US Supreme Court Justice The Hon. Elena Kagan receives honorary degree from U of T
US Supreme Court Justice The Hon. Elena Kagan receives honorary degree from U of T

From the Fall/Winter 2018 issue of Nexus

Excerpts from the latest news from the University of Toronto Faculty of Law.

SCOTUS Justice Elena Kagan is our newest alumna!

The University of Toronto hosted a special convocation Nov. 12th to recognize , an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Kagan received an honorary degree to acknowledge “her excellence in the academy and her outstanding service for the public good, as lawyer, scholar and jurist.” As part of the ceremony, Kagan participated in a conversation with the Faculty of Law’s Prof. Yasmin Dawood, Canada Research Chair in Democracy, Constitutionalism, and Electoral Law. Later in the afternoon, Kagan spoke in conversation with alumna The Hon. Rosalie Abella, a justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, in front of an audience of our law students, faculty and staff—giving law students a unique opportunity to hear from a sitting U.S. Supreme Court justice. 

Watch the conversation on YouTube

IHRP report says Canada's adoption of AI in immigration raises serious rights implications

Algorithms and artificial intelligence are augmenting and replacing human decision-making in Canada’s immigration and refugee system, with alarming implications for the fundamental human rights of those subjected to these technologies, says a report released Sept. 26th by the University of Toronto’s International Human Rights Program (IHRP) and the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. “Bots at the Gate: A Human Rights Analysis of Automated Decision Making in Canada’s Immigration and Refugee System”  details how the federal government’s use of these tools threatens to create a laboratory for high-risk experiments.

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Congratulations to our alumni who received 2018 Arbor Awards

The Arbor Awards recognize U of T alumni who make outstanding volunteer contributions to the experience of U of T students, faculty, staff and alumni, and personify the very best attributes of the University’s motto, Velut Arbor Aevo—“May it grow as a tree through the ages.” Congratulations to this year's Faculty of Law award winners: Ari Blicker, 1995; Angelo Gentile, 2006; Atrisha Lewis, 2012; Laura Trachuk, 1986; Maureen Whelton, 1995.

Menaka Guruswamy, lead lawyer who represented LGBTQ Indians in fight to decriminalize gay sex in India, gives the 2018 Goodman Lecture

When India’s Supreme Court recently changed its position and struck down a nearly 155-year-old colonial era law criminalizing gay sex, it had as much to do with shifting perceptions of love as with new legal interpretations, one of the lead lawyers representing petitioners in the case told an audience at the 2018 David B. Goodman Lecture. The historic Sept. 6, 2018 decision was a stunning reversal for a court that just five years earlier ruled against LGBT Indians, and stories of fear and discrimination from individual petitioners is what seemed to turn the tide, said Menaka Guruswamy, the BR Ambedkar Research Scholar and lecturer at Columbia Law School.

Read the full story and watch the video