Faculty of Law University of Toronto
LEGAL THEORY WORKSHOP SERIES

presents

Dwight Newman
University of Saskatchewan College of Law

Four Moral Theories of Duty to Consult

Thursday, December 4, 2008

12:30 – 2:00

Flavelle Dining Room

78 Queen’s Park

This paper takes off from explicit and implicit references by the Supreme Court of Canada to the theoretical foundations of the Aboriginal law duty to consult.  I suggest that these references expose at least four distinct moral theories of the duty to consult, each of which actually has quite distinct implications for the future contours of the doctrine.  In the paper, I will engage with the different theories and attempt to say something about the doctrine of the duty to consult from a moral theory perspective, in the process also commenting on general issues associated with theorizing Aboriginal law.

Dwight Newman, B.A., LL.B., B.C.L., M.Phil, D.Phil. is Associate Professor and Associate Dean Academic at the University of Saskatchewan College of Law and Honourary Senior Research Fellow at the University of the Witwatersrand School of Law. Professor Newman served as a law clerk to Chief Justice Lamer and Justice LeBel at the Supreme Court of Canada and has worked for human rights organizations in South Africa and China and for the federal Justice Department in Ottawa.  Professor Newman completed his graduate studies at Oxford University in 2005, where he was a Rhodes Scholar and, later, a SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship holder and recipient of the William E. Taylor Fellowship as Canada’s top SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship student. He has published in areas related to Aboriginal law, constitutional law, international law, and legal and political theory. He currently holds a SSHRC Standard Research Grant to work on “Theorizing Aboriginal Rights”.

A light lunch will be served.

For more workshop information, please contact Nadia Gulezko at n.gulezko@utoronto.ca.