Associate Professor

Jackman Law Building
78 Queen's Park
Toronto, Ontario M5S 2C5 

Tel.: 416-978-4488
Email: richard.stacey@utoronto.ca

Richard Stacey is an Associate Professor of law at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. He works in public law, with a research focus is on how governments and their administrative branches uphold and fulfil, or can be encouraged to uphold and fulfil, their constitutional commitments. Richard's undergraduate and law degrees are from the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, and his PhD is from New York University. He was law clerk to Justice Kate O’Regan and Justice Bess Nkabinde at the Constitutional Court of South Africa, and has taught at the City University of New York Law School, the University of Witwatersrand and the University of Cape Town. He recently co-edited a collection of essays entitled The Limits and Legitimacy of Referendums (with Richard Albert) published by Oxford University Press, and is currently engaged in a project exploring the connections between popular sovereignty, the rule of law, and referendums. 

All publications
Education
Ph.D., New York University, 2014
LLB, University of the Witwatersrand, 2004
BA (Hons), University of the Witwatersrand, 2002
Selected publications

‘Public Law’s Cerberus: A three-headed approach to Charter rights-limiting administrative decisions,’ (2023) Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 1 (https://doi.org/10.1017/cjlj.2023.8) 

The Limits and Legitimacy of Referendums (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022) (with Richard Albert).

"The Unnecessary Referendum: Popular Sovereignty in the Constitutional Interregnum", in Richard Albert and Richard Stacey (eds), The Limits and Legitimacy of Referendums (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022).

"Constituting and regulating democracy: Kenya’s electoral commission and the courts in the 2010s" (with Victoria Miyandazi), (2021) 16 Asian Journal of Comparative Law, s193-s210.

"A Unified Model of Public Law: Charter Values and Reasonableness Review in Canada" (2021) 71 University of Toronto Law Journal, 338-375.

"The Magnetism of Moral Reasoning and the Principle of Proportionality in Comparative Constitutional Adjudication", (2019) 67 American Journal of Comparative Law 435.

"A Service Conception of the Constitution: Authority, Justification and the Rule of Law in Proportionality Jurisprudence" (2019) 9 Constitutional Court Review, 219-245

"The Dilemma of Indigenous Self-Government in Canada: Indigenous Rights and Canadian Federalism" (2018) 46 Federal Law Review 669.  

"Honour in Sovereignty: Can Crown consultation with Indigenous peoples erase Canada's sovereignty deficit?", (2018) 68 University of Toronto Law Journal 405.

"Falling short of constitutional norms: Does “normative (in)congruence” explain the courts’ inability to promote the right to water in South Africa?", (2018) 43 Law & Social Inquiry 796.

"Dynamic Regulatory Constitutionalism: Taking Legislation Seriously in the Judicial Enforcement of Economic and Social Rights", (2017) 31 Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics and Public Policy 85.

"Popular Sovereignty and Revolutionary Constitution-Making” in David Dyzenhaus and Malcolm Thorburn (eds), Philosophical Foundations of Constitutional Law, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2016.

Research areas
Aboriginal Law
Administrative Law
Canadian Constitutional Law
Charter of Rights
Comparative Law
Legal Theory

Law Courses

Administrative Law (0102)
Administrative Law

Publications

All publications