Research that transforms

The return to classroom instruction has created a welcome buzz of excitement these past few weeks. Many students, faculty and staff have remarked how wonderful it is to be back on campus. We have missed in-person scholarly inquiry and debate and hearing these conversations continue in the corridors after class.

While teaching is now transitioning back to familiar modes, our faculty’s research carried on throughout. The thought leadership of our scholars drives our ranking as Canada’s leading law school and among the world’s top 16. As scholars, the Faculty’s professors examine law and legal problems from a wide variety of perspectives, thereby expanding the world of ideas, creating legal change, and developing the deep frameworks of law that they bring to their teaching. In this issue of Nexus, we share a few examples of our scholars' remarkable and important research: 

Health law is a dynamic and rapidly growing field, presenting a wide range of practice opportunities and intellectual challenges. The legal issues are increasingly numerous and complex, as Professor Trudo Lemmens, explains. As a Faculty, and in Canada’s largest city, we are uniquely positioned, alongside our University of Toronto colleagues in health, including the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, Joint Centre for Bioethics and the University Health Network, to advance health law scholarship and practice and see future policy impacts.

Professor Angela Fernandez is one of only two Animal Law researchers in Canada to contribute to Animal Law Fundamentals, published by the U.S.-based Brooks Institute for Animal Rights Law and Policy. As she explains, this is also a multifaceted field of practice with many career opportunities. 

At the intersection of co-curricular learning and research is the launch of our Future of Law Lab. Inaugural director, Joshua Morrison (LLM 2014) and faculty advisor, Associate Professor Anthony Niblett, Canada Research Chair Law, Economics, & Innovation, are leading the lab and share some the activities on offer to students interested in how technology will impact the law.

We also celebrate the naming of the Law & Economics Program, Law & Economics Chair and Falconer Hall solarium, a beloved teaching and meeting space, in honour of Michael J. Trebilcock’s remarkable 50-year contribution to the field. And we check in with three graduates of our Global Professional Master's of Law, Julie Di Lorenzo (GPLLM 2020), Rico Ruilei Liu (GPLLM 2019), and Shawn Mehta (GPLLM 2019) to learn how the program has had an impact on their work.

Going digital with Nexus has allowed us to invite a few of our graduate students and faculty members to share their research in their own words. We hope you watch and listen (their messages are no more than a minute each) as we continue to explore legal questions with interest and rigour – a hallmark of U of T Law.

I hope you will enjoy this issue of Nexus.

Jutta Brunnée, FRSC
Dean, University Professor and James Marshall Tory Dean’s Chair
Associate Member, Institut de droit international