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Sex workers set to launch landmark challenge
Tracey Tyler writes for the Toronto Star:
“The one thing I can tell you from looking at this, both as an academic and as a person constructing a case, is that we have not had a really rational discourse on this topic because political ideology, emotional reactions and stereotypical thinking have dominated,” said Alan Young, an Osgoode Hall Law School professor who is Bedford’s lawyer.
CIRA, whois and IP Osgoode
Check out my post about CIRA’s ‘whois’ policy on the recently launched IP Osgoode wesbite. I wrote it as an assignment for my IP law class with professor D’Agostino.
Osgoode Looking to Undergo Makeover
“I was practically embarrassed to see such a horrible looking building,” [business leader and philanthropist, Ignat Kaneff, said] of his visit to the school where his daughter, Kristina, is a student. “It was awful.”
Many who know Osgoode Hall law school would echo this sentiment. Indeed, my anonymous friend at the school had this to say about the building: “like a bunker, but with fewer windows.”
Even the school’s website sports few photos of the building, probably for this very reason.
However, Osgoode’s Advancement Office has embarked on a campaign to remedy the situation.
The Building Osgoode campaign is trying to raise $25 million to add an impressive new wing to the law school. The wing will include a rare books library, a lounge, and a new cafeteria. All of this will be centered around an expansive glass atrium.
According to the campaign’s website,
The Building Osgoode Campaign, however, is not strictly about bricks and mortar. It is about creating a centre for legal education that will equip young lawyers to face the challenge of constant change in the years ahead. Today’s law graduates must be able to navigate a legal system that is ever shifting, increasingly global in nature, and continually giving rise to new ethical and professional questions. Imparting this knowledge takes more than outstanding faculty, it requires physical facilities that match the ambition of the education provided. The Building Osgoode Campaign will give us the tools we need to fully engage a demanding future.
I got in touch with Anita Herrmann, Osgoode’s Office of Advancement Director. Ms. Herrmann’s office is in charge of the Building Osgoode campaign. She explains:
We’re in the final planning stages so I can’t offer any specifics on what will happen, but I can say that it will be a spectacular transformation that will focus on student space and improving the student experience. We are planning to break ground next May.
Ignatt Kaneff has generously donated $2.5 million towards the project. Other notable donors include Canada Law Book, Goodmans LLP, and Ogilvy Renault.
Construction is expected to take two years to complete.
International Customary Law Part of Common Law in Canada
H. Scott Fairley, a Theall Group LLP partner, wrote an lucid and compelling comment on R. v. Hape in the last issue of The Globetrotter. In that decision, the Supreme Court formally admitted international customary law into Canadian common law. Mr. Fairley explains why this happened and why it matters for most lawyers in this country.
I am glad I am taking international law classes at Osgoode.
OHLJ’s Environment Law issue is out
The Summer 2008 issue of the Osgoode Hall Law Journal is out, and it’s completely dedicated to environmental law. Stepan Wood, an associate professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, is the guest editor.
Most in the 2010 class knew Professor Wood as an acting Assisant Dean, First Year but many of us also interacted with him as the Director of Osgoode’s Mooting Program. He is the Director of Osgoode’s LLB/MES program as well.
For more on the contents of this next issue in the OHLJ anniversary series, see the table of contents, download articles as pdfs or read Professor Wood’s foreword [pdf].
Osgoode Francophone Society
Osgoode Hall Law School has had its own Francophone Society since January. We started with a tiny weekly conversation club last year even before officially registering with Legal and Lit. About ten or fifteen French language enthusiasts regularly pulled tables together in the inescapable Osgoode cafeteria and practiced French. We didn’t have a single native speaker among us but some of us spoke pretty good Français. That was our first year.
Come September, we would like to continue our conversation club. If you are in Osgoode in any capacity and speak French, why not bavarder avec nous? If you are a native speaker this is really your Society, and one of its goals is to raise the profile of the Francophone community in Osgoode.
We would also like to build relationships with the Francophone legal community in Toronto. There is a significant interest in the French language among law students as my experience with running the Francophone Society shows. Let’s network.
Drop me a line if you want to join the Society or would like more information: my first name @ my last name . org.
Last year in Osgoode (and the Law Journal)
I am lucky enough to be a senior editor of the Osgoode Hall Law Journal in the year of its 50th anniversary. To mark this occasion the Journal is publishing a series of special issues on “Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility, Environmental Law, Transnational Law and Comparative Constitutionalism, and Access to Justice and Law Reform” – to quote our editor-in-chief (and Section C’s criminal law prof last year) Jamie Cameron.
The Winter 2007 issue began the anniversary series with a discussion of law and feminism. Mary Jane Mossman (my first year property prof) guest-edited it and wrote a foreword and a book review. My first two footnote assignments when I was a junior editor came from our feminism issue.
The current Spring 2008 issue, with an all new look and feel, focuses on legal ethics and professional responsibility with Trevor Farrow as a guest editor. Professor Farrow is familiar to the 2010 Osgoode class as one of the faculty leaders of the brand new Ethical Lawyering in a Global Community course. Adam Dodek whose article opens the ethics issue was my Ethical Lawyering professor. Another name in the table of contents familiar to my class is Janet Leiper, the Visiting Professor of Public Interest Law and the overseer of the Osgoode Public Interest Requirement.
These are some of the happenings and names that remind me of my first year in Osgoode and with the Law Journal. I marked the passing of three quarters of the summer watching L’année dernière à Marienbad in the Cinematheque last night. Remember last year?
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