A recent $6-million injection of funding from the Ontario government through the "Access to Opportunities Strategy," aimed at boosting the number of Aboriginal post-secondary graduates province-wide, will help support a range of Aboriginal initiatives at the University of Toronto. About one-quarter of the $200,000 grant U of T received has been earmarked for the Faculty of Law. Other University of Toronto funding recipients include the faculties of Physical Education and Health, Arts and Science, and First Nations House and Ontario Institute for the Study of Education.

In a brief to the Ontario Privacy Commissioner as part of the investigation into the alleged practice of conducting background checks on potential jurors, the David Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights calls for a public inquiry or wide-ranging independent probe of the issue. The brief was prepared by Prof. Lisa Austin, Research Assistant Kerri Lui (a JD student at the Faculty of Law), and Executive Director Cheryl Milne.

Edge, the magazine about research at the University of Toronto, has profiled the work of Prof. Ayelet Shachar, who recently published her second book, The Birthright Lottery, in the Spring of 2009.

Read the Edge profile (PDF).

Prof. Shachar and The Birthright Lottery are also profiled in the Summer 2009 issue of Nexus.

You can't say that: muzzled lawyers

by Jacob Ziegel

This commentary was first published in the National Post on December 12, 2009.

It was bound to happen, and now it has. From the earliest days of Confederation, many practicing lawyers, bar associations, presidents of the Canadian Bar Association and academics (both legal and non-legal) have complained about abuses by successive federal governments in exercising their judicial appointment powers — all to little avail.