Catherine Valcke

Professor

Flavelle House
Room 422
78 Queen's Park
Toronto, Ontario M5S 2C5

Tel.: 416-946-8240
Email: c.valcke@utoronto.ca

Research interests
Civil Law
Contracts
Legal Theory

Courses

Publications

All Publications
See also Professor Valcke's SSRN page.

Catherine Valcke (LL.B. Civil Law, University of Sherbrooke; LL.B. Common Law, University of Toronto; LL.M. University of Chicago; S.J.D. Columbia) is Professor at University of Toronto Faculty of Law, where she served as Associate Dean from 1997 to 2000.  Professor Valcke has lectured on contract law, comparative law, and comparative legal theory in North America, Europe, and North Africa, and published in those fields nationally and internationally, in such journals as Nomos, the American Journal of Comparative Law, the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, the Yale Journal of International Law, the European Review of Private Law, and the Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence.  An elected member of the International Academy of Comparative Law, Professor Valcke as acted on several occasions as National Reporter for Canada to the Congress of the Academy.  Her latest project seeks to bridge comparative law and legal theory.

Education
J.S.D. - Columbia University, New York, NY, USA (1997)
LL.M. - University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA (1989)
LL.B. (Common Law) - University of Toronto (1988)
LL.B. (Civil Law) - University of Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada (1985)
Academic appointments
Acting Associate Dean of Law (First-Year Programme), University of Toronto (2007, 2008)
Visiting Professor of Law, University of Montreal (2004-2005)
Guest Lecturer, Faculty of Law, University of Tunis II, Tunis, Tunisia (2005)
Awards and distinctions
Article cited as “illuminating” by the English House of Lords (Lord Hoffmann) in Chartbrook Ltd. v. Persimmon Homes Ltd. et al., [2009] UKHL 38, [39].
Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada Standard Research Grant for project “Reconstructing Comparative Law” (2011-2014)
Rapporteur for Canada, International Survey on Legal Convergence, International Academy of Comparative Law (2009)
Member of the International Academy of Comparative Law (by nomination and election only) (2007)
Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada Standard Research Grant for project “Towards a Theory of Comparative Law” (2004-2007)
Rapporteur for Canada (Common Law Section), XVIIth Congress of the International Academy of Comparative Law (“Precedent and Comparative law”), University of Utrecht, Netherlands (2006)
Selected Publications

Reflections on Comparative Law Methodology, in M. Adams and J. Bomhoff, eds., Practice and Theory in Comparative Law (forthcoming Cambridge University Press, 2011), approx. 30 pages.

On Comparing French and English Contract Law:  Insights from Social Contract Theory, (2009) IV Journal of Comparative Law, pp. 69-95. (Cited and described as “illuminating article” by the English House of Lords (Lord Hoffmann) in Chartbrook Ltd. v. Persimmon Homes Ltd. et al., [2009] UKHL 38, [39]; also cited by the Scottish Law Commission (Review of Contract Law, Discussion Paper 147, [4.13].)

Le système de droit en droit comparé—Réflexions sur l’épistémologie d’une définition, in P. Legrand, ed., Comparer les droits, résolument (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2009), pp. 99-121.

Convergence and Divergence among English, French, and German Conceptions of Contract (2008) 16 European Review of Private Law, pp. 29-62.

Comparative Law as Comparative Jurisprudence—The Comparability of Legal Systems, (2004) 52 American Journal of Comparative Law, pp. 713-740. (Reprinted in M. Del Mar, W. Twining and M. Giudice, eds., The Library of Essays in Contemporary Legal Theory—Legal Theory and the Legal Academy (Ashgate Publishing, 2010).)