October 13, 2011, 18:30-20:00
Unmarried Couples and Family Law
Professor Robert Leckey
Robert Leckey teaches constitutional law and family law, and conducts research in those fields as well as comparative law. He has been a member of the Law Society of Upper Canada since 2003 and sits on the editorial boards for the Canadian Journal of Law and Society and the Review of Constitutional Studies. He chairs the Legal Issues Committee of Egale Canada. In 2010-11, he served as director of research for the Inquiry Commission on the Process for Appointing Judges (the Bastarache Commission). In 2011 he is serving as acting director of the Quebec Research Centre of Private & Comparative Law. He has received the Prix de la Fondation du Barreau du Québec (2007), the Canadian Association of Law Teachers' Scholarly Paper Prize (2009), the McGill Law Students’ Association’s John W. Durnford Teaching Excellence Award (2009), the Canada Prize of the International Academy of Comparative Law (2010), and the Principal's Prize for Excellence in Teaching (2010).
Me Violaine Lemay
Violaine Lemay is a professor at Université de Montréal’s Faculty of Law, the director of the Programme interdisciplinaire de doctorat en sciences humaines appliquées, anda researcher at the Centre de recherche en droit public. Professor Lemay specializes in the interdisciplinary dialogue between law and the social sciences. Her work studies, among other things, the social impact of the recent development of children’s rights on intergenerational relationships, the connection between pedagogy and law, public policy in youth matters, and the theory and practice of professional intervention in its relationship with authority and contract. Violaine Lemay received the Teaching Excellence Prize in 2008 awarded by the rector of Université de Montréal. She holds a doctorate in law from Université de Montréal and a master’s in law from Université Laval.
Alexander Steinhouse
Alex Steinhouse is a third-year law student at McGill University. Prior to his legal studies, Alex completed a BA (Hons.) at McGill University, receiving the Isidore Finkelstein Prize for the highest graduating mark in the Honours History Program. He will be articling at the Montreal offices of Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP.
Professor Johanna Ransmeier
Johanna Ransmeier is a historian of Modern China, specializing in the Late Qing and Republican period. Her current research describes forms of human trafficking, household bondage, and domestic slavery in China during this period. More broadly, she is particularly interested in the ways in which legal records and police reports can be used to shed light on local practices and to reconstruct social history and histories of family life. Professor Ransmeier teaches a range of courses on Modern China and East Asia. She plans to offer seminar courses on gender in China, as well as courses on law, crime, and transforming notions of rights.
October 20, 2011, 18:30-20:00
Access to Medicines: The Crisis Continues
Professor E. Richard Gold
E. Richard Gold teaches in the area of intellectual property and common law property at McGill University’s Faculty of Law. An Associate Professor at McGill Law, he was the founding director of the Centre for Intellectual Property Policy. His research centres on understanding the links between innovation, intellectual property and development. He led the International Expert Group on Biotechnology, Innovation and Intellectual Property, a trans-disciplinary research team that issued a ground-breaking report on the policies and law of innovation and intellectual property. Richard Gold has published widely in legal and scientific journals on this topic and is the author of Body Parts: Property Rights and the Ownership of Human Biological Materials (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 1996).
Dr. Rachel Kiddell-Monroe
Rachel Kiddell-Monroe, member of the United Kingdom Law Society since 1991, has worked in the humanitarian field for over 15 years. After starting up an indigenous rights advocacy organisation in London after witnessing the injustices faced by indigenous peoples during a 3-year stay in southeast Asia, she began working with Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) in 1992. Rachel headed emergency humanitarian missions in Djibouti (1992-93), Rwanda (1994-1995) and Democratic Republic of Congo (1993-1994; 1996-1997). She also advised projects in other African countries and in Uzbekistan. Rachel went on to open a regional advocacy office for MSF in Latin America where she worked for 4 years covering Colombia, El Salvador, Brazil and Mexico in particular. In 2003, she was appointed to head MSF's Access to Medicines Campaign in Canada where she became well-known for her access to medicines work and humanitarian ideals. Rachel was appointed President of Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (www.uaem.org) in August 2007. Rachel also lectures in international development at McGill University and acts as a consultant for the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (www.dndi.org) and the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network on the Canadian Access to Medicines Regime (www.aidslaw.ca. She lives in Montreal with her husband and three sons.
oline Twiss
oline Twiss has a longstanding interest in the ways that law and policy can be applied to promote public health. She completed McGill’s civil law and common law undergraduate program in December 2009. oline spent a summer working with the Intellectual Property Attorney at the Centre for International Environmental Law in Geneva where she researched the role of WHO in responding to counterfeit medicines. She has over ten years of experience doing public health advocacy work at a variety of organizations in Canada, including at the Stephen Lewis Foundation, the BC Nurses Union, and at the Children’s & Women’s Health Centre of BC. Her Master's research project examined transnational social movement organizing towards access to medicines and the adoption of the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health at the WTO.
Dr. Richard L. Cruess
Dr. Richard L. Cruess graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Princeton in 1951 and an MD from Columbia University in 1955. He is Professor of Orthopedic Surgery, and a Member of the Centre for Medical Education at McGill University. An orthopedic surgeon, he served as Chair of Orthopedics (1976-1981), directing a basic science laboratory and publishing extensively in the field. He was Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at McGill University from 1981 to 1995. He was President of the Canadian Orthopedic Association (1977-1978), the American Orthopedic Research Society (1975-1976), and the Association of Canadian Medical Colleges (1992-1994). He is an Officer of The Order of Canada and of L’Ordre National du Québec. Since 1995, with his wife Dr. Sylvia Cruess, he has taught and carried out independent research on professionalism in medicine. They have published widely on the subject and been invited speakers at universities, hospitals, and professional organizations throughout the world.
October 27, 2011, 18:30-20:00
Should We Obey the Law?
Professor Stephen Smith
Stephen Smith is James McGill Professor at the Faculty of Law, McGill University, where he teaches primarily in the fields of private law (common and civil law) and legal theory. A former clerk to the then Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, Brian Dickson, and graduate of Queen’s (Kingston), University of Toronto, and Oxford, Professor Smith was a Fellow in law at St. Anne’s College, Oxford from 1991-98 and a visiting professor at the University of Texas in 1998. His research is mainly in the areas of private law (in particular contract law and remedies) and private law theory. He is the author of Contract Theory (2004, OUP) and co-author of Atiyah’s Introduction to the Law of Contract, 6th ed. (2005, OUP). Professor Smith was the recipient of a Killam Fellowship for 2009-2010; he is currently writing a book on the law of court orders.
Jaggi Singh
Jaggi Singh is one of Canada's most high-profile anti-globalization and social justice activists. A self-described anarchist, Singh lives in Montreal where he works with groups such as Solidarity Across Borders (a local migrant-rights organization) and the No One Is Illegal collective, among others. Singh graduated from St. Michael's College School and attended the University of Toronto.
Catherine Gleason-Mercier
Catherine Gleason-Mercier is in her last year of the BCL/LLB program at McGill University. Before embarking on her law degree, Catherine completed a combined honors at the University of King's College in Classics and History. She hopes to pursue a legal career in litigation as she enjoys crafting arguments and oral pleading.
Professor Morton Weinfeld
Professor Weinfeld holds the Chair in Canadian Ethnic Studies, and directs the minor program in Canadian Ethnic Studies. Among his publications are an edited collection The Jews in Canada, with R. Brym and W. Shaffir (2010); Like Everyone Else But Different: The Paradoxical Success of Canadian Jews (2001), Still Moving: Recent Jewish Migration in Comparative Perspective, with D. Elazar (2000); Ethnicity, Politics, and Public Policy, with H. Troper (1999), and Who Speaks for Canada? with D. Morton (1998). Professor Weinfeld's current research interests are in areas of ethnicity and public policy, notably the role of minority-origin professionals in various policy domains. He has taught undergraduate courses on the sociology of ethnic relations, Jews in North America, an undergraduate seminar in Canadian ethnic studies and graduate seminars on the sociology of ethnic conflict, and social inequality and public policy.
November 3, 2011, 18:30-20:00
The End of the Artist: Copyright Law and the Internet
Professor Tina Piper
Tina Piper is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Law at McGill University and former Research Director of the Centre for Intellectual Property Policy. She completed graduate work at the University of Oxford as a Canadian Rhodes Scholar and clerked for the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada. She researches why people create and innovate in science and the arts and the role laws and norms play in this process. Her current Quebec FQRSC funded research explores the how medical scientific innovation developed in the early twentieth century in Canada in relation to patent law. Tina’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada funded research studies independent music labels in Montreal and the interaction between copyright and public subsidy in the discourse of creative economies.
Noelle Sorbara
Noelle Sorbara graduated from McGill’s Faculty of Law in 2010. In 2002, she founded the Pop Montreal International Music Festival, and served as the Executive Director until 2006, and she continues as Chair of the Board of Directors. She also sits on the Board of the Mile-End Legal Clinic. Her undergraduate and Master’s work focused on East Asian Philosophy and Mandarin.
Remy Khouzam
Remy Khouzam is widely recognized as a specialist in new media, film and television law – particularly in matters involving fair dealing and freedom of expression. He is a partner at the high profile Montreal law firm Lussier & Khouzam. In 2005, he was commissioned by the Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund to write and adapt a legal toolkit consisting of 12 contracts for producers of audiovisual and multimedia content. He currently sits on the board of directors of the Festival du Nouveau Cinema (FNC) and of the Montreal International Documentary Festival (RIDM).
Professor Will Straw
Will Straw is the Director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada and Professor of Communications in the Department of Art History and Communications at McGill University. He is interested in a range of topics, most of them having to do with media and cities. He is currently director of a research project, funded by the Quebec FQRSC, on "Media and Urban Life in Montreal." In another project, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, he is comparing sensational, crime-oriented periodicals in Quebec, Mexico, the United States and France. Will has been music correspondent for Prime Time (CBC Radio), popular culture correspondent for the Women's Television Network, and a cultural commentator for Newswatch (CBC Television, Montreal.)
