By Lucianna Ciccocioppo
Two doctoral students at the Faculty of Law have been awarded notable Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships, worth $50,000 each for three years, to further their innovative research in international criminal law and health care policy.
Michael Da Silva, JD 2012, and Randle DeFalco, LLM 2013, are part of the outstanding cohort of 34 doctoral students and post-doctoral fellows from the University of Toronto—the most for any university in Canada—to receive the highly competitive and prestigious awards. A total of 166 Vaniers and 70 new Banting Postdoctoral Fellowships were announced by the federal government.
Both programs are funded through the three federal research granting agencies: the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).
Da Silva, who was born in Cortland, New York, but grew up in Peterborough, Ontario, is the only law student to receive a 2014 Vanier from the CIHR, and DeFalco is only one of two law students to receive it from the SSHRC.
The awards support world-class doctoral students and post-doctoral fellows furthering unique research in the health sciences, natural sciences and engineering, and social sciences and humanities at Canadian universities, or fund Canadians carrying out research at institutions around the world.
Here’s a Q & A with Michael and Randle about the importance of the awards to their work:
LC: What are you researching, and what impact will it have on society?
Michael Da Silva: Social rights are increasingly recognized in law and philosophy (the discipline in which I did my undergraduate work and more recently pursued further graduate study). I am particularly interested in one of the least controversial examples, which exists at international law and is now recognized in 68.7 percent of constitutions: the right to health care. In particular, I am analyzing how different constitutional and sub-constitutional legal arrangements realize the positive effects we think a plausible account of a right to health care is designed to achieve.
To this end, I seek to identify what the right is supposed to achieve, whether the Canadian health care system achieves it in the absence of an explicit legal right to health care, and if and how other legal arrangements could better achieve those effects. I study previous Canadian constitutional challenges to certain health care entitlements and conduct comparative study with other nations. There are many interesting theoretical questions in this area, but the average person should care about this work (at least in part) because how we frame the right to health care can have significant effects on our health care policy. From dental care to long-term care, many important issues require difficult government decision-making. Closer analysis of the right to health care and its legal manifestations should help guide these decisions.
My work has greatly benefited from the strong health law, constitutional law and legal theory faculty here. This year, I held a Health Law, Ethics and Policy Fellowship and I will participate in the program again this year.
LC: How will this award further your research?
MD: This award minimizes any stress I may feel about finances, which makes it much easier to focus on my research. It is, however, almost as important to me to receive the recognition from the selection committee that my research has promise.
LC: What was your immediate reaction when you were informed you had won a Vanier award?
MD: When you first receive a message about Tri-Council funding, all you receive is an e-mail saying that a decision has been made concerning your application. I was nervous as I clicked on the link to that decision. I was confident in my research, but there are so many deserving candidates that one never makes any assumptions. When I read the positive result, I was elated. While we were not allowed to tell the public about our award, I called my wife and my parents pretty much immediately. I made sure to call my Dad in particular as he had complained when I did not tell him about previous achievements quickly enough! I then e-mailed my supervisor whose advice really improved my application. Professor Colleen Flood helped me through several versions of the application, which I started in the summer and focused on throughout September. Throughout the process, she assured me that the hard work would be worth it in the end if I won. I am glad to say she was right!
LC: Randle, what are you researching, and what impact will it have on society?
RD: I will be exploring the possibilities of international criminal law in preventing and punishing the causation of mass suffering, primarily within civilian populations, through non-violent means. This would include situations such as famines, confinement of populations leading to the spread of disease and other similar situations where control exerted over victims by others leads to suffering and/or death rate increases comparable to traditionally understood violent international crimes, such as mass executions or killings. I will approach this issue by examining it through an interactional legal theory lens, as developed by Professors Jutta Brunnée and Stephen Toope. This theory seeks to trace out the unique nature of legal norms in international settings and will be used by me to examine the normative underpinnings of international criminal law and associated views concerning non-violent civilian suffering. My work will be tied to numerous ongoing global conflicts, such as the current situations in Gaza, the Darfur region of the Sudan and North Korea to name a few. I will also consider historical examples, drawing from my master's research on potential criminal accountability of former Khmer Rouge leaders in Cambodia for the famine in that country from 1975-1979.
LC: How will this award further your research?
RD: The Vanier award will be critical to furthering my legal research. I have been interested in pursuing this research project as part of a doctoral program for some time, but financial restraints have made the choice of whether to forego income to return to the Faculty of Law at U of T made the choice very difficult. The Vanier has given me the financial stability to pursue my research project without constant financial restrains. The award, and the possibility of the Michael Smith foreign study supplement, has also made it possible for me to travel as necessary in order to pursue opportunities to deepen my understanding of this complex and pressing issue and its global implications.
LC: What was your immediate reaction when you were informed you had won a Vanier award?
RD: A mix of joy and relief. I had already decided to pursue my SJD at U of T before hearing back from the Vanier secretariat and this decision had put me in a tenuous financial position. I was joyful that my research is considered important by such an esteemed group of scholars and this gave me great confidence leading into my doctoral studies. I was also incredibly relieved that I had obtained sufficient financial support to simply pursue my research without having to be sidetracked by the necessity of working to earn income while also taking on full-time doctoral obligations. In short, I felt truly free to pursue my research and academic passions.
