Hassan Ahmad (SJD 2022)
Thesis: The New Immunity: Multinational Corporations, Tort Law, and Human Rights in the Third World
Graduate Supervisor: Mohammed Fadel.
Awards: Young Comparativist of the Year 2019 (co-winner), American Society of Comparative Law; Nathan Strauss Q.C. Graduate Fellowship in International Law (2019); Michael Smith Foreign Study Supplement (2019); Canada Graduate Scholarship in Honour of Nelson Mandela (2018); Joseph-Armand Bombardier CGS Doctoral Scholarship (2018); U of T Faculty of Law Doctoral Research Fellowship, (2017); O’Brien Fellowship for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism (2017).
Hassan Ahmad works as an assistant professor at the Peter A. Allard School of Law at the University of British Columbia and is a 2022 SJD graduate of the University of Toronto Law School. He continues to litigate public interest cases and is slated to appear before the Ontario Court of Appeal in January.
“Academia allows me to pursue issues and topics that I care about deeply in the way I want to pursue them. It also provides me an invaluable public platform,” Ahmad says of his decision to pursue an SJD. “I enjoy the scholarship and public intellectual side of things.”
Attending U of T for his graduate legal studies provided him with exposure to leading legal scholars and when he began his job search, Ahmad says he benefited from the notoriety the faculty enjoys in Canada and worldwide.
“U of T Law gave me a platform to get into an academic career,” Ahmad says. “It has a reputation for rigorous and creative scholarship that is applicable in the world. It made me a better scholar and my research more meticulous.”
His current research examines contentious areas of dispute resolution that appear before the courts, such as “how to hold large corporations to account when they commit egregious human rights violations in poorer parts of the world.” Ahmad focuses on tort law, an area of expertise, to explore “how to connect the victim and the wrongdoer when the wrongdoer is a nebulous, widespread entity.” He is becoming increasingly interested in climate change, corporate interactions with Indigenous populations and industries tied to war in order to determine how to hold corporations to account and how to use the courts to do so.
While at U of T Law, Ahmad enjoyed the camaraderie and support among doctoral colleagues, creating “fond memories that I’ve taken with me.” He also looks back with pleasure at the semester he spent as an exchange student at the University of Cambridge, enjoying the experience with his wife and young son at the time.