a focus on governance institutions and communities of colour, Professor Sujith Xavier’s scholarly interest is situated at the intersections of law, socio-legal theory, and global and local society. His research interests span domestic and international legal theory, including Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL), constitutions and administrations, global governance, international law, and transitional justice. Professor Xavier’s scholarly engagement explores the intersections of law and society with a focus on race, colonialism and imperialism. His research is rooted in TWAIL methodologies that seek to unpack, deconstruct embedded racial hierarchies in law, and then reconstruct it. He borrows from neighbouring disciplines to advance progressive and practical solutions to the exclusionary challenges facing law and its institutions. Professor Xavier is one of the co-editors of Third World Approaches to International Law: On Praxis and the Intellectual (London: Routledge, THIRDWORLDS Series, 2017). His peer reviewed publications appear in the following academic journals: Indian Journal of International Law, Third World Quarterly, Journal of International Criminal Justice and Transnational Legal Theory.  

Research Interests/Expertise:

• Colonialism, Settler Colonialism and Race
• Comparative Administrative Law and Constitutionalism of the Global South
• International Law & Theory, and Transitional Justice