I explore the applications of critical feminist legal and economic theory to contract law, seeking pragmatic openings for applied theory within the bounds of the abstract liberalism that continues to structure private law discourse. My current project considers the conceptual and historical progression from general contract law to its sub-fields: employment, consumer protection, tenancy, et c. I argue that these fields should not be understood as contractual at all.
Published in the Dalhousie Law Journal, Supreme Court Law Review, Canadian Business Law Journal, Journal of Commonwealth Law, and the Journal of Law and Equality. I received a scholarship and fellowship for my LL.M. which applied relational theory to the penalty doctrine in contract law, and specifically questioned the public-private split that that doctrine seems to imply. Other things I do and have done include research assistantships, teaching assistantships, teaching non-assistantships, journal editing, peer review, conference and workshop presentations and participation, committeeships, Chairing the UTGSU's Board of Appeal, and poverty law, as well as previous publication and research work in computational geophysics.
Writing
Please contact me to read or discuss any of the following. Several are available on my SSRN page.
"Unconscionability is an Equitable Doctrine", presented at the 2019 Canadian Law of Obligations conference, Fredericton
(unconscionability is not an expression of contractual justice, but an equitable limitation thereon; it denies enforcement to contractual obligations that would cause an injustice despite that every requirement of contract law has been met; this explains recent cases using unconscionability to preserve parties' civil rights)
"The Good Faith Challenge", forthcoming in the Journal of Commonwealth Law, presented at the Université de Montréal Common Law Group's 2018 Symposium: Good Faith in Contract
(responses to good faith in contract come in three flavours: avoidance, containment, embrace; these same flavours and the same arguments in their support arise across time and space in response to widely varying policy suggestions under the label "good faith")
"Private Contracts, Public Conventions", presented at 2018 Private Law Junior Scholars' Conference, Toronto
(arguing that contract law serves as a conventionalizing force that binds "stronger" and "weaker" parties alike to present modes of social ordering)
"Stuck: Path Dependence and Welfare Justifications of Contract"
(the costliness of changing investments results in path dependence in competitive markets; the plausibility of comparably inefficient and/or distributively undesireable paths means that we cannot generally be confident that contract will be welfare-enhancing)
"When Is a Contract Not a Contract?: Douez v Facebook Inc. and Boilerplate", (2018) 60:3 Canadian Business Law Journal 428
(reading the eponymic decision as a first step towards a common law response to the problems of boilerplate so far unaddressed by our courts)
"Good Faith Between Public and Private", (2018) 84 Supreme Court Law Review 2d 353, presented at 2017 Canadian Law of Obligations Conference at the Allard School of Law, UBC
(canvassing previous attempts to understand good faith; concluding that the best understanding of the new organizing principle of good faith in the Canadian common law of contract is as a relational rejection of the public-private divide)
"Connexion: A Note on Praxis for Animal Advocates", (2017) 40:2 Dalhousie Law Journal 545, presented at the Jackman Humanities Institute Working Group, Animals in the Law and Humanities in 2017, and at the 2017 Osgoode GLSA Conference
(panning recent political theories of animals for insight into effective legal reforms for animal advocates; arguing that among other concerns they should turn their minds to the connexion or disconnexion that legal reforms can create between humans and animals)
"The Subjects of Bhasin: Good Faith and Relational Theory" (2017) 13 Journal of Law and Equality 1
(the Bhasin case destabilizes the hegemonic vision of the contractual subject; the new principle of good faith enacts a more relational vision)
"Can Animals Contract?" presented at the Animals in the Law and Humanities Working Group in 2018
(the titular question is not as obvious as it seems; attending to the ways in which animals can and cannot contract suggests that critical contract scholars and animal advocates share common conceptual cause against a contract-based market liberalism)
"The Contractual Construction of Polyamory", presented at the 2018 Law & Society Association Annual Meeting and the UofT LGBTQ+ Workshop in 2017
(observing that contractualist concepts already pervade polyamorous communities; noting issues that will arise if the legal recognition of polyamorous relationships takes a contractual form following feminist debate about contract as a mode of ordering personal relationships)
"The Penalty Doctrine in Canada"
(showing that the death of the penalty doctrine in Canadian contract law has been exaggerated; suggesting that a pragmatic framework can combine the relevant parts of existing attempts to explain the doctrine into a convincing whole)
