University Professor of Law and Philosophy and Albert Abel Chair

Jackman Law Building
Room J424
78 Queen's Park
Toronto, Ontario M5S 2C5   

Tel.: 416-978-6935

David Dyzenhaus is a professor of Law and Philosophy at the University of Toronto,  a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy.  He holds the Albert Abel Chair of Law and was appointed in 2015 to the rank of University Professor. He has taught in South Africa, England, Canada, Singapore, New Zealand, Hungary, Mexico and the USA. He holds a doctorate from Oxford University and law and undergraduate degrees from the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. In 2002, he was the Law Foundation Visiting Fellow in the Faculty of Law, University of Auckland. In 2005-06 he was Herbert Smith Visiting Professor in the Cambridge Law Faculty and a Senior Scholar of Pembroke College, Cambridge. In 2014-15, he was the Arthur Goodhart Visiting Professor in Legal Science in Cambridge. In 2016-17, he was a Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. In 2020-21, he was a Guggenheim Fellow and a Visiting Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford.

Professor Dyzenhaus is the author of Hard Cases in Wicked Legal Systems: South African Law in the Perspective of Legal Philosophy (now in its second edition), Legality and Legitimacy: Carl Schmitt, Hans Kelsen, and Hermann Heller in Weimar, and Judging the Judges, Judging Ourselves: Truth, Reconciliation and the Apartheid Legal Order. He has edited and co-edited several collections of essays. In 2004 he gave the JC Smuts Memorial Lectures to the Faculty of Law, Cambridge University. These were published by Cambridge University Press in 2006 as The Constitution of Law: Legality in a Time of Emergency. He is editor of the University of Toronto Law Journal and co-editor of the series Cambridge Studies in Constitutional Law. His most recent book is The Long Arc of Legality: Hobbes, Kelsen, Hart (Cambridge, 2022).

Education
B.A. - University of the Witwatersrand (1977)
LL.B. - University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Law (1979)
D.Phil. - University of Oxford (1984-1988)
Academic appointments
Associate Dean of Graduate Studies, University of Toronto, Faculty of Law (2002-2010)
Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (2016-17)
Global Visiting Professor, New York University Law (Fall 2008 and in 2013)
Herbert Smith Visiting Fellow, University of Cambridge, Faculty of Law (2006)
Visiting Scholar at Pembroke College, Cambridge (2006)
Law Foundation Fellow, University of Auckland (2002)
Humboldt Fellow, Faculty of Law, University of Heidelberg (1992-1993)
Awards and distinctions
Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (1999)
Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy (2021)
Other info

Editor, Cambridge Studies in Constitutional Law, University of Toronto Law Journal

Selected publications

Hard Cases in Wicked Legal Systems: South African Law in the Perspective of Legal Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991); 2nd edition as Hard Cases in Wicked Legal Systems: Pathologies of Legality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). http://www.amazon.com/Hard-Cases-Wicked-Legal-Systems/dp/0199532214/ref=...

The Constitution of Law: Legality in a Time of Emergency (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). http://www.amazon.com/Constitution-Law-Legality-Time-Emergency/dp/052167...

Judging the Judges, Judging Ourselves: Truth, Reconciliation and the Apartheid Legal Order (Oxford, Hart Publishing, 1998). http://www.hartpub.co.uk/books/details.asp?isbn=9781841134031

Legality and Legitimacy: Carl Schmitt, Hans Kelsen, and Hermann Heller in Weimar (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997). http://www.amazon.com/Legality-Legitimacy-Schmitt-Kelsen-Hermann/dp/0198...

“Emergency, Liberalism and the State” (2011) 9 Perspectives on Politics 69-79. http://www.rairo-ita.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8203...

Research areas
Administrative Law
Comparative Law
Legal Theory
Moral Philosophy
National Security Law and Anti-Terrorism Law
Political Philosophy and Theory