Leaders Summit on Climate: Q&A with Dean Jutta Brunnée

Thursday, April 22, 2021

U.S. President Joe Biden has invited 40 world leaders to the Leaders Summit on Climate, April 22 (Earth Day) and April 23.

According to the White House announcement, the summit “will underscore the urgency – and the economic benefits – of stronger climate action.  It will be a key milestone on the road to the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) this November in Glasgow.”

U of T accepts all 56 recommendations of Anti-Black Racism Task Force

Wednesday, April 14, 2021

The University of Toronto’s Anti-Black Racism Task Force has delivered its final report, which includes more than 50 action-oriented measures and solutions to tackle anti-Black racism and promote Black inclusion and excellence on the university’s three campuses.

The university administration has accepted all 56 recommendations.

Headnotes - Apr 12 2021

Announcements

Academic Events

Yale-Toronto Private Law Theory Discussion Group - *Abstracts added*

Yale-Toronto Private Law Theory Discussion Group 

The Private Law Theory Discussion Group is a new initiative between the University of Toronto Faculty of Law and the Yale Law School. The workshop aims to provide a forum for established and early career scholars to present their in-progress work in private law theory to an audience of students and faculty. The Discussion Group has a broad understanding of private law and theory, and welcomes work deploying philosophical, economic, historical, and other methodologies to the study of private law. Papers may focus on doctrinal issues with a theoretical overlay or more abstract issues concerning private law.  

The discussion group’s first (virtual) event is slated for Saturday April 24th at 12:30-4pm. We are delighted to have Professors John C.P. Goldberg (Harvard), Larissa Katz (Toronto) and Daniel Markovits (Yale) presenting papers. Papers will be pre-circulated, and speakers will be asked to give 20-minute presentations before opening up the floor to Q&A. 

The schedule of the event is as follows:

12:30-1:30 –– Goldberg, "Taking Responsibility Seriously: On John Gardner's From Personal Life to Private Law"
1:30-1:45 –– break
1:45-2:45 –– Katz, "The Role of Plaintiffs in Private Law Institutions"
2:45-3:00 –– break
3:00-4:00 –– Markovits, "Promise Made Pure"

Please see the attached PDF for paper Abstracts. Registered attendees will receive the papers and Zoom link via email before the event. 

In future years, the workshop aims to hold two events per semester. Individuals affiliated with the University of Toronto Faculty of Law and Yale Law School are welcome to attend. All other individuals interested in attending should seek prior approval from the organizers of the workshop. We welcome external participants.

For more information on registering to attend the group’s events or presenting a paper at the workshop, please contact co-convenor Amit Singh (amitpal.singh@mail.utoronto.ca).

Date of event:
Sat. Apr. 24, 2021, 12:30pm
Location:
Zoom link to be circulated.
Event conditions:
Registration required.
YT Private Law Theory - Titles and Abstracts
Legal Theory Reading Group

I will be convening an ad hoc legal theory reading group starting after exams. Books up for discussion, but we will start with Bicchieri, The Grammary of Society (CUP 2006). Email me (vincent.chiao@utoronto.ca) if you are interested in participating. Dates & times tbd based on availability.

Financial Aid, Scholarships, and Awards

The Iranian Canadian Legal Professionals (ICLP) Scholarship

The Iranian Canadian Legal Professionals (ICLP) Scholarship is a $1000.00 scholarship awarded to two law students of Iranian Descent per school year. This Scholarship is designed to assist law students of Iranian Descent with the increasing costs of legal education, and recognize their academic achievements as well as their community involvement.

The Application Deadline is April 25, 2021.

For more information, please see the attached or visit the ICLP Website: www.iclp.ca

iclp-scholarship-application_2.pdf
Student Loans available from FCCP for 2021-22

The Federation of Chinese Canadian Professionals (FCCP) Education Foundation is a registered charity established in 1981. The Foundation has awarded over $300,000 in scholarships and $100,000 in student loans. 

Interest-free student loan applications are accepted between March and July annually, from all eligible Ontario students.  The value of the loans is up to $3,000 each.  The eligibility for application are:

  • Canadian citizenship or landed immigrant status;
  • Minimum of one-year residency in Ontario;
  • Currently enrolled full-time in any Ontario university or Ontario post secondary institution leading to a degree or diploma;
  • Good academic performance;
  • Financial need.

The application deadline is July 31 of each calendar year.

Application information for interest-free student loans is available at: 
https://fccpontario.com/education-foundation/student-loans/interest-free-student-loans/ 

Journals, Research, and Scholarship

Indigenous Law Journal –– 2021-2022 Senior Board, Editors-in-Chief positions

The Indigenous Law Journal (ILJ) is currently seeking applications for next year's Senior Board, which includes Editors-in-Chief, Senior Editors, Submissions Manager, and other positions. 

The ILJ is the first and only Canadian legal journal to exclusively publish articles about Indigenous legal issues. The ILJ publishes articles, notes, case comments, and reviews grounded in all areas of study pertaining to both the laws of indigenous peoples and the law as it affects indigenous peoples. 

Please see the attached document, which contains more information on the positions available and the application process. Please apply by Friday May 14, 2021. 

Any questions can be directed to Editors-in-Chief Amit Singh and Daniel Diamond at indiglaw.journal@utoronto.ca.

ilj_senior_board_application_information.pdf

Other Notices

Food Law & Policy Society Winter Newsletter

External Announcements: Events

Wed, Apr 21, 2021 The Ethics of Songs: Deep River (African American spiritual, arr. H.T. Burleigh), with Ellie Hisama

Join us for the Spring 2021 Season of The Ethics of Songs, the Centre for Ethics YouTube series that explores the ethical dimensions of songs familiar and new! (The full schedule is available here.)

Ellie Hisama 
Music and Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality 
Columbia University 

Produced and edited by Laura Menard (Music & Centre for Ethics, University of Toronto)

Ellie Hisama is Professor of Music and a member of the Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Columbia University, where she has taught since 2006. The author of Gendering Musical Modernism, she has published on the music of Geri Allen, Joan Armatrading, Benjamin Britten, Ruth Crawford, Julius Eastman, and DJ Kuttin Kandi. She will join the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Music in July 2021 as Professor of Music and its next Dean.

► please register here

This is an online event, available on the Centre for Ethics YouTube Channel. Channel subscribers will receive a notification at the start. (For other events in the series, and to subscribe, visit YouTube.com/c/CentreforEthics.)

03:00 PM - 03:30 PM
Centre for Ethics, University of Toronto 
200 Larkin

Fri, May 7: Transparency in the Digital Environment: An International & Interdisciplinary Conference

Transparency in the Digital Environment

Transparency has become an astonishingly popular ideal over the last couple of decades. Its traditional habitats, public law and political theory, have lost their monopoly to define it. It has globalized and spilled over to new disciplinary discourses – quite prominently, in algorithms and automation – thus becoming a well-nigh self-justificatory virtue, “the cultural signifier of neutrality.” Transparency promises that we can witness, immediately, what happens in the chambers of power, and by virtue of this witnessing, fix what needs to be fixed.

Can transparency deliver its promise in a digitalized environment? Does power hide not only from transparency but in transparency? Is it just a figurative placeholder for information release practices, or has it become a meta-discourse to assess the successfulness of those practices? To what extent is it legal, social, cultural, technical, material? 

This online conference features contributors to a special issue, guest edited by Ida Koivisto (Law, Helsinki), in the open-access online journal Critical Analysis of Law: An International & Interdisciplinary Law Review.

Preliminary Schedule

10am [= 7am Pacific/3pm UK/4pm Central Europe/5pm Finland]
Panel 1: Digital Transparency Between Truth and Power

11:30am [= 8:30am/4:30pm/5:30pm/6:30pm]
Panel 2: The Promise and Perils of Digital Transparency

► please register here

This is an online event. It will be live streamed on the Centre for Ethics YouTube Channel at 10am, Friday, May 7 [= 7am Pacific/3pm UK/4pm Central Europe/5pm Finland]. Channel subscribers will receive a notification at the start of the live stream.

Contributors:

Co-sponsor:

Wed, Apr 14, 2021: Noam Kolt, Predicting Consumer Contracts with GPT-3: A Legal Case Study in Computational Language Models (Ethics of AI in Context: Emerging Scholars)

Predicting Consumer Contracts with GPT-3: A Legal Case Study in Computational Language Models

Computational language models can perform a wide range of complex tasks by predicting the next word in a sequence. In the legal domain, language models can summarize laws, draft case documents, and translate legal jargon into plain English. While language models could potentially empower consumers, they could also provide misleading legal advice and entrench harmful biases. By exploring the extent to which GPT-3 can understand consumer contracts, this case study sheds light on the opportunities and challenges of using language models to inform consumers of their legal rights and obligations.
 
► please register here

This is an online event. It will be live streamed on the Centre for Ethics YouTube Channel on Wednesday, April 14. Channel subscribers will receive a notification at the start of the live stream. (For other events in the series, and to subscribe, visit YouTube.com/c/CentreforEthics.)

► To stay informed about other upcoming events at the Centre for Ethics, opportunities, and more, please sign up for our newsletter.

Noam Kolt
Faculty of Law
Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society
University of Toronto
Wed, Apr 28, 2021: Emerging Scholars Julian Posada, Disembeddedness in Data Annotation for Machine Learning (Ethics of AI in Context: Emerging Scholars)

Disembeddedness in Data Annotation for Machine Learning

What happens when data annotation and algorithmic verification occurs in a significantly deregulated market? Today, many AI companies outsource these essential steps in developing machine learning algorithms to workers worldwide through digital labour platforms. This labour market has experienced a race to the bottom environment where most of the workers are situated in Venezuela, a country experiencing a profound social, political, and economic crisis, with the world’s highest inflation rates. This talk presents preliminary findings of ongoing research to explore how the “disembeddedness” of this market, in which economic activity is unconstrained (or deregulated) by institutions, affects workers’ livelihoods and, ultimately, the algorithms they are shaping. The talk explores this situation through the working conditions of platform users, the composition of their local networks, and the power relations between them, ML developers, and platforms.

► please register here

This is an online event. It will be live streamed on the Centre for Ethics YouTube Channel on Wednesday, April 28. Channel subscribers will receive a notification at the start of the live stream. (For other events in the series, and to subscribe, visit YouTube.com/c/CentreforEthics.)

► To stay informed about other upcoming events at the Centre for Ethics, opportunities, and more, please sign up for our newsletter.

Julian Posada
Faculty of Information
University of Toronto

Critical Perspectives on Justice and Inequality Speaker Series: Video

Video from the fourth event in the Critical Perspectives on Justice and Inequality speaker series is now available on YouTube:

The Truth Machines

Video from the first three events in this series on criminological and sociolegal dimensions of anti-Black racism, Indigenous peoples, and settler colonialism is also available:

·       Authoritarian Police in Democracy: Contested Security in Latin America

·       Wheels of Change, Critical Considerations: Visual & Digital Technologies in Canadian Criminal Courts

·       Policing the Womb

External Announcements: Opportunities

Charles D. Gonthier Research Fellowship 2022

Note that the Charles D. Gonthier Research Fellowship is open to faculty and graduate students.

Thank you for sharing the following:

CIAJ has been proudly supporting academic research for over twenty years!

For over twenty years, the Canadian Institute for the Administration of Justice (CIAJ) has annually awarded law professors and students a 7,500$ fellowship to encourage research on pressing legal issues. The projects submitted this year must respect the theme “The Right to Dignity in Canadian Law: From the Cradle to the Grave,” which is the focus of CIAJ's 46th Annual Conference that will take place in Halifax in October 2022. The winner will be invited to attend.

2022 Charles D. Gonthier Research Fellowship ($7500)

Call for Applications: Transformative Student Research & Leadership Opportunity

The Reach Alliance began in 2015 at the University of Toronto as the Reach Project, a student-led, faculty-mentored, multi-disciplinary research initiative dedicated to investigating the pathways to success for innovative programs that are reaching some of the world’s most marginalized populations.  

Inspired by the United Nations’ call to eliminate global poverty by 2030 as part of a set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), our mission is to pursue the full achievement of the SDGs by equipping and empowering the next generation of global leaders to create knowledge and inspire action on reaching the hardest to reach. 

The Reach Alliance is housed at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy with support from the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth. 

Now accepting applications for the 2021-2022 cohort.  Application deadline: May 9, 2021

For more information, please visit:  APPLY — The Reach Alliance

reach_applications_open_2.png

Op-Ed by Anna Zhang, 2L: Anti-Asian racism is real in Canada, and I will no longer hide

Thursday, April 8, 2021

In an op-ed for the Toronto Star (Apr. 5), second-year JD student Anna Zhang share her experience of racism and seeking acceptance while growing up in Canada. She writes: 

U of T Law alumna Lobat Sadrehashemi (JD/MSW 2005) appointed Justice of the Federal Court

Wednesday, April 7, 2021

The Honourable David Lametti, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, announced Apr. 6 a new judicial appointment to the Federal Court.

Faculty of Law alumna Lobat Sadrehashemi (JD/MSW 2005), Senior Counsel and Clinic Lead at the Immigration and Refugee Legal Clinic in Vancouver, is appointed a Judge of the Federal Court. Madam Justice Sadrehashemi replaces Mr. Justice K.M. Boswell, who retired effective January 29, 2021.

How kindness, compassion and even awe can boost your mental health: U of T News

Wednesday, April 7, 2021

Anyone who has comforted a friend in a time of need or volunteered for a worthy cause knows the experience can leave you feeling good about yourself.

Jennifer Stellar, an assistant professor in the department of psychology at the University of Toronto Mississauga, specializes in studying “prosocial” emotions such as compassion, gratitude and awe, and her research suggests these feelings do in fact contribute to one’s own well-being.

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