#UofTGrad21: U of T Law congratulates fall graduates of the SJD, LLM and GPLLM programs

Ashley Barnes (SJD 2021) is currently a Senior Research Fellow, Department of International Law and Dispute Resolution, Max Planck Institute Luxembourg. Her thesis title is "Compensation in a Changing International Legal Order".

"My research examined the evolution of access to justice and compensation for individuals at the international level. I demonstrated a new legal sensibility and important step change in remedying large-scale injury caused by violations of international law – one that will continue to shape thinking about responding to new needs in the future. Appreciated the support and engagement of my supervisor, [Professor] Karen Knop, and committee member, [University Professor and Dean] Jutta Brunnée, throughout the process."

Christopher Campbell-Duruflé (SJD 2021) is currently a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow, Cambridge Centre for Environment, Energy and Natural Resource Governance (C-EENRG), University of Cambridge. His thesis title is "From T​reaty Norms to Practices: A State Accountability Analysis of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change".

About Christopher's research: 

Christopher’s research and practice focus on international environmental and human rights law, with a particular interest in intersections between different fields and jurisdictions. As Banting Postdoctoral Fellow with Professor Jorge Viñuales at the University of Cambridge, his research analyzes the potential for synergies and conflict between the Paris Agreement on climate change and other closely-related regimes (e.g., human rights, trade and investment, biodiversity, energy). Christopher is also part of the editorial team of C-EENRG Working Papers.

"My dissertation provides a critical analysis of the approach to accountability that states negotiated in the Paris Agreement and in the implementation modalities adopted over the last years. I am immensely grateful to my supervisor, [University Professor and] Dean Jutta Brunnée, and to my committee members, for their thoughtful guidance. In particular, I thank them for being so supportive of my direct participation in the United Nations climate negotiations, where I was able to build partnerships with the delegation of Burkina Faso, non-governmental organisations, and legal research networks. This project has kindled a passion for researching how principles of international law travel between regimes and can become part of national laws — including those of Canada — in time to prevent the most harmful impacts of climate change."

Daniel Del Gobbo (SJD 2021) is currently a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow, McGill University Faculty of Law. His thesis title is "Negotiating Feminism: Campus Sexual Violence and the Politics of Settlement".

About Daniel's research: 

Daniel's research falls at the intersections of civil procedure, human rights and equality, access to justice, and critical theory. He is interested in exploring how legal institutions can be redesigned to promote more fair, equal, and accessible outcomes for women, LGBTQ2 peoples, and other historically marginalized groups.

Daniel has signed an advance contract to publish his thesis at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law (Negotiating Feminism) as a book with the University of Toronto Press, expected in 2022 or 2023. Over the course of six chapters, Daniel argues that colleges and universities should empower complainants with the choice to proceed with their complaints in campus adjudication, mediation, or restorative justice in what he calls the “plural process” model of campus sexual violence policy. Correspondingly, Daniel argues that legal and administrative efforts to ban the use of mediation and restorative justice in campus sexual violence cases are misguided. One of Daniel's central claims in the thesis is that feminist concerns about mediation and restorative justice are symptomatic of feminism’s broader turn to law and victims’ rights discourse in contemporary modalities of feminist anti-rape activism, commitments that originate in the feminist “sex wars” from the late 1970s to early 1990s and continue to the present day. Formalistic and legalistic trends within feminism have entailed a principled resistance to mediation and restorative justice because they challenge these commitments.

Building on his interests in civil procedure and gender justice, Daniel's current research as a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at the McGill University Faculty of Law explores the potential of restorative justice and transformative justice to address systemic human rights abuses and promote reconciliation with LGBTQ2 peoples. The focus of his research is the Canadian “Gay Purge”: the historical sanctioning and discharging of gender and sexual minorities from the military and federal public service between 1955 and 1992. The Gay Purge is the subject of a class action and settlement agreement in the Federal Court of Canada that resulted from a process which purported to embody the values of restorative justice. Daniel's research investigates the extent to which the legal mechanisms employed in the case – praiseworthy as they may be – reflect a gap between restorative justice and the requirements for social change.

"I am incredibly fortunate to have worked with [Professors] Brenda Cossman and Simon Stern as co-supervisors of my doctoral dissertation and Lorne Sossin as the third member of my graduate committee," says Del Gobbo. "Brenda, Simon, and Lorne introduced me to new thinkers and theories, challenging me to think more critically and creatively than I otherwise would have done. Brenda, Simon, and Lorne went out of their way to find opportunities for me to teach, meet leaders in my field, and grow as a scholar. Over the course of five years, countless meetings, brainstorming sessions, and conference dinners, they taught me how to research and write with openness, sensitivity, and rigour by showing me the way. My thesis was made possible by their contributions."