It is with immense sadness that the Faculty of Law announces the passing of our dear colleague, Stephen Waddams, on May 27, 2023.
Stephen Waddams is a University Professor at the Faculty of Law, where he has been teaching since 1968. He served as graduate co-ordinator from 1976 to 1987, and held the Goodman/Schipper Chair from 2000 to 2020. He holds B.A. and LL.B. degrees from Toronto, M.A. and Ph.D degrees from Cambridge, and LL.M and S.J.D. degrees from Michigan. He has been visiting senior research fellow, Jesus College, Oxford; visiting senior lecturer, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, and visiting fellow, All Souls College, Oxford. He is a fellow of Trinity College at the University of Toronto and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1988. He is a senior fellow of Massey College. In 1989, he was awarded the Canadian Association of Law Teachers/Law Reform Commission of Canada Award for Outstanding Contribution to Legal Research and Law Reform; in 1994, the first Albert Abel Professorship; in 1996 the David W. Mundell medal for contributions to Law and Letters; and in 1999, a Killam Research Fellowship. He was appointed University Professor in 2005. He was selected as a Herbert Smith Freehills Visitor to Cambridge University in 2017.
Professor Waddams specializes in contract law and is the author of nine books: Products Liability, The Law of Contracts, The Law of Damages, Introduction to the Study of Law, Law, Politics and the Church of England, Sexual Slander in Nineteenth-Century England, Dimensions of Private Law: Categories and Concepts in Anglo-American Legal Reasoning, Principle and Policy in Contract Law: Competing or Complementary Perspectives?, and Sanctity of Contracts in a Secular Age: Equity, Fairness and Enrichment as well as numerous law review articles and notes. He was co-winner of the Owen Prize in 1987 for The Law of Damages. He is also a past editor of University of Toronto Law Journal. In 1990, he received an award from the university student organizations for excellence in teaching. He has received several grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Canada (SSHRC), most recently an Insight Grant (2020-2023) for the study of “Continuity and change in private law: the equitable perspective”.
