“Lawyers Doing Cool Things With Their Law Degrees” is a series of conversations with alumni about their cool jobs, the important issues they are tackling, and how their law degrees got them there. We intentionally focus on alumni who are earlier in their careers and moving the dial on important issues.

Each “Cool Things” alumni speaker will host a lunch for up to 20 students in one of the law school’s classrooms. The law school will supply sandwiches and drinks. Registration is on a first-come-first-served basis.

The fall 2018 line up includes amazing alumni who are doing cool things with the federal government, McCarthys, the College of Psychologists of Ontario, Boston Consulting Group, Nestle Canada Inc., and Edward Royle LLP (criminal law firm).

On September 25^th at 12:30 – 2:00, our first speaker is Andrew Stobo Sniderman (J.D. 2014). Andrew was the human rights policy advisor to Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Stéphane Dion, and is writing a book about education and racism in a small town and a neighbouring reserve in Manitoba. He previously worked for Justice Edwin Cameron at South Africa’s Constitutional Court, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Zimbabwe, and Olthuis Kleer Townshend LLP, an Indigenous rights law firm in Toronto.

Fall 2018 speaker bios and registration links are here: https://www.law.utoronto.ca/academic-programs/jd-program/lawyers-doing-cool-things

Lawyers Doing Cool Things - Andrew Stobo Sniderman, J.D. 2014

Tuesday September 25, 2018, 12:30 – 1:30

Sandwiches and drinks will be provided.

Andrew Stobo Sniderman was the human rights policy advisor to Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Stéphane Dion, and is writing a book about education and racism in a small town and a neighbouring reserve in Manitoba. He previously worked for Justice Edwin Cameron at South Africa’s Constitutional Court, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Zimbabwe, and Olthuis Kleer Townshend LLP, an Indigenous rights law firm in Toronto.

To register, click here. 

Happy September Everyone!

To keep everyone up to date on all the Health & Wellness related activities and opportunities available to the law school community we will be providing monthly bulletins listing up-coming events and on-going programming. Additional information can be found in Headnotes or by contacting Yukimi Henry at yukimi.henry@utoronto.ca. 

What's happening in September:

•  Our first Student Health & Wellness Committee Meeting will be held on Monday, September 24th from 12:30-2pm in J225. Come join your fellow students in planning events and programs around physical fitness, mental health, and well-being for the whole law school community. Plus, there will be lunch ; ) !

• Personal counselling appointments are now available through the office of the Manager, Academic/Personal Counselling & Wellness. To request an appointment please complete the Client Record Form on the Health & Wellness pages of the law school website (https://www.law.utoronto.ca/student-life/personal-support/health-and-well-being/health-and-wellness-law-school) and submit it to wellness.law@utoronto.ca

• Our Peer2Peer Mental Health Support Program is available for students interested in informal, confidential support from a fellow law student with lived experience of mental health. Contact yukimi.henry@utoronto.ca for more information on being matched with a peer mentor.

• Through our partnership with the Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education, the SPARK and MoveU.HappyU programs are now accepting applications from students who are interested in using physical activity to help support their mental health. Please contact Yukimi Henry for more information. This program is free for students. Registration is limited so contact Yukimi soon!

• Take a "Brain Break" and join us for the first UofT Law Mindfulness Program event of the school year. On Wednesday, September 26th from 12:30-1:50pm, our expert facilitator will be returning to the law school to provide an introduction to the neuroscience and practice of mindfulness. Registration and more information is through eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/brain-break-introduction-to-mindfulness-uoft-law-tickets-49957859302. Space is limited so register early!

 On-going Programming:

• The University of Toronto Health & Wellness Centre is now providing family medicine and mental health services through new extended hours. On Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, the clinic is open until 7pm to better serve you. For more information on services available visit their website: https://www.studentlife.utoronto.ca/hwc/medical-services

• U of T Accessibility Services is available to provide academic accommodations and other learning supports to students with disabilities (including mental health and learning disabilities). Early registration is strongly encouraged to ensure that accommodations are in place to meet students' needs. For more information see the Accessibility Services website: https://www.studentlife.utoronto.ca/as/register-accommodation , or speak to Alexis Archbold: alexis.archbold@utoronto.ca or Yukimi Henry for more information. 

Interested in physical fitness? Want to promote health & well-being? Committed to reducing stigma around mental health challenges?

Come join your fellow students at the Student Health & Wellness Committee! We are a committee that organizes activities and events for law students by law students on issues related to health and well-being. Come join a working group, offer ideas or spend some with like-minded law students engaged on wellness issues.

Our first meeting is Monday, September 24th from 12:30-2:00pm in J225. Lunch will be provided. All students are welcome!

This Committee is facilitated by our Manager, Academic/Personal Counselling & Wellness, Yukimi Henry, and Student Programs Coordinator, Sara Marni Hubbard. If you have any questions please contact Yukimi at yukimi.henry@utoronto.ca or Sara Marni at sara.hubbard@utoronto.ca

Students, staff and faculty are invited to participate in a drop in yoga class at the law school. Classes will run every other Tuesday, 12:30-1:45pm on Sept 25^th, Oct 9^th, Oct 23^rd, Nov 6^th, Nov 20^th and Dec 4^th in J140.

Classes are free and drop in only. Space will be allotted on a first come first serve basis. Students bring their own mats.

The class is a beginner vinyasa flow and will be taught by a wonderful law student, Alison Durran.

The class welcomes all levels and is appropriate for students new to yoga.

Cheers,
Sara-Marni

--

Sara-Marni Hubbard, Doctoral Student

Student Programs Coordinator

“Irrational, indefensible, and manifestly arbitrary.” 

Professor Menaka Guruswamy, Columbia Law School, recently represented gay petitioners in India’s Supreme Court, successfully arguing that India’s ban against consensual gay sex should be struck down.    In its unanimous decision the justices ruled gay Indians are to be accorded all the protections of the Constitution.  She will discuss the case, discussed in this article, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/06/world/asia/india-gay-sex-377.html, during this year’s Goodman Lecture.  The Lecture will take place on Tuesday, October 23, at 4:10 pm in the Moot Court Room.

THE JAMES HAUSMAN TAX LAW & POLICY WORKSHOP
presents

Jordan Barry
University of San Diego School of Law 

The Transition (Under-) Tax

Wednesday, September 26, 2018
12:30 – 2:00
Solarium (Room FA2), Falconer Hall
84 Queen’s Park

One of the most significant effects of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (“TCJA”) was shifting the United States from a worldwide tax system to a territorial one:  Before the TCJA, U.S. corporations were subject to tax on all of the income they earned, regardless of where they earned it; after the TCJA, U.S. corporations generally will not have to pay U.S. federal income tax on profits earned outside of the United States.  The TCJA coupled this permanent shift with a one-time transition tax (the “Transition Tax”).  The Transition Tax taxes the trillions of dollars of income that U.S. corporations earned outside of the United States, but which had not yet been subjected to U.S. tax, at a rate of either 8% or 15.5%, depending on how the income was invested.  There is much to criticize about the Transition Tax.  In particular, its rate is significantly lower rate than either the pre- or post-TJCA corporate tax rate (35% and 21%, respectively).  This comparatively low rate creates several negative consequences:  First, by applying a lower tax rate to sophisticated multinational enterprises than to wholly domestic U.S. companies, the Transition Tax raises serious equity concerns.  Second, the Transition Tax raises both equity and efficiency concerns by varying the rate depending on how income was subsequently invested.  It is a fundamental tenet of modern tax policy that the tax system should not “pick winners and losers,” yet the Transition Tax does exactly that.  Finally, and most importantly, the Transition Tax rewards tax avoidance behavior, thereby encouraging more tax avoidance behavior in the future.  Pre-TCJA, companies kept profits overseas to avoid paying U.S. tax.  This behavior was not what Congress desired, intended, or contemplated, and it cost the United States fisc hundreds of billions of dollars.  Tax law should not treat those taxpayers who frustrate and undermine the system better than those who do not, yet the Transition Tax does just that.  Happily, there is a straightforward way to ameliorate all of these problems:  raise the Transition Tax rate.  Doing so could bring the net tax rate imposed on previously untaxed offshore profits to at least 21%, the post-TCJA corporate tax rate.  In addition to correcting all of the problems described above, raising the Transition Tax rate would raise hundreds of billions or even trillions of dollars in revenue which could be used to provide services, reduce the deficit, or cut taxes elsewhere.    

Jordan M. Barry is a Professor of Law and Co-Director of Graduate Tax Programs at the University of San Diego School of Law.  He teaches and writes in the areas of tax law and policy, corporate law and finance, and law and economics.  He has also taught at the University of Michigan Law School and the UC Berkeley School of Law.  He has published numerous articles, including, most recently, Regulatory Entrepreneurship, 90 S. Cal. L. Rev. 383 (2017) (with Elizabeth Pollman).  Prior to joining the faculty at USD, Professor Barry practiced law in the New York office of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson and clerked for the Honorable Jay Bybee of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.  Professor Barry is a graduate of Cornell University and Stanford Law School, where he served as Managing Editor of the Stanford Law Review. 

For more workshop information, please send an email to events.law@utoronto.ca.

The Fall Feast is an annual event hosted by the Indigenous Law Students’ Association (ILSA). It’s a potluck style event and an opportunity to learn about First Nation, Métis and Inuit traditions and to share your own culture. There will be a teaching from an Elder and a musical performance. All are welcome!

 It will be on Friday, September 28^th in the Rowell Room from 12:30-2 p.m.

The first issue of Ultra Vires 2018-19 arrives hot off the press on Wednesday, September 26th at lunchtime in the Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP Atrium. Snacks may be served. Hope to see you there! 

The U of T Law Union is a chapter of the Law Union of Ontario, an organization dedicated to using the law as a tool of progressive social change. 

Please join us on Wednesday September 26 from 12:30-1:30PM in P338 for our first meeting of the year. We will spend a little time getting to know each other, and then will talk about events and initiatives that we’re interested in organizing for 2018-2019. 

All interested students, staff and faculty are welcome.  Vegan snacks will be provided.

Your Right to Know: an Access to Information Workshop for Legal Research and Advocacy

Every Canadian has the right to request information from federal, provincial/territorial and municipal governments.  Access to information from our government underpins society’s most important democratic ideals, including government accountability, freedom of expression and press freedom.  Many organizations even characterize access to information as a fundamental human right.

The Asper Centre is convening a lunchtime panel on September 26th 2018 at 12:30 – 2:00 in J140 focused on the use of ATI (Access to Information) and FOI (Freedom of Information) requests.

This moderated panel will focus on the importance and uses of ATI and FOI requests, best practices for filing ATI requests, and limitations/challenges with the ATI regime in Canada.

A Q & A period will follow the panel.

Panel members will include:

Dara Lambie, Legal Counsel for the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner/Ontario

Alex Luscombe, PhD student in the Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies at the University of Toronto and a Junior Fellow at Massey College, works to advance the use of FOI requests as a method of data production in the social sciences. With Prof Kevin Walby, he has written about FOI and theory, FOI and standards of validity/reliability, FOI and comparative research, and FOI and research ethics.

Michael Power, Toronto Lawyer and Adjunct Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, author of Halsbury’s Laws of Canada, Access to Information and Privacy and Sailing in Dangerous Waters: A Director’s Guide to Data Governance.

A light lunch will be provided

Note: A longer “hands-on” session will be held later in the year, where law students, faculty members and other scholars can bring their draft access to information requests or research questions for assistance. Date TBD.

Email tal.schreier@utoronto.ca for further information

above_the_law_panel_discussion_sept_20_16h30_at_utlaw.pdf

Visit the Bookstore in P125 for course materials PLUS

-Faculty of Law branded merchandise

-Essential stationary and tech supplies

September Special:

My Life in Crime and Other Academic Adventures by Martin L. Friedland

$15 while supplies last.

The Butcher of Richard Street: Hannah Mary Tabbs, Black Womanhood, Violence, and Sovereignty

Hannah Mary Tabbs, an African American southern migrant, was accused of throwing the severed torso of her paramour off of a bridge in Eddington, Pennsylvania, in 1887. Through the trial and investigation Tabbs emerged at once as a figure steeped in the horror and tragedy of American slavery and its violent aftermath and as a brutal neighborhood terror in her own right. Whereas most studies of black women in this era focus on their victimization, this research explores an instance of black female violence that did not appear to be explicitly motivated by self-defense or even financial gain but rather by the sheer thrill of the exercise of power and domination, and, ultimately, pleasure. Further, this presentation ponders whether a black woman’s decision to mobilize violence on her own behalf may uniquely sketch and challenge the interstices of race, gender, sexuality, and state power.

☛ please register here

Kali Gross
Rutgers University
Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of History

04:00 PM - 06:00 PM
Centre for Ethics, University of Toronto
200 Larkin

Democracy and Constitutional Reform: Deliberative Versus Populist Constitutionalism

Whereas, populism has sometimes been thought to be a movement that attempts to bypass, discredit, or suspend constitutions, contemporary populism has often progressed and gained ground through embracing and claiming ownership over national constitutions and the “people.” The cases that I look at are Hungary, Poland, Turkey and Venezuela but the threat is quite broad.
Populist constitutionalism poses a problem for scholars and citizens alike who believe that constitutional politics should also be democratic politics. How do we tell the difference between democratically driven constitutionalism and populist constitutionalism? How can citizens participate in constitution-making without hijacking constitutionalism for majoritarian, nationalist, and authoritarian ends?
One of the challenges in identifying normative objections to populist constitutionalism is how to hold on to essential ideas of popular sovereignty and citizen participation without surrendering constitution-making and constitutional limits to the anti-pluralist forces of populism. Deliberative constitutionalism, because it invests popular sovereignty in processes of collective egalitarian discourse rather than in outcomes of majoritarian procedures or an identifiable general will is in a good position to offer a critical yard stick for questioning the democratic credentials (not just liberal) of populist constitutionalism.
In this paper I lay out the main features of populist constitutionalism and then contrast it with three alternatives: liberal constitutionalism, popular constitutionalism, and deliberative constitutionalism. I argue that only deliberative constitutionalism offers a model of constitutional reform that includes citizens but offers practical advice for excluding or mitigating populist forces. The use of referendums in Scotland and Ireland are used as illustrations of deliberate appeals to citizens in constitutional questions.

Simone Chambers
UC Irvine
Political Science

04:00 PM - 06:00 PM
Centre for Ethics, University of Toronto
200 Larkin 

What’s Wrong and What’s Right with Deterrence Theories in Criminal Law

Criminal law has many aims, one of them being that it seeks to influence human conduct. Criminal law has in-built theories about human action. Often some sort of rational action theory serves as a model. According to classical law and economics, human beings can be deterred by keeping the costs of offending high enough. The model of rational economic action has famously been challenged by findings of the so-called behavioral economics and law. Human beings simply fail to act rationally when studied empirically. Behavioral law and economics has created its own way, even its own language, to study law and regulation. We all know about ‘endowment’, ‘bounded rationality’, ‘nudging’, and ‘choice architecture’.

The theory of positive general prevention, well known to Continental criminal law scholars, works on somewhat different premises than classical law and economics. According to that theory, human beings are able to internalize the moral and ethical values that the criminal law tells about which in turn gives individuals additional reasons not to offend. This theory could even be linked with the theory of a democratic Rechtsstaat, since the citizens quite obviously have reasons to respect legitimate norms. Even legal doctrines which provide for legal security and predictability could contribute to the legitimacy of criminal law.

We should also mention regulatory theory, which has equally departed from classical law and economics. According to regulatory theory, at least if we read Christopher Hodges, no-blame cultures are most efficient as means to improve the quality of human action, be it in terms of security in civil aviation, or reducing malpractice by medical professionals. Often the solution seems to be to choose another regulatory option than criminal law. For serious violations of interests of others we may still need criminal law. From a regulatory point of view criminal law would still always also interact with ethics and social norms since criminalisations trigger effects on the side of the legal subjects, and on the side of the society at large. Hodges claims that behavioral law and economics is not enough to found socio-legal structures on the reality of how people make decisions. He tries to build an integrated theory, integrating theories of regulation, enforcement, compliance and ethics.

I wish to look at more closely whether behavioral law and economics as well as the theory of regulation call for a reassessment of how we should think about criminal law as a way of regulating behavior. Is behavioral economics still too narrow, too utilitarian, to be relevant for criminal law theory? Isn’t it too reductionist in its style? How would regulatory theory see this? Should we only adopt the psychology part of it?

It seems that the various approaches to and understandings about seeking to influence human behavior have very different criminal policy implications. As concerns environmental criminal law or economic criminal law, to take two examples, the Chicago-style law and economics leads to stressing the severity of (criminal) sanctions, whereas positive general prevention would leave more room for additional ethical reasons for actors in a company frame to work for minimizing the risk of crime. We do not need severe punishments to communicate blame. Much of EU criminal law seems to build on negative general deterrence.

It looks as if it makes sense to stress that criminal law possesses certain specific qualities which go beyond simple instrumental and utilitarian concerns. The theory of positive general prevention might work even if we cannot expect people to act rationally. As criminal law uses blameworthiness to communicate values, this goes well together with the idea that the individuals should be approached as responsible citizens who have the ability to learn to do better. We need to go beyond a utilitarian theory of regulating behavior. This could even be a paradox: we have to introduce non-instrumental views about how criminal law is anchored in the society in order to truly understand how criminal law operates and becomes functional. There is different politics of criminal law involved, and a different view of the society.

Kimmo Nuotio
University of Helsinki
Faculty of Law

12:30 PM - 02:00 PM
Centre for Ethics, University of Toronto
200 Larkin