Legal History

Hai Tran is a doctoral candidate at the Faculty of Law. He holds a dear interest in the historical evolution of land law, and property rights in general. His doctoral thesis is the explanation of the unique and turbulent property rights compromise between socialist and free market legal norms in postsocialist East Asia. With his research, he seeks to solve the welfare question for the public regarding land redistribution and de-escalate the new ideological cold war of the 21st century. This is tied to his broader investigation of the developments of legal institutions in developing countries which are often ideologically nonconforming and self-contradicting.

Beyond his academic endeavor at the University of Toronto, he is an active member of social activism. He has been involved with the feminist HeForShe project in Japan; CPRE for the protection of the English countryside; Power For People and Repowering London to campaign for and build the capacity of community energy groups in the U.K.