Mindfulness Mondays - Mindfulness in conflict management - Feb 24 at 12:30

The Faculty of Law offers a 6-session mindfulness training program as part of its wellness programming. 

For more information about the mindfulness program at the law school, and to register for this and future sessions, please click here.

Lawyers Doing Cool Things - Erin Simpson, J.D. 2012

Erin Simpson is hosting a Lawyers Doing Cool Things lunch on Monday February 10^th, 12:30 – 2:00.

Erin practices primarily in the area of refugee law, acting for clients in refugee protection hearings, judicial reviews, detention reviews, and other immigration proceedings. Erin currently acts as counsel to Amnesty International, the Canadian Council for Refugees and the Canadian Council of Churches in a legal challenge to the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA). In addition to her focus on refugee law, Erin also represents and advises NGOs working for legislative reform in the area of corporate accountability for international human rights violations.

To register, click here.

Law and Economics Colloquium

Presents:

Daniel Klerman
USC Gould School of Law

Legal Origin from Outer Space

Tuesday February 11, 2020
4:10pm - 5:45pm
Flavelle House
78 Queens Park, FL219 (John Willis Classroom)

Dan Klerman teaches Civil Procedure, Property, Concepts in American Law, and English Legal History. In 2014, he received the Student Bar Association (SBA) Faculty Appreciation (“Outstanding Professor”) Award. Klerman’s scholarship concentrates on Civil Procedure, English Legal History, and Law and Economics. His publications include “Forum Selling” (Southern California Law Review, 2016) (with Greg Reilly), “Inferences from Litigated Cases,” (Journal of Legal Studies, 2014) (with Yoon-Ho Alex Lee) and “Jurisdictional Competition and the Evolution of the Common Law" (University of Chicago Law Review, 2007). In 2004, he was awarded the Sutherland Prize from the American Society for Legal History for best article on English legal history. In 2001, he received the David Yale Prize from the Selden Society for distinguished contribution to the history of the laws and legal institutions of England and Wales.

Klerman served on the Board of Directors of the American Law & Economics Association from 2009-2012 and was co-president of the Society for Empirical Legal Studies in 2008-09. He is on the editorial boards of Law & History Review and Journal of Legal Analysis. He is a member of the American Law Institute (ALI) and served as USC Law's Associate Dean for Academic Affairs 2009-2011. 

Klerman received his BA from Yale University and his JD and PhD in History from the University of Chicago. He clerked for The Honorable Richard A. Posner, judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, and for The Honorable John Paul Stevens, associate justice of the United States Supreme Court. In addition to USC Gould School of Law, he has taught at the University of Chicago Law School, Harvard Law School, Stanford Law School, the California Institute of Technology, Sichuan University, Tel Aviv University Law School, and the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya

For further workshop information contact events.law@utoronto.ca

PLEASE SIGN UP FOR THIS FIRM VISIT HERE: https://forms.gle/jqWvyJQ3aFaymtuA8

We will be visiting Monkhouse Law to learn more about employment law practice. Alexandra Monkhouse just intervened at Heller v Uber at the SCC! In fact, if you are interested in the issues surrounding the gig economy, Monkhouse is the firm for you. You can learn more about the firm at https://www.monkhouselaw.com/. If you have any questions for the firm, please send them at least a week ahead of the event via email to lels.utoronto@gmail.com. The address is 220 Bay St., Suite 900.

NOTE: We can have a maximum of 10 people attend, so first come, first served.

Communication skills for effective team decision-making
Thursday March 5, 12:30 – 2:00
Location J125
Presenter: Chris Graham

In this session, you will learn:

• The requirements for successful team-based learning, especially when those teams are interdisciplinary and action-oriented (i.e., respond to unexpected events in a coordinated way)
• How to cultivate those requirements (called Psychological Safety)
• The limitations of group-based decision-making
• Why people favour silence
• Strategies for overcoming the limitations of group-based decision-making

Register https://www.law.utoronto.ca/academic-programs/jd-program/workshops-and-registration

Love Books?

Come in and browse the non-required books available in the Law Bookstore.

Reading week is coming -- find something you WANT to read to celebrate.

Open Mon-Thurs 11:30 am - 2:30 pm and Friday 3 pm - 7 pm.

The Law Bookstore -- more than just textbooks

Toronto Lawyers Association Program: Sentencing in Criminal Court: Latest Trends and Bill C-75 Amendments

Whether representing the Crown or the defence, there are a myriad of things to consider when preparing for a sentencing hearing. These include, but are not limited to, the circumstances of the offence, unique features of the case or the offender’s role, types and range of available punishments, the offender’s background, as well as the legal principles and procedural and substantive rules applied at sentencing.

The TLA invites Law School Students who are interested in learning more about criminal law, to join experts Danielle Robitaille (defence) and Erin Winocur (Crown) as they provide a clear, concise and balanced review of the latest trends and most challenging issues, flagging areas requiring special attention as a result of Bill C-75 amendments.

Speakers:

Danielle Robitaille, Henein Hutchison LLP

Erin Winocur, Assistant Crown Attorney, Crown Attorney’s Office

Moderator:

Danann Hawes, Emond Publishing

Program details:

Wednesday, February 26, 2020

5:15 – 7:00 p.m. (Registration at 5:00 p.m.)

Toronto Lawyers Association - Lawyers Lounge, 2nd Floor, 361 University Avenue Court House

More details and registration:

https://tlaonline.ca/event/education_program/bill-c75-amendments

Complimentary tickets are available for Law School Students. Contact Sandra Porter at events@tlaonline.ca

The Promise and Perils of International Human Rights Law for AI Governance

The increasing use and deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) poses many challenges for human rights. This paper is largely a mapping exercise and explores the advantages and disadvantages of using international human rights law to regulate AI applications.  Particularly, it examines existing strategies by international bodies, national governments, corporations and non-profit partnerships on how to govern and consequently ensure the development of AI is consistent with the protection of human rights. Not all of these strategies refer to or include references to human rights law or principles. In fact, most of them are self-adopted ethical guidelines or self-regulating norms based on a variety of sources to mitigate the risks and challenges of, as well as identifying the opportunities brought about by AI-powered systems. In recent years, academic and policy literature from a variety of disciplines has emphasized the importance of a human rights-based approach to AI governance. That means identifying risks to recognized human rights, obliging governments to incorporate their human rights obligations in their respective national policies, and even applying international human rights law itself. This was encapsulated in the Toronto Declaration, issued last May 2018 by a group of academics and civil liberties groups, which called on states and companies to meet their existing responsibilities to safeguard human rights. But save for few exceptions, it remains a question what and how that approach concretely looks like, and why it is beneficial to do so in the first place.

☛ please register here

Anna Su
University of Toronto
Law

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

Thinking Inside the Box: The Promise and Boundaries of Transparency in Automated Decision-Making

At break-neck pace, computers seem to be gaining abilities to do things we never thought to be possible. As humans are known to be biased and unreliable, should we hand decision-making over to computer programs and algorithms? Especially in routine cases, automated decision-making– computer-based decision-making without human influence (‘ADM’) – could help us overcome our deficiencies and lead to increased perception of fairness. So, problem solved?

This seems not to be the case. There is growing evidence that human bias cannot be totally erased, at least for now. It can linger in ADM in many ways. As a result, it is not clear, who is accountable. Are the codes involved to blame? Or the creators of those codes? What about machine learning and algorithms created by other algorithms? The difficulty to answer these questions is often referred to as ‘the black box problem’. We cannot be sure how the inputs transform into outputs in the ‘black box’ between, and who is to blame if something goes wrong.

Consequently, transparency is often proposed as a solution. For example, the call for transparency features in a great majority of AI ethics codes as well as in the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation. No more black boxes, but transparent ones! The belief in transparency is hardly surprising, as its promise as a governance ideal is overwhelmingly positive. Although transparency can be approached in a plethora of ways, as a normative metaphor, its basic idea is simple. It promises legitimacy by making an object or behavior visible and, as such, controllable.

In this talk, I will argue that the legitimation narrative of transparency cannot really deliver in its quest for resolving the black box problem in ADM. To that end, I will argue that transparency is a more complex an ideal that is portrayed in mainstream narratives. My main claim is that transparency is inherently performative in nature and cannot but be. This performativity goes counter the promise of unmediated visibility, vested in transparency. Subsequently, in order to ensure the legitimacy of ADM – if we, indeed, are after its legitimacy – we need to be mindful of this hidden functioning logic of the ideal of transparency. As I will show, when transparency is brought to the context of algorithms, its peculiarities will come visible in a new way.

☛ please register here

Ida Koivisto
Law
University of Helsinki

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

Guy Maddin blends fact and fiction, documentary and drama, reality and myth in this dreamy black-and-white tour of Winnipeg. Widely regarded as Maddin’s best film, My Winnipeg won the award for Best Canadian Feature Film when it premiered at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). A 2015 poll conducted by TIFF named it one of the Top 10 Canadian films of all time, while another in 2016 listed it as one of 150 essential works in Canadian cinema history.

☛ please register here

06:00 PM - 08:00 PM
Centre for Ethics, University of Toronto
Rm 200, Larkin Building

Poetics/Ethics: New Work by Queer Poets III

This is the third of four readings that will showcase contemporary queer poetry by authors working in Canada, based on the notion that ethics should be conceived as encompassing not just academic research but also literary writing. Each of these poets crafts new languages to describe and confront the interplay of lived experience and political critique. By bringing them together, we hope not only to foster a conversation between the authors of some of the most exciting poetry being written today, but also some of the most complex and subtle thinking about gender and sexuality and their intersections with race, indigeneity, migration, and colonialism

☛ please register here

Gail Scott‘s iconic feminist novel Heroine (Toronto : Coach House, 2019) has been re-issued with an introduction by Eileen Myles. Other novels include The Obituary (New York, Nightboat, 2012; Coach House, 2010), a ghost story set in a Montréal triplex, a 2011 finalist for Le Grand Prix du Livre de la Ville de Montréal. My Paris (Dalkey Archive), about a sad diarist in conversation with Gertrude Stein and Walter Benjamin in late 20th century Paris ; Main Brides ; Heroine (1987 edition), Spare Parts Plus 2 (stories and manifestoes). Essays are collected in Spaces Like Stairs and La Théorie, un dimanche (translated as Theory, A Sunday, New York : Belladonna, 2013). Scott is co-editor of the New Narrative anthology: Biting the Error: Writers Explore Narrative (Coach House, 2004). Her translation of Michael Delisle’s Le désarroi du matelot was shortlisted for the Governor General’s award. A memoir, based in Lower Manhattan during the early Obama years, is forthcoming.

07:00 PM - 09:00 PM
Centre for Ethics, University of Toronto
200 Larkin