Professor
Tel.: 416-978-2311

Peter Benson joined the University of Toronto, Faculty of Law in 1998 after teaching at the McGill Faculty of Law from 1984-1998. He became a full professor in 2000. He holds law degrees from the University of Toronto and Harvard, as well as an M.Sc. in Politics from the London School of Economics and an A.B. in Sociology (magna cum laude) from Harvard. In 1983-4, Professor Benson was a law clerk to Chief Justice Bora Laskin and Justice Gerald Le Dain of the Supreme Court of Canada.

His teaching and writing focus mainly on contract law, contract theory, the theory of private law, and theories of justice. He is the author of Justice in Transactions: A Theory of Contract Law (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2019) and the editor of as well as a contributor to The Theory of Contract Law: New Essays (Cambridge University Press, 2001). His work has been widely published in journals and book collections including The Oxford Handbook of Jurisprudence, The Philosophical Foundations of Tort Law, Blackwell’s A Companion to Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory, Political TheoryThe Columbia Law ReviewThe Iowa Law ReviewThe Cardozo Law Review, and The Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence.

Research areas
Contracts
Legal Theory
Political Philosophy and Theory