Ultra Vires Vol 17 Issue 2: 2015 October

OCTOBER 28, 2015 | ULTRAVIRES.CA

ILLUSTRATIONS BY ALEX WONG (3L)

THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO FACULTY OF LAW

Building cost up $1.7 million Fundraising still $1.4 million short of target MATT HOWE (3L) | PHOTOGRAPHS BY TREVOR SNIDER (2.5L) At the October 7 Faculty Council meeting, Dean Iacobucci provided an update on the Faculty’s new home—the Jackman Law Building. Students have likely noticed that substantial progress is being made on the exterior, after a long period of slow, if non-existent, progress, and the Dean confirmed that construction is back on track after last year’s delay.

However, the delay has caused the building budget to balloon even further.

The Business Board of the University of Toronto’s Governing Council releases an annual public report on capital projects. The 2014 capital projects report listed the law building’s “total project cost” as $54.6 million, an increase of $600,000 over the originally planned cost. The 2015 capital projects report, published on March 31, 2015, now lists the total project cost as “in camera data.”

We asked the Faculty’s Chief Administrative

Officer, Paul Handley, for an update on the building. He revealed that the budget for the building project has increased by $1.7 million since 2014, to $56.3 million. It is unclear why the Governing Council’s most recent report does not disclose this.

The reason for the increase is the construction delay caused by the Faculty’s failure to secure a necessary tree removal permit in a timely fashion, which set the project back by

six months.

Handley explained that Governing Council approved an additional $1.7 million in funding to the Faculty of Law to cover this increased cost.

It was also revealed at Faculty Council that funding for the new building has not been completed, because of both unfulfilled pledges and a gap between pledged funds and the Faculty’s portion of the building cost. Handley

continued on p. 12

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE Guide to In-firms Page 10

Interview with Justice Moldaver Page 9

From the Archives Page 23

2 | OCTOBER 28, 2015

EDITORIAL/NEWS

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Fundraising campaign should reflect student voices BRETT HUGHES (3L) Last week, Canadians voted for change in Ottawa, but U of T law students were reminded yet again that they had been signed up for “five more years.”

For those new on the scene, Dean Iacobucci was appointed last year following a selection process that seemed designed to limit student input. Our Students’ Law Society’s (SLS) held a vote and put forward official nominees for the decanal search committee, who were rejected by the University Provost. Meanwhile, the sole “external” member of the search committee was a U of T Law alum and partner at the law firm that endowed thenProfessor Iacobucci’s business law chair.

Somehow, the “international” search process found that what we needed was right under our noses all along—the son of a former Dean (and

former Supreme Court justice!), whose academic focus is law and economics, and who can leverage his and his father’s connections to raise large sums of money. Bold. Visionary.

I was reminded again of this disregard for student voices at last week’s Faculty Council meeting.

This was the first annual discussion on tuition and financial aid to be chaired by Dean Iacobucci, and his message was clear: “Things are great. Don’t be adversarial. Just be positive and help us raise money.” Students expecting dialogue were sorely disappointed. The take-home was that students should be seen—on the Faculty website, and in glossy promotional materials, perhaps—but not heard.

The administration surely expects students to play a major role in its upcoming fundraising push

for financial aid. In fact, students already do. The law school asks financial aid recipients to write thank you notes to donors for their noblesse oblige— I was asked to write a thank you note to the Imperial Tobacco Foundation last year.

Students should think carefully about participating in any financial aid fundraising initiatives until we have (1) more transparency about what is going on now, and (2) a clear picture of where our leader intends to take our school in the future. Raising lots of money is not an inherently valuable goal, so we should not be reflexively “positive” about a new fundraising campaign.

After a decade of a growing gap between tuition and financial aid, we have plenty of lost ground to make up for without letting costs balloon further.

Without a clear plan to tie fundraising to specific,

measurable commitments to accessibility, the new campaign will just function as a subsidy from wealthy donors to professors with sky-high salaries, all funnelled through increasingly debt-burdened financial aid recipients.

Ultimately, when the school asks for you to help fundraising as a student, make sure you’ve asked yourself: why does the University of Toronto Faculty of Law deserve more money? Am I confident the funds will go to students in need? To be sure, we need plenty of donors to get on board, but encourage them to be similarly critical. Let’s do this.

But let’s do it right.

Faculty Affairs: Tuition rises again while SLS stresses accessibility and transparency MATT HOWE (3L)

At the October 21 Faculty Council meeting, Dean Ed Iacobucci said he will recommend to the U of T administration that tuition fees be increased by 5% next year, the maximum legally allowable amount. This means that tuition for incoming students next year will be at least $34,600, an increase of almost $1,600.

The reason is the same as every year. The Faculty continues to increase its spending while financial support from the government and central U of T administration hardly changes.

Iacobucci said that, despite tuition revenue, the Faculty regularly spends more money than it brings in. The U of T administration has chosen to regularly transfer funds to the law school to cover the gap. Iacobucci said it would take “chutz-

pah” to seek transfers from the central administration without also increasing law students’ tuition as much as he can.

Dean Iacobucci wants to focus on “margins where we can make a difference,” instead of issues which are unchangeable. This includes closing the gap between the tuition growth-rate and the growth-rate of available financial aid—a gap which has been growing for years—and implementing a broad fundraising campaign around financial aid.

This fundraising campaign is in a “quiet” and “exploratory” phase, and Iacobucci indicated there is no particular plan or target at this stage.

Students’ Law Society (SLS) President Andrew Wang expressed appreciation that the administra-

tion has made financial aid a fundraising priority, but stressed that there are still potentially difficult conversations that the Faculty should be having on tuition and financial aid. He made three specific requests on behalf of the SLS. First, Wang asked that the fundraising campaign include specific, measurable goals to tie fundraising to financial accessibility targets, rather than only an absolute dollar amount. In particular, he asked for a contingency plan for financial accessibility in case fundraising falls short, or takes longer than expected—e.g. a commitment to draw on the Faculty’s endowment to maintain financial aid when fundraising does not keep pace with tuition.

Iacobucci agreed that measurable goals are important, but said he “couldn’t tell you what we ex-

pect to accomplish at this point.”

Second, Wang requested that the administration release more data on the socioeconomic composition of the class, and start tracking it for students who do not apply to financial aid.

In particular, he requested that the administration release the parental income data for the 50% of students who apply for financial aid to provide a partial picture of socioeconomic diversity.

Currently, for the other 50% of students, the administration takes the postal area from each student’s “permanent address” and uses the median income for that postal area—which may include 10,000 people or more—as a proxy for students’ actual family income. Wang argued this is an imprecise substitute for actual data for several rea-

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ultravires.ca sons, including that many students list their campus address as their permanent address, instead of their parents’ address.

He said more precise data should be collected, perhaps by requiring every incoming student to submit parental income information to the Financial Aid Office, or by adding a question about parental income to the peer mentorship survey.

Professor Denise Réaume spoke in support of the request. She said “it’s not fair to say [to students]: ‘take whatever information you’re given, and see if you can figure out where the holes are.’”

Professor Alarie and Dean Iacobucci defended the adequacy of the current information, stating that useful inferences can be drawn from postal area data, and that the technique is widely used in the social sciences. They said the administration has cross-referenced postal area data with actual data on students receiving financial aid and found them to roughly match.

Iacobucci refused to commit to releasing existing parental income data or to tracking additional data. He said that he would discuss it with Professor Alarie after the meeting.

In response to Professor Réaume, Iacobucci said that this was not an “adversarial process,” and that everyone is committed to achieving accessibility

and excellence together. Former SLS Vice President of Student Affairs and Governance, Padraigin Murphy (3L), found the Dean’s comment “a little tone deaf following his opposition to sharing

credit.

The Faculty currently provides “emergency” loans to students in this situation, even though the loans are supposed to be for “short-term” issues

Source: UV’s 2014 recruitment survey–174 responses from 2L class

Source: U of T Law Administration–Median household income from postal areas

the data the SLS requested, which students have now been requesting for years.”

Wang’s final request was that the law school “fix the access to credit issue.” Given that meeting one’s unmet financial need is contingent on access to large private lines of credit, some students struggle if they are unable to secure sufficient private

only. Wang said this approach only “works” if there are very few low-income students in the first place, because the emergency loan fund is limited.

Further, students with credit issues may not apply to this law school in the first place because it is unclear how, if at all, they will be helped.

Wang asked the administration to assure all pro-

OCTOBER 28, 2015 | 3 spective students that, if admitted, their unmet need would be met somehow, either through guaranteed private loans, or larger bursary amounts.

Professor Alarie said that this issue has been discussed for many years now and that he would continue to discuss it with fellow Financial Aid Committee member, Assistant Dean, JD Students Alexis Archbold.

Spencer Burger, a 3L SLS Student Affairs and Governance Rep, appreciated that the Dean is committed to solving the problem of aid remaining stagnant while tuition grows. However, he felt that the “elephant in the room”—the law school’s growing costs—was largely ignored. He thinks the academic-side of the law school should think seriously about ways in which efficiency could be increased, perhaps by requiring Faculty to teach more classes, which would allow for reduced future hiring.

For his part, Wang welcomed “Dean Iacobucci’s preliminary commitment to raising financial aid at least at the same rate as the rising tuition.” He noted that he was “looking forward to the Dean’s repose to our requests, and to continuing our work together to make U of T Law accessible to all.”

U of T Law and UTSU ALEX REDINGER (2L) Even if you try to avoid student politics, you have probably heard of the University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU). Here’s a brief overview of UTSU and how it relates to law students.

What is UTSU? Established in 1901, UTSU is the largest student union organization at the university, representing approximately 50,000 undergraduate and professional faculty students at the St. George and Mississauga campuses.

With approximately 650 JD and graduate students at the law school, we comprise just over one percent of UTSU’s overall membership.

UTSU has a three-point mandate: 1. To advocate to improve quality of and access to education, and to protect student rights.

2. To enhance the student experience by building community, organizing events, and supporting campus groups.

3. To provide cost-saving services, such as health and dental plans (which you can opt out of ), income tax clinics, discounted metro passes, and so on.

Recently, UTSU’s advocacy has prompted several changes: limiting flat fees for courses which required that students pay for a full slate of courses regardless of how many they actually took; rejecting Access Copyright, a redundant and expensive copyright blanket licence for access to certain academic materials; and pushing the TTC to introduce the post-secondary metro pass program.

Controversies UTSU has attracted controversy for two main reasons: (1) its advocacy activities, and (2) its electoral and internal processes.

UTSU has been criticised for involvement in campaigns like “Israeli Apartheid Week” and the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. Many of the advocacy activities are related to UTSU’s membership in the Canadian Federation of

Students (CFS), which it joined in 2003 and has itself attracted controversy.

There have long been concerns about the integrity of UTSU’s electoral process. For instance, UTSU resisted the switch to online ballots which occurred in 2013, and past elections have included suspiciously high numbers of spoiled ballots. During the 2014 election for the UTSU executive, Grayce Slobodian (of the CFS slate) received 2,574 votes; her competitor, Nicky Bhatty, received 2,559 votes; and there were 1,264 spoiled ballots.

As for internal management, in September, UTSU launched a civil suit against three former members of its executive committee: Sandy Hudson, Yolen Bollo-Kamara, and Cameron Wathey. UTSU claims that Hudson, not wanting to work with the incoming (non-CFS) slate, conspired with the other two to arrange her own dismissal. This allowed her to collect $247,000 in payments on her way out—approximately 10% of UTSU’s annual operating budget.

Governance changes UTSU is currently struggling to comply with recent changes to the Canada Not-ForProfit Corporations Act (CNCA), which require a new structure for its board of directors.

The first proposal, touted in 2014 by thenPresident Munib Sajjad, would have removed directors for colleges and faculties in favour of “constituency directors” (for instance, a commuter students director, an Indigenous students director, a sustainability director, and a female students director). Of 24 directors, three would have represented Arts and Science students, and three would have represented professional faculty students. Directors for colleges and faculties would be replaced by committees, which would present motions for the new board of directors to vote on.

Representatives from Victoria University, Trinity College, and the Engineering Society perceived Sajjad’s proposal as a means to remove dissident factions from the Board. Ultimately, the plan failed to receive the necessary

two-thirds majority and was thus rejected.

This year, two new proposals were voted on.

The “Zhuk/Singh” proposal would have maintained the current proportional representation of students according to college and faculty, and allowed internal elections for each constituent group. It also would have created six “general equity directors” appointed by the board. This proposal was endorsed by the Faculty of Law’s Students’ Law Society (SLS), as “it [created] a new position of Vice-President for Professional Faculties within the UTSU Executive Committee.”

The other proposal, from Grayce Slobodian (current Orientation Coordinator, former Vice President External), would have appointed one director per college and faculty, eight directors for the Mississauga campus (up from seven), and twelve constituency directors.

This was substantively similar to the first, rejected proposal.

The Zhuk/Singh proposal beat out Slobodian’s proposal, but failed to receive the twothirds majority necessary for ratification.

Thus, UTSU still needs to find a board structure that all groups can agree on. Theoretically, if UTSU does not comply with the CNCA, the organization must be dissolved, but this is unlikely to happen in practice.

Why should you care?

UTSU is the main avenue to advocate for law student interests to the University of Toronto. A number of college and faculty organizations have supported defederation from UTSU because they do not believe the organization takes into account their discrete interests.

There has been some support among the law student community, including from within SLS, to hold a referendum on defederation.

Last year, the SLS committed to “a Referendum regarding law students’ membership in the University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU)” for the March, 2015 elections. The SLS did not include an UTSU referendum question on the ballot. Several successful SLS

candidates in that election expressed an interest in holding a referendum this year instead.

Finally, you might be paying nearly $400 annually for UTSU services (less if you opted out of insurance), so you have an interest in ensuring that the organization spends the money in a manner amenable to you. You may also simply with to hold this representative organisation accountable through fair and democratic elections.

Even if you don’t want to sit through the long Annual General Meetings, you can at least vote online for the executive committee members each year.

NEWS

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Faculty affairs: Admissions report and Dean Iacobucci’s four priorities MATT HOWE (3L) Attendance was high and the mood seemed optimistic at the first Faculty Council meeting of the academic year, which dealt mainly with the latest admissions report and, in broad strokes, Dean Iacobucci’s priorities for the near future.

Professor Ben Alarie, chair of the Admissions Committee, began by providing an overview of this year’s Admission and Enrollment Report. Alarie stressed the positive aspects, pointing out that applications to U of T Law have gone up for the past three years, in spite of an overall decrease in applications to Ontario law schools.

Alarie also claimed that U of T Law’s yield rate (percentage of students who accept their offer), at around 65%, is the second or third highest amongst North American law schools.

He said he thinks the rate is a function of U of T’s excellent reputation, pointing out that only three students chose Osgoode over U of T,

fewer than in past years. He also noted that the plurality of students who rejected U of T’s offer (14) chose Harvard Law School.

Alarie made no mention of the diversity of the 1L class. There are a few interesting data points. For example, the number of aboriginal students enrolling at the Faculty has decreased over the past three years. The number has dropped from eight in 2013, to five in 2014, to only two this year.

Non-white students make up about 35% of the current 1L class, with “Mixed-Race” and “Asian” the only two listed categories which make up more than 2% of the class. These numbers are consistent with recent years.

Dean Iacobucci spent the remainder of Faculty Council laying out four main priorities which will guide his Deanship.

First, he wants to “enhance the student experience” through a heightened focus on experiential education—integrating classroom learning with hands on experiences—as well as increased support for students. The Faculty is hiring a “Manager, Academic and Personal

Counselling” who will help students navigate the accommodations process and serve as a counsellor to students.

Second, the new Dean wants to strengthen the school’s “partnerships” with local institutions and the global legal community. Iacobucci hopes to enhance our intensive visitor program to attract more scholars, and raised the possibility of an “intersession,” akin to Western and Osgoode. This would mean suspending regular classes for some period in which students would take an intensive course with a visiting lecturer.

Iacobucci’s third priority is to improve the Faculty’s “financial outlook.” Money is tight at the Faculty, especially with the construction of our new building, and options will be looked at to generate additional revenue.

Iacobucci reiterated that his fundraising efforts will be centered on financial aid. However, he said that a broad campaign will have to wait until funding for the Jackman Law Building is secured. For now, the Faculty will focus on “quieter” ways to fundraise for finan-

cial aid while Jackman Hall remains the first priority.

Asked if he had plans to account for the growing gap between tuition and financial aid until the fundraising kicks into high gear— freezing salaries or tuition, for example—Iacobucci said that he has no control over Faculty salaries and would address tuition at the next Faculty Council meeting. (At the next meeting, he announced that tuition would increase 5% again next year, and did not announce any interim measures to reduce the gap.)

Fourth and finally, Iacobucci will strike a committee to respond to the recent Truth and Reconciliation Commission report, which contains a number of “Calls to Action” for law schools and the legal profession. The committee will explore what more the Faculty can do to address these Calls to Action, both within the curriculum and more generally.

stitutional challenges normally reserved for large corporations and wealthy individuals.

One notable case was Harper v. Canada (AG), a kind of Canadian Citizens United, where the CCP funded intervenors to argue for upholding the constitutionality of election spending limits. Yes, the Harper in the title of this case is the Harper you are thinking of.

Trudeau’s funding pledge at $5 million is slightly under what the program was receiving nine years ago ($5.5 million) and significantly less than the $11.2 million promised by Stéphane Dion. Nevertheless, the funding is unquestionably a step in the right direction. It will have major consequences for anyone interested in using their law degree for public interest or social justice.

“We will give more support to survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, and sexual harassment, and ensure that more perpetrators are brought to justice.”

Trudeau has promised to implement a comprehensive gender violence strategy in concert with the provinces. This will involve increasing investments in shelters and transition houses, as well as amendments to the Criminal Code. The Criminal Code amendments will toughen bail requirements for those with previous convictions for violence against their partners and make intimate partner violence an aggravating factor. No word yet on restricting the ability of defence lawyers to viciously cross-examining sexual assault victims who take the stand (an idea floated by Premier Wynne earlier this year).

“We will repeal the problematic elements of

Bill C-51, and introduce new legislation that better balances our collective security with our rights and freedoms.”

The infamous security bill that had some Liberals tearing up their membership cards proved not to be the electoral vulnerability many expected. Trudeau’s ‘middle ground’ stance on C-51 was lent credibility by an official platform document that specified that a Liberal government would:

Fiat Justinia?

Justice Policy under Trudeau II JUSTIN KHORANA-MEDEIROS (1L) In the Munk Debate, Justin Trudeau expressed pride in certain big-ticket political legacies of his father, including multiculturalism and official bilingualism. Prime MinisterDesignate Trudeau should take as much pride in Trudeau Sr.’s impressive legal legacy. From decriminalizing homosexuality to liberalizing divorce laws, from legalizing contraceptive pills to reducing draconian mandatory minimums for drug crimes, from authorizing breathalyzer tests to imposing gun control laws, Pierre Trudeau (a former law professor and lawyer) spearheaded the most progressive justice policy initiatives of any politician in Canadian history. How will his progeny’s policies measure up?

“We will make the Supreme Court appointment process more transparent” Ironically, an all-party SCC appointment process was a perennial Harper campaign pledge in the early-to-mid 2000s. Indeed, upon his election Mr. Harper made some movements to create such an institution, but ultimately left it powerless to effect real change, before abandoning it altogether.

Nonetheless, it was unfair of Trudeau to claim that Harper “disrespected and degraded” the all-party appointment process, since it has never traditionally been a part of Canadian politics to begin with. We will have to wait and see how close to a US-style highly publicized (and politicized) ‘vetting’ process Trudeau wishes to bring us.

“We will ensure that all those appointed to the Supreme Court are functionally bilingual.”

Mr. Trudeau has stated he will go beyond the constitutional requirement to appoint three SCC justices from Quebec to ensure that all appointments to the highest bench are bilingual. While this is great news for Quebecers and French Immersion grads generally, it is unclear whether this will actually improve the quality of decision making at the SCC. Some argue that the Anglophone justices already have access to the best translators in Ottawa, and that this practice would exclude high-quality justices from the bench.

“We will legalize, regulate, and restrict access to marijuana.”

During the election, Mr. Trudeau promised that at least the decriminalization of marijuana would occur within “a year or two” of taking office. This would means less stress on the justice system, less stress on police forces who must currently commit resources to combatting a victimless crime, and less stress on the prison system - not to mention the ramifications for Canadians barred from the labour market by criminal records for small possession convictions.

“Reinstating the Court Challenges Program of Canada cut by Stephen Harper” One promise that attracted little attention during the campaign was Trudeau’s pledge to reinstate the Court Challenges Program of Canada. The program, which provided funding to ‘test cases’ that sought to advance minority rights (language, equality, inter alia) was eliminated in 2006. The program addressed the access to justice crisis in Canada by enabling the disenfranchised to bring con-

• • • •

introduce a guarantee that all Canadian Security Intelligence Service warrants respect the Charter of Rights and Freedoms; establish an all-party national security oversight committee; ensure that Canadians are not limited from lawful protests and advocacy; require that the government review all appeals by Canadians on the no-fly list;

Some of these points deserve applause, such as the establishment of an oversight committee (a common requirement in comparable legislation across the globe). Others, like the no-fly list review, are weak. The Liberal proposal preserves the use of ‘closed sessions’ in which the accused and their lawyer have no access to some of the evidence on which the judges might base their decision. In 2007, the Supreme Court held that a similar procedure for security certificates was unconstitutional under s. 7 of the Charter.

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FEATURES

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OCTOBER 28, 2015 | 5

False Security: The Radicalization of Canadian Anti-terrorism Interview with Professor Kent Roach SARAH ROSTOM (2L) On Thursday October 8th, 2015, Professors Craig Forcese and Kent Roach launched their new book titled “False Security: The Radicalization of Canadian Anti-Terrorism” at the University of Toronto. The book discusses the enactment of Bill C-51 (short title: Anti-Terrorism Act, 2015) and other recently enacted security laws, the domestic and international events that motivated its introduction, and its significant implications on both Canadian security law and civil liberties. The book also provides context to the far-reaching changes to security law that Bill C-51 has introduced. This includes Canada’s history of both underreacting and overreacting to terrorism, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) as an emerging and evolving terrorist threat, and lacking recognition for the role in counter-violent extremism programs in Canadian national security efforts.

Following the book launch, I spoke with Professor Roach about the new book, his motivations for co-authoring the book, and key themes and issues the book addresses. Profes-

sor Roach noted that he and Professor Forcese were shocked by Bill C-51’s content, but also the government’s lack of full explanation on the bill. This motivated them to write their own backgrounders and make them available at www.antiterrorlaw.ca.

But beyond this, Professor Roach observed that he personally felt he had an obligation to publicly voice his concerns with Bill C-51 given his involvement in both the Air India and Arar c om m i s s ion s , and the government’s complete disregard for their corresponding recommendations.

“Having worked 4 years as the director of research on the Air India Commission, and for the two years before that, been part of the research advisory committee for the Arar commission – I really felt like I had an obligation to speak out because for better or for worse, the Canadian people paid a lot of money for these inquiries, and I remain proud of both of them, and the government really ignored many of the recommendations and lessons from those….For me, what was really

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striking was how both of these commissions of inquiry, which had been sitting on the table gathering the proverbial dust, became very relevant with Bill C-51.”

In our conversation, Professor Roach re-iterated a point he made in the panel discussion: that he and Professor Forcese are not questioning the government’s ends, but the means that the government has taken to achieve those ends.

Professor Roach gave the example of the new Security of Canada Information Sharing Act enacted in Bill C-51.

He noted that, “I don’t have problems with properly tailored information sharing, as long as there is review that helps ensure that it’s accurate and reliable, and respects privacy. But the information sharing act was just so over the top, it was just so broad, it really kind of begged the question of who is going to review and how these massive amounts of information within government is shared.”

The means the government took with Bill C-51 animated an imperative message in the book, “that this narrative is both violative of rights, and also may – in a purely practical perspective – be counter-productive.” Professor Roach pointed to Bill C-44 as a clear example. Bill C-44 (short title: Protection of Canada from Terrorists Act) essentially reverses the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Canada (Citizenship and Immigration) v. Harkat where the court refused to recognize CSIS source privilege as a class privilege. Bill C-44 provides that once a CSIS human source has been promised confidentiality, a class privilege applies, and that individual cannot be identified in any subsequent proceeding unless that person and the CSIS director consent to the identification. Professor Roach observed, “Again, this is an example of the government trying to win a battle but losing the larger war. In the Air India commission, we looked at that question rather closely and concluded that it would not be advisable to give CSIS and CSIS sources such a privilege because it could make terrorism prosecutions more difficult. I had this kind of surreal experience in January or December of going to a parliamentary committee and basically saying, ‘I know you don’t intend this, but you are making terrorism prosecutions more difficult.’”

Taking a step back from the details of recently enacted legislation. Professor Roach and I discussed the government’s approach to responding to the murders that took place in October 2014. At the book launch, Professor Roach noted that the factual record on these events remains incredibly sparse, with very little information having been made publicly available (although newly disclosed docu-

ments regarding the warnings the RCMP received prior to the shootings at Parliament Hill may provide some additional and disappointing insights). Professor Roach contrasted this with Australia’s approach to the 2014 Sydney hostage crisis, where the Abbott government published a 75-page report one month after the siege.

Professor Roach commented on why he believes the Canadian government has remained tight-lipped on the events that took place in October 2014: “I think that it’s partly a particular sense that knowledge is not something that is to be encouraged, because as I said at the book launch, the Abbott government in Australia is very ideologically similar to the Harper government. There was a lot to lose because the terrorist in Sydney, Man Haron Monis, had been granted bail, charged with numerous non-terrorist offences, he had been involved with the mental health system – there was a lot that the government could look bad on but yet it felt that it needed to kind of clear the air…

Perhaps it’s a little bit like the long-form census: there is a sense that if you don’t have the information, if people don’t have knowledge, then you won’t have informed criticism. I think that is extremely, extremely regrettable.”

Politically, Bill C-51 received mixed responses from political parties, with the Liberals supporting, but promising to amend, the bill and the NDP promising to repeal the bill entirely. Professor Roach commented on the difficulties of repealing Bill C-51, given that CSIS may already be exercising powers that the bill grants the agency, including the ability for a judge to provide a warrant authorizing a violation of the Charter, so long as that violation does not cause bodily harm, the obstruction of justice, or a violation of a person’s sexual integrity. Moreover, he noted that even if it were possible to repeal Bill C-51, the government would also have to repeal parts of Bill C-44. Ultimately, Professor Roach observed that the repeals would not dispense with the need to move ahead on improving both review and oversight and discussing more comprehensive approaches to countering violent extremism.

Professor Roach also discussed his concerns with the Liberal government’s approach and his hopes for the incoming government – both particularly relevant given Canada’s newly elected Liberty majority government.

“My concern with what the Liberals are saying is that, one, it confuses what we think is a pretty fundamental difference between review and oversight. So they talk about parliamentary oversight…[but] we don’t want parliamentarians telling CSIS and the RCMP in real time what to do. They simply don’t have the competence and there are a lot of dangers

FEATURES

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JUSTICE POLICY UNDER TRUDEAU II

INTERVIEW WITH PROFESSOR KENT ROACH

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What’s Left Out? There’s at least one issue out there arguably more important than bilingual requirements or SCC appointment reforms - a problem that has plagued Liberal and Conservative governments alike, but which failed to make an appearance in any party platform. I refer here to patronage appointments to the several hundred non-SCC benches that the federal government controls. A 2006 study by CanWest News Service revealed that at least 60% of lawyers appointed since 2000 to the provincial benches of Quebec, Ontario, Alberta, and Saskatchewan and the federal court by the Chrétien and Martin governments had donated exclusively to the Liberal Party in the three years before their appointments. Let’s hope Mr. Trudeau establishes a non-partisan process to ensure that judges are selected purely for merit.

Justin Trudeau has promised some of the most progressive and dramatic changes in justice policy in years. Some of it simply undoes the damage of the Harper years, but some of it is entirely novel. While the election was largely fought on the economy, let us hope that Mr. Trudeau does not forget his numerous justice policy commitments.

All quotes pulled from the official Liberal Party Platform

in doing that…But also, the book agrees that we need a parliamentary committee that has access to secret information…but that’s not necessarily enough.

The end of the book has a pretty ambitious platform for legislative changes, which would not entirely eliminate C-51 but would certainly change big chunks of it, but would also introduce new subjects on the table. But I also think it’s important to note that we say: look, the ultimate litmus test isn’t whether a new government follows our particular list. Our list is there and if people find it helpful, that’s great. But we need to have a much more consultative sort of process. So ideally, what I would like to see a new government do is probably repeal some of the worst and most problematic features of C-51 before they take root, although they already may have taken root, and then to open up more ambitious legislation and policy-making through a kind of white paper.

This is also another thing law students need to be aware of: we are all, including myself, focused on legislation and court decisions, but it also matters how the government communicates its strategy. With any new government, I would be looking at the signals that it sends. I

mean, yes, I do think that parts of C-51 are both unconstitutional and counter-productive. I would hope that a new government would repeal them fairly promptly and not simply wait for Charter litigation which already started, but at its speediest would take 5-6 years, and I don’t think we can wait that long. But I would also be looking for a new government ideally to start a conversation, and one the best ways to start it is to figure out exactly what went wrong last October, and to the extent it doesn’t harm our ongoing security efforts, to make that public, and then let’s have an informed debate.”

Speaking to students specifically, Professor Roach provided his insights on how we as law students should respond to legislation such as Bill C-51, particularly at an institution such as the Faculty of Law where these issues are not always widely discussed. While Professor Roach recognized the pressures law students face, he emphasized that at the most basic level, students should be aware and informed on these issues in order to intelligently respond to questions that members of our families, communities and friendship groups may ask of us.

Moreover, Professor Roach observed that

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students should be asking and expecting law faculties to have debates about these issues, and be prepared to contribute to and partake in those discussions. Professor Roach’s final comments addressed his hopes for the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto in particular: …For Uof T particularly, I would like to see a faculty that is more attentive to these important policy issues with legal dimensions that are being discussed in Canada every day. I just think that we as a community – professors, students, alumni – have a responsibility to engage on these issues and to educate ourselves about them.

“False Security: The Radicalization of Canadian Anti-Terrorism” is available for purchase from Irwin Law and extracts of the text are available online. This information can be found in full on www.antiterrorlaw.ca.

This interview has been condensed and edited.

Better Know a Court: Nunavut CORINNE XU (3L) Inspired by The Colbert Report’s “Better Know a District” series, and a desire to learn about courts beyond the few encountered in our law school readings, Ultra Vires is launching the “Better Know a Court” series to acquaint you with some of Canada’s lesser known judicial institutions.

The Nunavut Court of Justice The Nunavut Court of Justice is unique in Canada in that it is both a superior and a territorial court. This would be like combining the Ontario Court of Justice, which is provincially appointed, and the Ontario Superior Court, which is federally appointed. The Nunavut Court of Justice was established in Iqaluit on April 1, 1999 as Canada’s only “unified” court. Prior to its establishment, justice was administered through the Territorial Court of the Northwest Territories, and the Supreme Court of the Northwest Territories.

All judges at the Nunavut Court of Justice are superior court judges and appointed by the Federal Government of Canada.

In addition to presiding over court proceedings in Iqaluit, judges from the Nunavut Court of Justice also travel as a circuit court to 25 of Nunavut’s 27 communities (approximately 95%). The Court visits as frequently as every six weeks or as infrequently as every two years, depending on a particular community’s needs.

The Court does not visit very small communities that do not have RCMP detachments and report very little crime. In an average week, the Court will sit both in Iqaluit and at least one other community.

Members of the traveling circuit court in-

clude a judge, a clerk of the court, a court reporter, a prosecutor and at least one defence attorney. Depending on the case, court workers and victim witness assistants might also travel with the Court. Court is held in community halls, school gyms, and in other conference facilities. Elders sit with the judge in the courtroom, and may speak with the accused after hearing the submissions and prior to the sentencing.

All court proceedings in the communities

records were kept. They may not know their date of birth, or may have been born out on the land. A child may be named to honour a deceased person—if the daughter bears the name of her paternal grandmother, a daughter might call her own father “son,” and he, in turn, would call his daughter "mother." Finally, in Inuktitut, verb tenses can be the same.

“Have you eaten” or "are you eating" is expressed the same way, which can present challenges when dealing with issues of time.

Justice of the Peace Court The volume of cases handled by the Nunavut Court of Justice requires the assistance of a wide network of deputy judges and justices of the peace, in addition to the federally appointed judges. Justices of the peace are lay people who perform various judicial and quasi-judicial functions. Living in the community where they sit, justices of the peace can preside over summary conviction matters, municipal bylaws, and certain criminal cases. They may conduct first appearance and bail hearings, issue warrants and summonses, and carry out public functions such as administering oaths and conducting marriage ceremonies.

Nunavut Court of Appeal

are interpreted for the public by courtroom interpreters. Language is an important aspect of cross-cultural communication, particularly in the law. Courtroom proceedings in Nunavut can present unique challenges with respect to sharing meaning and common understanding across cultural boundaries.

As Bruce McRae, U of T Law alumnus and Co-Chair of the CBA Aboriginal Law Section, states in an article about practicing in Nunavut, Inuit culture is very distinct because of how the Inuit organize their society. For example, older Inuit were born before official

Illustrations by Alex Wong (3L)

The Youth Justice Court of Nunavut The Youth Justice Court of Nunavut is a special branch of the Nunavut Court of Justice. It is charged with hearing matters relating to youth between 12 and 18 years who have been charged with Criminal Code offences. The Youth Justice Court of Nunavut is comprised of judges from the Nunavut Court of Justice, as well as certain justices of the peace appointed under the Youth Court Jurisdiction Regulations.

The Nunavut Court of Appeal hears appeals from the Nunavut Court of Justice. A panel of one to three judges hears matters before the Court. A single judge hears an appeal from a summary conviction case, whereas a panel of up to three judges hears appeals from an indictable offence. The Nunavut Court of Appeal only sits two to three times a year, and judges from the Nunavut Court of Justice, the Courts of Alberta, the Northwest Territories, and the Yukon all serve on the Court of Appeal.

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OCTOBER 28, 2015 | 7

Admissions Report Law school is becoming more homogenous SIMON CAMERON (2L) The recently concluded Federal election saw a record number of indigenous MPs sent to Ottawa. The same, sadly, cannot be said for the Faculty of Law. The class of 2018 saw just two aboriginal students registered, the lowest number in the six years of data available to Ultra Vires. This low also comes despite the Faculty of Law having received more applications from aboriginal students than in any other year over that same time period.

Aboriginal Students 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 Applications 18 26 24 31 24 38 Offers 7 12 9 14 9 8 Registered 5 11 6 8 5 2 Percent Accepted 71% 92% 67% 57% 56% 25% These figures were published in the Annual Report presented by the Admissions Committee to Faculty Council on October 2. The Annual Report breaks down the applications received, offers made, and students enrolled among several demographics.

These figures reveal that the demographics of the entering class have shifted considerably over the past six years. One significant change has occurred in the number of mature students enrolled. Only four mature students were registered in the Class of 2018, a drop from a high of twenty-one in the Class of 2015. The Annual Report does not detail how many offers were extended to mature students.

Mature Students

The lows in aboriginal and mature student enrolment come despite the class size at the Faculty of Law reaching a record high. In 2010 the entering class numbered 193 students, by 2015 that number had risen to 209.

2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 Class Size 193 199 194 207 200 209 The low number of registered aboriginal and mature students may be the result of another troubling trend in admissions to the Faculty of Law. Students offered enrolment are increasingly likely to decline their offers. This is reflected in the increase in the number of offers extended in order to fill the entering class.

2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 Application's Received 2229 2111 1915 1789 2000 2040 Offers 285 284 279 301 349 323 Class Size 193 199 194 207 200 209

2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 13 19 21 9 5 4

Matt Damon: Space Pirate?

MATTHEW SMITH (1L)

This piece contains mild spoilers for The Martian.

Matt Damon: rogue CIA asset, good Will, heist-man, and now…space pirate?

Earthlings not living under rocks will have heard of Hollywood’s latest addition to the “Alist actor vs. outer space” genre: The Martian.

Stunning visuals, suspense, and its own brand of smart, irony-laden comedy are the hallmarks of this film, with the latter largely thanks to Matt Damon’s portrayal of NASA astronaut Mark Wattney. During one monologue, Wattney proudly declares that his current plan of action made him “technically, a pirate. A space pirate!”

Okay Wattney: how so?

Wattney’s claim to extra-terrestrial piracy is simple. In his NASA craft and habitation module, American law applies. However, on

the surface of Mars, he is outside sovereign territory, and maritime law applies. He plans to commandeer a second NASA craft—absent permission, he will have taken control of a craft in “international waters” without permission of the owner: piracy!

But how does this claim hold up against the law of outer space?

As it turns out, Wattney is a fantastic astronaut, botanist, and extraterrestrial survivalist, but not an authority on space law. Unfortunately, the “space pirate” characterisation falters on two counts. First, maritime law is not the leading legal regime on Mars. Second, under current international space law, Wattney was within his rights to make use of another craft, with or without permission.

First, the suggestion that maritime law applies on Mars seems predicated on the idea

that law in space is derivative from terrestrial international law concerned with nonsovereign regions. There is no space law, so maritime law will do. There is, however, a body of international space law entrenched within the United Nations’ Treaties and Principles on Outer Space. This consists of five UN treaties and five principles adopted by the General Assembly.

The seminal treaty regarding space law is creatively titled: the “Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies.” (Mercifully known as the “Outer Space Treaty.”) Surprisingly, this 1967 treaty predates the 1982 codification of the international law of the sea in the “Third United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea,” or UNCLOS III. Once humanity’s use of outer space was in full-swing, two independent legal regimes were in place, with each having sole jurisdiction over their respective regions. Barring some collapse of the UN’s Outer Space Treaties between the present day and the year 2035—when The Martian is set—there is a source of space law one could turn to, and would turn to before applying maritime law.

Second, Wattney’s claim to space piracy is undermined by Article V of the Outer Space Treaty, which takes the wind out of Wattney’s (solar) sails. It states that in “carrying on activities in outer space and on celestial bodies, the astronauts of one State Party shall render all possible assistance to the astronauts of other States Parties.” Further, Article XII states that “all stations, installations, equipment and

space vehicles on the Moon and other celestial bodies shall be open to representatives of other States Parties to the Treaty on a basis of reciprocity.”

If any of the 129 parties to the treaty, from Afghanistan to Zambia, owned the craft in question, they would be hard-pressed to summon a legal rationale for denying Wattney access. Under the Treaty, astronauts “shall give reasonable advance notice of a projected visit”, but when left for dead on an inhospitable world, a knock on the door seems timely enough notice. I doubt even the most callous of bureaucrats would turn away an unexpected traveller on a cold (negative 73 degrees Celsius) Martian night.

All in all, our apologies to Matt Damon for scrapping his dreams of becoming an extraterrestrial Captain Jack Sparrow. Perhaps next film, Matt. “Pirates of the Etherium: Curse of the Black Hole” anyone?

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8 | OCTOBER 28, 2015

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Viva Voce LISANA NITHIANANTHAN (3L)

A series totally not inspired by Humans of New York, providing a glimpse into the lives and thoughts of students at the Faculty of Law.

A: You know the bar deadline’s coming up.

Spread the word.

E: What?!

A: Yeah I emailed the CDO. E: That’s good to know.

- Ainslie Keith (3L) and Erin Peters (4L)

When people find out that a 5 foot tall blonde girl wants to practice criminal law, they’re either skeptical about whether I’ll be able to handle it or they’re concerned that I’ll be associating with ‘those awful kinds of people” who get charged with crimes…so my biggest struggle is to note curse them out for underestimating me.

- Samantha Saunders (3L)

At this point, in 4th year, we’re supposed to have it already figured out. And if we don’t have everything figured out…then, it’s really easy to spend a lot of this year coming up with some way of having it figured out. I guess the problem is we’re trying to figure out what our careers are, figure out life outside of law school, but it’s related enough to the curriculum or the function of law school that I feel like I’m getting schoolwork done when I’m trying to make sure I have a job for next year.

Or make sure that I’m not going to be swimming in debt for the next 15 years.

- Dave Marshall (4L)

I love to read, especially non-fiction, so that also takes up time. Especially when you’re reading every casebook. The last thing…I’m reading right now, is by Bob Rae, it’s his new book about the state of politics in Canada.

The last thing I read before that was the Lincoln biography, a team of rivals.

- Benjamin Fenech (1L)

Um well I’ll need to decide soon whether I actually want to be a lawyer.

- Spencer Robinson (4L)

Dennis Edney on Omar Khadr and doing good with a law degree ZACHARY AL-KATIB (2L) On September 17, the U of T Law Union and Muslim Law Student’s Association hosted Dennis Edney, the voice of Omar Khadr for the last twelve years. More than 150 people attended the lunch-hour talk, “Fighting for Freedom,” in which he recounted his involvement in Omar’s case, as well as broader issues of security, liberty, and rights in post-9/11 Canada.

After the talk, I sat down with Dennis to chat about some of the topics he covered. This interview is a composite of that chat and previous and subsequent conversations we’ve had.

You and your co-counsel, Nate Whitling, were named as two of the 25 most influential lawyers in Canada this year

by Canadian Lawyer because of your work on Omar’s case. Why is this a case that has national importance?

Omar Khadr’s case is a measure of the rule of law in this country. Guantanamo Bay is a terrifying place—a place outside the rule of law. People are treated like animals. They are denied basic human rights. Omar was literally a child when he was found under a pile of rubble in Afghanistan. He had no choice in being there. He was a child sent there by his father, with a group of men who turned out to be fighters. Omar had been abandoned by every adult figure in his life.

Instead of helping him, we allowed him to be tortured in Bagram [Airforce Base, in Afghanistan], then shipped off to Guantanamo,

where he suffered further torture and unspeakable living conditions. Our government knew about all of this, and was content to leave him there. They didn’t demand that his rights as a Canadian citizen be upheld.

This was a case about holding the government to account, making sure it was not allowed to just abandon citizens to places outside the rule of law.

How did you first get involved?

I was asked by an American civil liberties organization to take on the case of a Canadian citizen—not Omar Khadr—who was being held at Guantanamo. Most people don’t know that Omar wasn’t the only Canadian there.

When I got there, I heard there was a young child, who was Canadian, being held there, and I asked to see him.

I can never forget that first meeting. Here was this young boy shackled by his hands and legs to the floor, unable to move. He didn’t talk to me the entire time, until the very end of the meeting when I took out a picture of my own son and showed it to him. That was how we initially connected.

You know, when I went to Guantanamo, I thought it would be something great to put on my resume. But what I saw there the first time changed me. It was a turning point in my life.

I cried the whole way back.

What made you take Omar’s case?

What it really boils down to is that I couldn’t live with myself if I did nothing. I couldn’t turn away from what I saw in Guantanamo. It was the exact opposite of everything I lived for and believed in. A place where the rule of law did not apply, where people had no rights,

where there was no presumption of innocence, or obligation of humaneness. It is a nightmare, literally.

To think the USA, which holds itself out as the upholder of liberty and democratic values, could operate such a place in this day and age is beyond belief. To see our government leave a Canadian citizen, a boy, to rot there was completely unacceptable to me.

How has this affected your life?

It’s made me a better human being and a better lawyer. It also meant that I completely destroyed myself financially. My practice fell apart, and it was extremely difficult emotionally. I’ve gone into a lot of debt, and I had to re-finance my house. But I have no regrets.

Why not?

Because I feel like this was my test. Everyone has something in their life that they get tested with. Sometimes it’s a family issue.

Sometimes it’s something in your career.

There’s a right decision, which isn’t always the most lucrative in terms of personal gain, and there’s the wrong decision. I made the right decision. It’s paid off because I can go to sleep at night knowing I’ve done something meaningful, and I haven’t abandoned my principles.

What advice do you have for law students?

Stand up for justice. Care. Be engaged.

Vote! You don’t have to be a criminal or constitutional lawyer to do those things. You can be a civil lawyer. You can do corporate work.

You might not even work in the law. Whatever you do, though, be an ethical person and use what you have to help make this society better.

How do you do that, practically?

Institutions. Society is as strong as its institutions. You can’t do good work on your own.

We are in dire need of more institutions that work to make people’s lives better. Get on the board of an institution, or start something, and fill a need in society. Just looking at civil liberties work, there are numerous organizations in the US that are well-funded. It took a long time to get there, but they do good work.

We need to be building such institutions here.

I look at what’s happened since 9/11 and it terrifies me. There has been an erosion of civil liberties in Western democracies, and the institutions resisting that tide need to be bolstered. People forget what Germany looked like before 1939—it was a progressive, democratic place. It didn’t take much for Hitler to create a satanic war-machine. He eroded the rule of law and institutions.

As a law student, you can do a lot. It starts with pro bono clinics, involvement in the law school community, government. Those things.

Then you stay involved. You get involved with the board of a society geared towards achieving societal benefit, in a way that aligns with your interests. If one doesn’t exist, get some people together and start something. I was on the board of the Scottish club in Edmonton, and we did great work.

You have to leverage institutional manpower and capital to do societally beneficial things.

This interview has been condensed and edited.

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OCTOBER 28, 2015 | 9

Justice Moldaver on lawyering, life at SCC, and Judge Judy CLARA ROZEE (3L) AND NICK REYNOLDS (2L) On October 1, Supreme Court of Canada Justice Michael Moldaver came to the Faculty to sit on the panel for the 2015 Grand Moot.

He sat down with us before the moot began for a wide-ranging discussion on the legal profession, life as a Supreme Court justice, and his aspiration to someday follow in Judge Judy’s footsteps.

NR: Did you do any mooting in your time as a student here?

Not other than the compulsory moot. I think we had the compulsory moot in first year, but not beyond that, I was too terrified.

CR: You obviously got over that fear eventually.

Well, I don’t know. I never got over the fear of appearing in a courtroom, whether it be the Court of Appeal, or the trial courts. I always had butterflies and a great big lump in my throat just before the judge or judges came in.

I only had limited experience in the Supreme Court. In around 1978, I went there for a leave application, and got screamed at so badly, I crawled out of the court with my tail between my legs. I came back to Toronto, and I spoke to my partners at the time, and said, “I’m never going back to that place.” And I never did. I never went back there. Until all this happened. (Laughs.)

CR: Chief Justice McLachlin said what she tries to do as a judge is put herself in the shoes of the parties. She describes

this as “conscious objectivity.” If you had to describe your task when it comes to judging, how would you?

I agree with the Chief Justice. On a somewhat more practical level, I guess certainly at this court, it’s doing a lot of listening, and being particularly careful about how often you interrupt, and trying to make your questions meaningful.

It’s important to come in well prepared. I’m one of nine judges on this court, and in most cases counsel only get an hour to make their argument, so by and large we do a lot of listening, punctuated by the odd question. You sure don’t want to take things over, and you don’t want to be seen by your colleagues to be trying to take over, because they have questions too.

I’m just telling you from a very practical point of view what goes on in the courtroom.

I’m always thinking about where an argument is taking me. I may have come in with a certain point of view, but if there’s a compelling argument that starts to lead me down a different path, I remain open to that.

At this court, as I said, there’s a lot of listening. At the Court of Appeal, where I spent fifteen years, I was much more involved in the questioning. We had time to ask questions.

There were only two other judges. It was more acceptable to get involved in the case, and to actively engage with counsel.

CR: What has it been like to move

through the different levels of court? Have you had to adapt?

Yes, I’ve had to adapt. It was a huge change for me going to the Supreme Court. I had fifteen wonderful years on the Court of Appeal, and great colleagues, and good work. It’s been a major adjustment for me to work with eight other colleagues as opposed to two other colleagues. Also, the nature of the work at the Supreme Court is really quite different than the great bulk of the work that we see at the Court of Appeal. Most of the Court of Appeal work is error correcting, and some jurisprudential. At the Supreme Court, it’s virtually all jurisprudential, with very little error correcting.

More importantly, it’s being in a position, one of nine, to try and figure out what’s best for Canadians, what’s best for Canada. And while we are constrained by stare decisis, that doesn’t mean we’re frozen in time. We have to look at where we are, at any given moment and decide, within the bounds of stare decisis whether change is required. The Carter case is perhaps a recent example of how the Court went from a 5-4 decision 20 years ago to a unanimous 9-0 decision 20 years later.

Here, you feel the weight of the country on your shoulders. There are a lot of sleepless nights when you lie awake in bed, eyes wide open, wondering whether you are doing the right thing.

Now having said that, this is Canada, and

there are certain parameters within which we all work, and I don’t think any individual case is necessarily going to set this country on its head or last until the next century. Everything that we do is ultimately reviewable, and if it turns out that we’ve taken a wrong turn, then within the bounds of stare decisis, we can and do engage in our own error correcting, shall we say. We’re all just human, that’s the bottom line.

NR: You’ve spoken about your professional relationship with the other justices. Have you developed any personal relationships with your colleagues?

Yes, of course. Since I was last here [at the U of T Grand Moot], there have been significant changes in the composition of our court.

I’ve gone from being number eight on the list to number four. There have been several changes and I’m extremely happy with my new colleagues from Québec. I have a very close relationship with them. I just met Justice Brown recently, from Alberta, and he’s very personable, very young. He’s only fifty; I feel like his father! But he’s just a truly decent kind person, and warm— very bright, very able. So I’m looking forward to building a relationship with him as well.

Is there some tension at times? Of course.

But you’ve got to try to separate the personal from the professional. Every one of us up there really cares about what we’re doing, and we

continued on p. 14

If you have vision.

Some people have long known what they want out of a career. They look beyond their present and focus on their future: a future with international scope, global clients and limitless possibilities.

If you are that person, you’ve just found where your future lies.

Law around the world nortonrosefulbright.com

GUIDE TO IN-FIRMS

10 | OCTOBER 28, 2015

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Spread designed by Roxana Parsa (3L)

12 | OCTOBER 28, 2015

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FUNDRAISING STILL $1.4 MILLION SHORT OF TARGET continued from cover

Photographs by Trevor Snider (2.5L)

confirmed that the Faculty is $1.4 million short of its $36 million fundraising goal.

This shortfall will be addressed through additional fundraising, which will take priority over other fundraising efforts—including for financial aid—until completed. No indication was given as to when this fundraising is expected to be complete.

As for the building completion timeline, Dean Iacobucci provided more specifics as to the transition process. Although the Class of 2016 had been promised repeatedly before enrolling, and during their first year, that the building would be complete for their third year (2015-2016), Iacobucci confirmed that no-one will attend class in the Jackman Law Building this year.

The last direct communication to students had come through an email from interim Dean Jutta Brunnée in September, 2014, which stated the building would be substantially completed in Feb-

ruary, 2016. That message did not state whether classes would be moved at that time.

The Faculty expects an Occupancy Permit in February, 2016. However, classes will not be moved at that time in order to minimize disruptions mid-semester. This will also allow more time for the Faculty to complete the “Fit, Finishes, and Extras” stage, where furniture and audio-visual equipment is installed and tested. Instead, classrooms and offices will move during summer 2016.

The building will be fully operational by September, 2016.

There is some small solace for graduating students, however. Once the Occupancy Permit is granted, the Faculty will focus on moving the Bora Laskin Law Library into its new home and readying the space for students. The plan is to have the Library open for studying by late February or early March, in time for students prepping for April exams.

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2015 Grand Moot addresses the "Right to be Forgotten" KATYA POPOFF (2L) | PHOTOGRAPHS BY RONA GHANBARI (2L) The focus of this year’s Grand Moot, the Faculty’s annual student-organised show moot, was the nation of Flavelle’s new "Right to be Forgotten" legislation. The problem was inspired by the European Court of Justice’s 2014 decision that search engines must comply with requests to remove links from search results for a person’s a name that are "inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant."

Veenu Goswami (2L) and Joe Bricker (3L) represented the Appellant, Boondoggle Inc., the world's largest and most profitable search engine. Boondoggle brought a constitutional challenge to Flavelle’s Improving Search Results and Protecting Your Internet Legacy Act. Under the Act, any Flavellian can make an application to the Privacy Commissioner of Flavelle requesting that certain links be removed from search results displayed in response to queries for his or her name. The Privacy Commissioner may issue an order requiring that search engines remove the impugned links if the “adverse effects on the individual resulting from the ongoing public connection between his or her name and the information linked to by the Search Results” outweigh the public interest in ongoing access to

the search results.

The applicant in this case was Brettly Greenberg, a lawyer and former politician, was charged with fraud in connection with misappropriating several hundred thousand dollars from a client's trust fund. The allegations proved to be baseless and the Crown later withdrew all charges. However, this was not reflected in the search results for “Brettly Greenberg,” which continued to be dominated by stories about the allegations, with few mentions of the withdrawal of the charges. Brettly Greenberg successfully applied to have stories about the allegations removed from search results for his name.

Boondoggle argued that the Act infringes its section 2(b) Charter right to freedom of expression and cannot be upheld as a reasonable limit under section 1. The gist of their argument was that truth (even if incomplete) is always in the public interest, and that administrative decision-makers are simply not equipped to adjudicate this kind of dispute between freedom of expression and privacy.

Dave Marshall (3L) and Hana Dhanji (3L) represented the Respondent, the Privacy Commissioner of Flavelle. They argued that the Act does not

infringe freedom of expression under section 2(b) because of "how the electronic sausage is made."

Search results, representing an almost infinite amount of algorithmically generated content that is not even known to the search engine creators, do not warrant protection under s. 2(b). The Respondent argued, in the alternative, that the Act should be saved under section 1, as its protection of privacy and reputation outweighed the freedom of expression interests at play.

The Grand Moot was judged by a panel comprised of Justice Michael Moldaver of the Supreme Court of Canada, Justice Robert Sharpe of the Court of Appeal for Ontario, and Justice Julie Thorburn of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.

As is tradition, the judges reserved judgment— presumably we were all winners for having witnessed such fine advocacy—and commended the mooters for their preparation, engagement, and success in mastering a difficult problem.

Brett Hughes (3L) and Sam Greene (3L) were this year's student organisers. Greene reflected on the moot: “I thought that all four of the mooters knocked it out of the park. […] It takes an extraor-

dinary amount of effort to attain the level of mastery the mooters displayed.” He also mentioned the judges’ contributions: It goes without saying that all three are highly distinguished, deeply intelligent jurists. The questions they asked were tremendously insightful. But the most fun part was the banter. Being able to roll with the punches and knowing when to laugh or joke are critically important advocacy skills, and the way the judges approached their questioning allowed the mooters to show off those skills in spades.

With the completion of the Grand Moot, many U of T Law students are now starting to prepare for competitive mooting next semester, an activity that was recently the subject of an article in Macleans magazine.

14 | OCTOBER 28, 2015

INTERVIEW WITH JUSTICE MOLDAVER continued from p. 9 tend to be Type As, all of us. It can get pretty tense at times, because if you really believe that the law should be x, and you’ve got three other colleagues that agree, and four that don’t, and you’re waiting for the fifth one to make up his or her mind, that can lead to tension and anxiety and so on. At the end of the day, you’ve got to try to separate the business side of things from the personal. Sometimes it’s not easy, but it’s essential if you hope to survive.

CR: Speaking of going out for drinks and dinner, how do you unwind in your free time?

Dirty martinis. (Laughs.) With olives. Unfortunately, I’m not a hobby person. Unlike some of my colleagues who for example, like to golf, I don’t. I did once, but I’m so bad, I don’t need more stress and frustration in my life. I tend to just go home, turn on the news, and before you know it, I’m fast asleep.

On the weekends, I’ll work from about 6 in the morning until 2 o’clock in the afternoon, and then my wife and I will just goof off.

Sometimes we’ll have a dinner party at night, sometimes we’ll just go to a movie and then out for dinner, sometimes we’ll go for a walk on Rideau Canal. I like nature—I’m not a camper or anything, but sometimes we’ll go into the Gatineau Hills and walk around up there. Nothing terribly exciting.

NR: You were recently in Stratford for Hamlet’s Appeal. Are you a fellow thespian?

If you’re asking if I ever acted, I did… I acted in high school. Primarily because my

FEATURES mother wouldn’t let me play football, or hockey, so I had to do something else. I acted in two plays. One was A Man For All Seasons, and I was hoping to get the lead role, I was hoping to be Thomas More, but my English teacher had something else in mind. She made me Cardinal Wolsey —a perfect role, I think you’d agree, for a nice Jewish boy from Peterborough—who had never seen the inside of a confessional but probably should have!

Mercifully my part as the Cardinal ended in the first act because I got killed in short order. But I messed up my lines both nights. .

That caused me to realize that my acting career was probably going nowhere. Added to that was the fact that the year before we did George Bernard Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra. Again, I was kind of hoping for Caesar, but ended up playing the role of the palace eunuch.

CR: No! Yes. So I realized there must be something better than playing the role of eunuch one year and Cardinal the next. Having said that, when this job is done, I would really like to become the Judge Judy of Canada. I can only hope!

NR: And how was Stratford? Did you enjoy it?

It was a very interesting experience on a number of levels. I’d never read Hamlet before. We didn’t study it in high school. Even if I had, it would have been 50 years ago, or more, so I wouldn’t have remembered a thing.

I had to do a fair amount of reading to get ready for the Stratford Moot. One of my difficulties with Shakespeare was that I rarely ever understood a word he said. So as I remarked at Stratford, if it weren’t for Cole’s Notes, I’d still be back in grade ten.

I was always scared to death before I went

into the courtroom, especially on a murder case. I’d wake up every day and I’d want to just pull the covers over my head. I often woke up thinking why didn’t I go into dentistry?

And what I mean is that—and I don’t mean to disparage dentists — but when I think of dentists, I think that as long as they have some skill and do some preparation, chances are they’re going to beat the tooth. There’s probably about a 99.9 percent success rate. That’s one of the differences between being a dentist and being a trial lawyer. You can prepare to the nth degree, you can do a sparkling job in the courtroom, you can be absolutely brilliant, and you can still lose. There’s no certainty in the courtroom.

Going to court, going to trial on a major case was not a fun experience, and I always found that I lost a piece of myself in the courtroom, win lose, or draw. Every major trial took a toll. Mind you, it only takes a toll if you care about what you’re doing. If you don’t care about what you’re doing, if you see your role as simply being there and seeing that the I’s are dotted and T’s are crossed, then I think you can sleep better at night. I didn’t see that as my role.

I wouldn’t take on a major case, a murder case, for example, unless I believed or had a reasonable doubt in the innocence of my client. The reason for that is that if I didn’t believe myself, I couldn’t sell it to anybody. If I were going to argue successfully in front of a jury, that jury had to feel it in me. They had to know that I believed, and that I wasn’t trying to sell them a bill of goods.

Now the downside of that is that if you really care about what you’re doing, it hurts more when you lose. I used to suffer my losses far more than I would relish my wins. When I lost a big case, you wouldn’t see it if you met

ultravires.ca me on the street, but I would sort of punish myself for days, and sometimes weeks at a time, thinking where did I go wrong, what could I have done, what should I have done differently. Should I not have asked that question, maybe I should have asked this question.

All these things go through your mind. Losing a client to the penitentiary for life is not a fun experience.

CR: What’s the best piece of advice that you never got in law school?

I don’t know what goes on in law schools today so much, so I can only comment about my experience. It was important to learn the law, and go through the cases, fact, issue, ratio, whatever they do, and you had to have a basic understanding of the law.

In first year at U of T, we had Christmas exams, and fortunately they didn’t count, because I stood in the bottom quarter of the class and failed Torts. I travelled home to Peterborough hoping for a little tender loving care. I went to my father and told him I wanted to quit law school, that I wasn’t cut out for it, and that I wanted to join him in his scrap metal business. And he had no sympathy whatsoever—he accused me of not working hard enough. He put me on the next bus back to Toronto, and said “You get to work. I don’t want to ever hear about you quitting law school. Get working!” That was basically his message to me.

And he would not accept that I had been working. Indeed, I’d been working harder than I ever had in three years of Arts, believe me. In Arts, an exam question might be: “discuss the meaning of the universe”, and you would write ten pages of fluff, and that would be it. But here, at the Law School, suddenly you’re confronted with exam questions that were often 3 and 4 pages long.

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I remember in first year Contracts, I got to the final exam, and I panicked. I went numb. I literally went numb for 45 minutes. I could not think, I could not write, and I saw the whole year going down the drain. Somehow I managed to get it together, and I ended up getting a C. As for my father, it wasn’t that I wasn’t working until Christmas. I’d been working harder than I ever had. What I didn’t know was how to write a law school exam. I had this silly notion that somehow, somebody would like to have an answer to the question that was asked. Very dumb on my part. The only thing that mattered was the issues. And when I learned that they were only really interested in the issues as opposed to answers, I’d basically learned how to write a law school exam and things moved along from there.

The problem was that when I went out into the real world, you have real live clients. They weren’t interested in issues! They didn’t want to hear, well you may go to jail for life, or you may walk free. They wanted to know what was going to happen to them. They wanted answers. To that extent, and I don’t claim to know, again, what goes on in law school today, I would have liked a little bit more of a practi-

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cal approach that would have been more useful to me — preparing me to deal with real live people who have real live problems. To me, that was a bit of a failing.

CR: I have a question about the real world. What do you think the role of Canadian law schools should be in terms of improving access to justice?

Oh boy, that’s a huge question. I happen to think that we have a tremendous justice system, and I’ll speak primarily about the criminal justice system, although it bleeds into the civil justice system as well.

The criminal law is not a silo unto itself. Everything bleeds into other areas. So if I take six months on a trial that should have lasted three months, that means a judge in a courtroom was not free to hear a divorce case, or to hear a civil action, or whatever it may be. And because we have 11(b) of the Charter, which says that you’ve got to have your trial in a reasonable time, what happens is that criminal cases get precedence over civil and family law cases. You have long queues for civil cases to be heard, long queues for family law matters to be heard. And certainly in the civil areas, you see today ADR [alternative dispute reso-

lution] has grown up around us, and many people are bailing out of the civil justice system because it’s inefficient, it’s ineffective, it’s wasteful. You don’t know if you’re going to get a judge that knows anything about the kind of case you’re involved in.

People are leaving the civil justice system in large numbers, which is not great for the overall administration of justice, because in part, it stultifies the development of law. If you’re doing mediations and arbitrations and so on, you’re generally not resolving critical points of law. In the criminal law field, we’ve got to stop this we/they mentality. Defense counsel and Crowns have to start acting in a responsible fashion. There’s a huge mistrust out there.

The criminal justice system is functioning to a large extent on fear.

Defense counsel are afraid not to raise Charter motions even though they think there’s not much in them, because if things go badly they don’t want to be facing an incompetent counsel allegation in the Court of Appeal.

Crowns are running scared because today I don’t think that they have the discretion that they used to have. I think there are policy statements that define what they have to do or not do. Some, I believe, feel they are not supported from on high, so if they have to make a tough decision and it goes badly, and somebody walks free on a high visibility case, they’re worried that there’s not going to be someone on high there to cover their back. Everything is under a microscope today… I think that certainly in the higher visibility cases, there is a fear on the part of some Crowns to make tough calls.

Trial judges. I did murder trials — a lot of them — and they were mostly done in seven or eight days Today it’s usually seven or eight weeks and sometimes seven or eight months.

There’s a lot more concern on the part of trial judges about being overturned and having to re-do the trial, so they tend to err on the side of caution. Appellate courts have to take steps to reassure trial judges that if they act reasonably and responsibly, they will be supported.

It’s a long answer to a simple question but I think it’s important for trial judges to take back control of their courtrooms and for appellate courts to support them. I also think it is

OCTOBER 28, 2015 | 15 critical for counsel to act responsibly and that the stakeholders in our justice system work together, in good faith, to return to a system in which quality justice can be delivered in a timely and efficient manner. So perhaps some of these issues could be canvassed at law school with a view to improving our justice system.

What’s required is a cultural change and I think law schools and law students can play a role in bringing that about.

NR: We’re almost out of time, but I do have one more question. You may have read that a lot of computers and computer algorithms…

(Laughs.) Oh! …have started replacing the job of lowlevel workers, and we hear about this happening with document review and discovery. If this work is no longer available to junior lawyers, what do you see their role being? How might that affect the legal profession in general?

You’re way over my head! First of all, I don’t even know what an algorithm is! We got that in today’s [moot] problem. We’ve got this problem of freedom of expression, and algorithms, and servers, and service providers, and oh my god! (Laughs.) I’m a dinosaur when it comes to this stuff. But, I guess I will say, like anything else, people will have to adapt. If in fact technology is taking over some of the work that junior lawyers used to do, well, we’ll just have to find something else for junior lawyers, or else fewer people will go into law. I don’t know what the answer is because I really don’t know the mechanics of this.

CR: I guess the question is, what can a lawyer do that a robot never could?

Well, you know, you might be asking that about judges too at some point! Maybe we’ll just feed in the facts and we’ll get the answer and that’ll be it, and we’ll all be out of work.

And then I’ll go into dentistry. Or become Judge Judy. She’ll always have work.

This interview has been condensed and edited.

Open letter to Dean Iacobucci Re: SLS request for household income data We, the undersigned, were present at the October 21, 2015 Faculty Council discussion on tuition and financial aid at which you expressed a commitment that “this is not an adversarial process.” In that spirit of collaboration, we write to echo and reaffirm the Students’ Law Society (SLS) request that the Faculty of Law administration both release and collect more data on the family income levels of its students.

We firmly believe, like concerned students before us, that shared data is essential for our shared commitment to financial accessibility and socioeconomic diversity.

First, we request that you release the parental income data for the portion of the class who applies for financial aid, dating from 2015 back to the last disclosure of this information in 2003.

Second, we request that you task a committee this year with finding a method for collect-

ing parental income data for the portion of the class that does not apply for financial aid.

The first request is straightforward because the Financial Aid Office already has the data.

As such, we echo the SLS request that this data be released by the next Faculty Council meeting on November 25, 2015. We share your concern that outlier years not be interpreted to show trends. This is why the SLS asked for all twelve years dating back to the last disclosure in 2003.

We understand that the second request requires more effort because it involves collecting data that the school does not currently collect. That is why we agree with the SLS that it would be appropriate to task a committee with determining the best way to begin collecting this data.

We understand that the school currently uses the median income in postal areas for each student’s “permanent address” as a proxy

for the actual income of the half of the class who do not apply for financial aid. We appreciate the explanation from you, Professor Alarie, and Professor Niblett on this methodology and on its use in the 2013 report on The Accessibility and Diversity of Enrolment in the JD Program and the Career Choices of JD Graduates of the Faculty of Law, 1999-2012.

We assure you that we understand both the methodology, and that the postal area data has been compared with the parental income data that the school does have. We remain unconvinced that this is sufficient.

However strong this methodology may be for estimating data that cannot be collected, the data students have been asking for can be collected. No good reason has been provided for the Faculty to use a proxy when it could collect actual data instead.

Lastly, you said you were “more worried” about the data moving forward, than the data

the SLS was asking for. You expressed great concern that the trend could go in a negative direction, and suggested that we should all be focused on that potential problem We share your concern for the future, but that is one reason we need this data now.

If we do not know exactly where we are and have been, then we cannot measure our success in the years to come.

We firmly believe that it is always better to have data, than not to have it.

Kindest Regards, Sarah Bittman, Daniel Carens-Nedelsky, Peter Entecott, Matt Howe, Brett Hughes, Padraigin Murphy, Maia Rotman, Willow Petersen, Ramz Aziz

OPINIONS

16 | OCTOBER 28, 2015

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Word on the Street What did you do right after OCIs?

MICHAEL COCKBURN "I walked to the corner of Bay and King and stood in all the lobbies, suit on, arms crossed, and tried to figure out if I actually fit in"

EMMA ROMANO "Step 1: Removed nude pantyhose.

Step 2: Donned sweatpants.

ALAYNA DUECK

MADISON HASS

RONA GHANBARI

"I watched Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince with a Dark & Stormy (or 4)."

"Right after OCIs I bought a bottle of wine under the assumption that I would go to pub night to celebrate. I spent the night on my couch watching South Park instead"

"Ate a pizza pantsless and then passed out."

Step 3: Ordered pad thai."

JAKE GEHLEN "Combination shower beer and sit down shower."

ASHLEY MAJOR

SYDNEY HOPKINS

VICTOR KIM

"I waited around for the snacks to be brought out, stuffed myself, then went home and watched an episode of The Mindy Project in the bath"

"Immediately after my last OCI, I flew home to Ottawa to celebrate Thanksgiving with my family."

"I went to sleep and woke up in a new Bugatti."

Let’s Lead on Climate Change.

Let’s Break up With Fossil Fuels.

GRAHAM HENRY (2L) Governments around the world, including our own, have agreed that we must limit global warming to two degrees Celsius. Past this point, we reach “dangerous” levels of warming that will stress our society to the breaking point and only get worse the further we rise up the thermometer. We know what we need to do to avoid this future. Research recently published in Nature lays it out clearly: to stay below 2°C, “80%, 50%, and 30% of coal, gas, and oil reserves, respectively, would need to remain below Earth’s surface.”

How can we, as law students and members of the U of T community, help keep this carbon in the ground? A great place to start is getting our university out of the fossil fuel business.

Faced with this crisis, U of T is, with its $2.3 billion endowment, choosing to maintain significant holdings in the fossil fuel industry. It is betting on the success of these companies to do what they say they will: extract, sell, and burn all their reserves while exploring for more. These actions are at odds with the values of our institution, contribute to the destruction of the world we

are busy preparing for, and certainly satisfy the criteria for divestment as set out in the U of T divestment policy.

In March 2014, Uof T350.org, a studentrun climate action group, submitted their divestment brief to Meric Gertler, President of U of T. We have asked the university to issue a statement of values committing to fossil fuel divestment, to be followed over the next five years with divestment of all direct holdings in the 200 fossil fuel companies with the largest proven reserves of carbon.

On receipt of such a request, the President must strike a committee to evaluate the proposal. The committee must consider prudent investment, social injury, and actions taken by national or international governments on the issue.

It would be financially prudent to divest from fossil fuels. They have dramatically underperformed in recent years, and will play a limited role in our necessarily low-carbon future. Further, numerous studies have shown that portfolios divested of fossil fuels have equaled, and sometimes exceeded, the performance of those holding onto these stocks.

The burning of fossil fuels causes great social harm. With every extreme weather event, extra day of drought, and inch of sea level rise, we see the harm happening now. It will only get worse in the future. Even more devastating, the greatest burden of climate change lies with those on the margins of society. Put simply, they are less able to pay their way out of danger.

International governments are starting to act. This December, representatives of almost every country in the world will be meeting in Paris with the goal of establishing a binding international agreement on climate change. This agreement, if successful, will put hard limits on the amount of greenhouse gases we can emit into the atmosphere.

There is overwhelming scientific consensus, and growing political consensus, that action on climate change must happen, and must happen soon. The University of Toronto should align itself with action being taken to combat climate change rather than betting on and profiting from the continued success of fossil fuels.

With what we know about climate change,

and the university’s role in society, divesting from fossil fuels is not radical; business as usual is. To pull out of the fossil fuel business would be a measured, principled, and responsible move for our university. We can be a leader on climate change and a beacon of hope for our shared and sustainable future.

For more information, visit http://www. toronto350.org/divest and check out “The Fossil Fuel Industry and the Case for Divestment.” To get involved, you can find us on Facebook (Uof T350/ Fossil Free Uof T) or email me at graham.henry@ mail.utoronto.ca.

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OCTOBER 28, 2015 | 17

Talking about law: The environment, war, morality, and more NICK PAPAGEORGE (1L) I came to law school with numerous ideas about what might be done with a law degree.

But for a few, these were abstract ideas. They ranged from practicing on Bay Street in Toronto, to Wellington Street in Ottawa, to not practicing law at all—think being a professor, or president of the Chicago Cubs.

Two months into my 1L year I have gained a fair bit of insight from various talks and lectures into some of the actual work being done with the law, and the spectrum is broader than one might imagine. From the environment to conflict zones to history, the law is omnipresent.

The first talk happened down the street at the Law Society of Upper Canada. (I might here note that I was among the youngest in the room, dressed way down, and expecting John Goodman to scream “You’re out of your element, Donnie!” at me any moment.) Thankfully, three weeks in law school gave me enough understanding to follow the discussion instead of sitting there for two hours wondering what the hell a tort or a duty was.

Dutch lawyer Roger Cox humbly discussed his brilliance and creativity in successfully suing his national government for negligence (see the video via the link on the online version of this article).

Cox argued that the Dutch Government’s inaction on emissions reductions—in spite of international agreements it was signatory to— constituted a breach of the duty of care it owed to Dutch citizens. The court agreed and ordered the Dutch government to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 25 percent by 2020. Cox has begun working with other European governments to launch similar suits.

After the talk, Mr. Cox and five Canadian legal experts discussed the prospects for a similar suit in Canada. The consensus was that it wouldn’t fly. The Netherlands is a fully civil law jurisdiction; successfully challenging public policy through private law would be implausible in Canada.

Yet, former Court of Appeal for Ontario Justice Stephen Goudge believed a challenge under section seven of the Charter might stand a chance. This possibility should be heartening to those in Professor Schneiderman’s Constitutional Law class, who by now must think constitutional law is all federalisms and Francophone schisms.

In the next talk I attended, Dennis Edney used the law to compel governments to act, but in a markedly different way. For some twelve years he fought a protracted legal battle in American and Canadian courts, and most notably in the military tribunals of the deplorable Guantanamo Bay internment camp. Edney’s goal was to afford Omar Khadr his most basic rights as a Canadian and as a human being by getting Khadr removed from a place that was, and continues to exist, well outside the bounds of law and morality.

Edney’s personal recounting of this journey was mind-numbing and surreal. One may have known the story already, yet in the moment could not quite believe it. The details of the abhorrent conditions and treatment experienced by Khadr—torture by any definition of that term—and the perseverance of Edney to extricate him from this most Kaf kaesque situation were astounding in their repugnancy and impressiveness, respectively.

The urgency with which Mr. Edney then spoke of the need to defend our civil liberties more broadly, beyond egregious cases like this one, was a poignant political call to arms.

Coming as it did from someone who had done battle on the front lines, it carried considerable weight. It was spoken not as some platitude or ideal but as a very real possibility, of which Mr. Edney was a living example.

Edney spoke not just of the potential for lawyers to snatch justice from the jaws of iniquity, but of our duty to do so. Terms like “social justice” and “human rights” are thrown around so much that they often approach meaninglessness. But Mr. Edney came to our school with the intention of upending that impression, and in that he was an unreserved success.

One may not dream of taking on such a high-profile, emotional, and expensive case, nor does one need to. But one can carry the ideals expounded upon by Mr. Edney—perseverance, defence of civil liberties, the willingness to do what is right over what is profitable—into whatever their post-law school endeavours are.

Finally, while Misters Cox and Edney used the law to oppose governments, Dr. Armitage spoke of the law as historical and contemporary theory.

Dr. Armitage’s talk revolved around the contentious meaning of “civil war” and historical efforts to proffer a definition. He underscored how the Roman roots of the term make it inherently paradoxical; the Latin bellum civile means “war between citizens,” and the idea of war absent an external evil confounded both the Romans and all of posterity.

As such, a static conceptual definition has been, and continues to be both much evasive and highly contested. Yet reaching for one is important, as both the definition and its application have clear legal implications.

Naming a conflict as a civil war bears on issues of: potential intervention by governments external to the conflict; legitimacy conferred upon the warring parties; and the prosecution of the war itself. The first two aspects have ties to international law and governance, about which I know nothing and will refrain from commenting on.

However, the third is tied to the most core concepts of law and legal rights; for instance, whether habeas corpus is continued, or suspended (as Lincoln did during his Civil War).

The idea that contemporary legal problems may be approached not just with a view to history but by a total immersion in it fascinated me as a student of history. Indeed, one could name any contemporary legal issue and find a long history that both informs and constrains the debate surrounding it.

This is all to say that our school and other local institutions draw some brilliant speakers. Some of us may be certain of our post-law school future, and some may not have the foggiest. Either way, you have something to gain from these sorts of talks, free food included.

Reflections on OCIs MICHAEL COCKBURN (2L) In the weeks beforehand, the students went about their days in a desperate search for quantification. What grades did you get?

What volunteer clinic were you working for?

Was that your first choice? What was your course load like? Did it show enough of an interest in corporate? How did your work experience stack up? Did you go to McGill? No? Western? Oh fuck, that sucks eh? Haha jk man. Anyway, how many firms did you apply to? Only 30? Did you apply to those New York firms? No? Oh, right the grades. How many interviews did you get here? You bought a navy blue suit? Did you know that statistically

it made you more hireable over a black or a grey suit? That's why I got one too. What tie you get? Oh, dark red? Same man. Ah well, shit, good luck right? Get enough type A personalities in a room together and it was inevitable.

The interviews were okay though. You stand in a line for a few minutes in the waiting room before your timeslot, your left hand shakes a bit on the first go. Everyone looks meekly at everyone else and we make bad jokes about not knowing what the fuck we’re doing. A rep from the CDO marshals you forward and, after adjusting your tie and check-

ing your hair one last time you parade out, hoping your power posture is up to snuff. You walk into a room and thankfully remember how to properly shake a hand, and you sit. All of a sudden everything is fine. They ask a bunch of questions and they’re all about you.

As you talk you remember how dope you used to think you were. Everyone seems interested in you. It’s great. Every single time you come out saying “hey, that went really well.” The day ends and you go home. Wash, rinse, and repeat.

The good feelings last until you remember that intent to calls are a thing. The desperate

search for quantification begins anew. Has this firm sent out emails yet? They did? Shit.

Why you and not me? What grades did you get? What volunteer clinic were you working for?

Whatever. We all signed up for this I guess, and we all go through it. Something will come up in the next week or two that’ll give you some perspective and you’ll remember it’s all fine.

18 | OCTOBER 28, 2015

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Boots on the Ground Set your precedent at Bennett Jones and hit the ground running.

bennettjones.com/students

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OPINIONS

OCTOBER 28, 2015 | 19

Kid, You’ll Move Mountains.

TAMIE DOLNY (1L) You are prepared. You have watched Legally Blonde seven times and know that perms are not water-proof. You have not perfected your bend and snap, but are working on it. You stalked Lawstudents.ca with a blind passion. You memorized your schedule the moment U of T Law sent it to you. You taped it to your binder. You bought a binder. You bought highlighters. You bought different colored highlighters.

On the first day of law school, you walk up to an apathetic student handing out o-week kits, a mixture of dread and anticipation churning in your stomach. You sit down at your table and try to make a concerted effort at small talk for the next three hours, stumbling through the same school-ageoccupation-dreams questions over and over again until it becomes a blur. It’s going to be okay, you pray. THIS IS GOING TO BE FUN. During your first cold-call, your heart nearly explodes. You do not know the answer. The words vomit out of your mouth.

Ten seconds pass. You realize you are still alive, barely breathing, clutching your left arm, and hyperventilating in the corner of Northrop Frye.

U of T Law is a brick to the face.

Before law school, you didn’t know that extracurriculars were competitive; your exposure to clubs involved sitting with friends, talking about poetry, pretending to be sophisticated. You realize quickly that your $33,000 tuition funds the school’s on-call psychiatrist, subsidized yoga, and therapy dogs. They even give you a happi-

ness graph in your first week: “it will go down,” they warn. “This is a high point.” A happiness graph.

By the Ethics and Professionalism seminar, the lawyers talk about burnout and suicidal thoughts in front of an exhausted audience.

The panelists discuss work-life balance. Your neighbours frantically scribble away at clinic applications.

At this point, you have become fully convinced that you will die by the age of thirty: from alcoholism, depression, or papercuts. If one of your professors gave an HH bounty for your life, you know someone would pull it off. They wouldn’t just pull it off: they would kill you, cover it up, learn five languages, and then, to boot, become the next Trudeau.

There is little worse than a toxic culture, and nothing worse than one you cannot change. The competition to get into this school is so tight that competition between those who do get in can feel suffocating. It becomes irritating to be dragged from event to event, constantly reminded that “grades aren’t everything” but, as the CDO cheerily informed us at our first event, “grades are everything.” Grades are everything. Your self-worth and self-esteem should be measured by your academic success over one short year. Your identity depends on this.

U of T Law places its students through such a killer program because they, honestly, want us to ‘succeed.’ They want the highest Bay Street placement rates, the most elite alum in Canada, the best articling percentages. U of T Law is it, they tell us repeatedly, drilling it

into our heads until it becomes unconscious.

You are at U of T Law. You have grit. You kill to win. You attack your opponent at the jugular.

My issue with this atmosphere is not the focus on success. I want to thrive, I want to be the best I can be. My issue is about the students who are left behind and trampled on in this mad rat race.

When a school pits students against each other on a curve that is often arbitrary— “your answers were all great,” the professors agree, “the difference between a P and an HH was so minimal this year!”—you have to wonder what is lost. When you worry whether sharing notes with a classmate means they etch out that higher mark that you crave—that you need, for your sense of self—it is a signal that competition is eroding your own kindness, your humility, and your identity.

This law school may teach us to be great lawyers, but it is not necessarily teaching us to be great human beings.

I constantly struggle between two aspects of my personality: the part of me that craves success—recognizes it, reveres it, no matter the cost—and the second aspect that wants to give back to society, to be the person my younger self needed. I often find it difficult to maintain a sense of who I am outside of my career path.

But my name is Tamie. My favourite feeling is biking at night in the summer, no hands on the handlebars. When I was a child, I wept after accidentally killing a frog while trying to catch it with a butterfly net at my cottage.

I was constantly kicked out of classes in elementary, middle, and high school for laughing too much. My favourite number is four. My worst fear is shame: yet I have failed and been humiliated spectacularly in my life in too many ways to count. I like to think that it builds character.

What draws me to law is the ability to shape lives for the better: the human element. I don’t believe that competition makes us better people—maybe I’m a dirty hippy—but I look forward to this career because of the positive impact it can have on others, whether through business or human rights. We are the movers and shakers of our generation. We will change the world.

All I’m saying is that it’s easy to forget why we are doing this: why we are slogging along, collecting our marks, clawing at each other for a chance at a job, begging firms to mentor us into leaders. It is easy to forget that this should be a little bit fun: that yes, the material is dry and often boring, the competition is stiff, but there are people around you with incredible stories and beautiful, riveting eyes if you bother to glance over at them.

My suggestion is that all of these happiness graphs and depressing seminars and poor emotional outlooks are wrong. We will not be miserable and distraught ten years down the road, and our lives are not over because we chose a difficult career. In fact, they are enhanced for that very reason.

If it’s not hard, it’s not worth it. And in the words of Dr. Seuss: “Kid, you’ll move mountains.”

Faculty Council: A Familiar Feeling RAMZ AZIZ (1L) The second Faculty Council meeting of the semester occurred this past Wednesday, October 21. The Law Union rallied its faithful to attend this all-important meeting.

Students, professors, and administrators were set to discuss tuition and financial accessibility at the law school. High on progressive passion, I heeded the call.

The Place The trusty Solarium typically accommodates all within its eponymously sunny bowels, but more students than normal attended this meeting, displacing certain administrators to the indignity of the stairs. I liked the no-frills simplicity. Just a conference table, chairs, and projector screen.

The People Faculty members took their seats with an air of indifference. For most, it was clearly not their first rodeo. I was happy to see most of our Student Affairs and Governance Representatives—our majestic StAGs— grace the table. Others strategically occupied seats in the audience, perhaps to draw upon the people’s power.

Some StAGs showed deference to their elders, offering to vacate their seats for late-arriving Faculty. Classy. Perhaps even classier were the suits and formal attire donned with casual flair by the President and a couple of StAG reps. They meant business, and they looked it. Just the right blend of broke student and bona fide badass.

The Food The spread was really the star of the show.

There was more than enough to turn the most permanent frown upside down. After attendees improved their disposition with a healthy dose of wraps, cookies, coffee, and juice—pillaged with impunity by some non-attendees— the meeting commenced on an amicable note.

The Business Dean Iacobucci quickly dived into the meat of the agenda, over the faint sound of munching and the occasional slurp.

The Dean opened up the eagerly awaited tuition and financial aid item with a few all-too-familiar comments about the Faculty’s fiscal position. U of T’s Governing Council won’t allocate more money to the law school. Post-secondary transfers from the province have stagnated. With the provincial grant now constituting less than 50% of a university budget, Ontario’s formerly public universities are considered “publicly-supported” rather than “publicly-funded.”

This situation is not unique to U of T or Ontario. It affects universities across North America and around the world. Remedies require cooperation—and, dare I say, collaboration—between students, faculty and administrators. This is why I was surprised to witness typical interest-based dynamics at play.

As a newbie first-year attending my first

Faculty Council meeting, I was somewhat excited, mildly nervous, and all-around curious as to how the governing body of the Faculty of Law conducted its business. I expected to see a change from the familiar power dynamics, archetypal roles, and status quo struggles that are ubiquitous to joint administrative, student, and faculty bodies. I expected a cultivated culture of collegiality given that we are older, supposedly wiser law students. I expected decision-makers to bequeath to students a higher level of trust.

Instead, the conversation played out true to the status quo. Our SLS President outlined the growing gap between financial aid and tuition—for the 50% of the class receiving bursaries, the average bursary now only covers one third of tuition, as opposed to half of tuition a decade ago. He expressed the need for universal access to credit, or at least an alternative to financial aid contingent on private credit for those prospective and admitted students with credit issues.

Chiefly, he requested access to comprehensive student socioeconomic data to better identify problem areas, trends, and solutions.

The administration agreed with “the principle” and ambiguously committed to contemplating the request.

Some faculty members allied with the administration delved into a confusing and meaningless tirade about current data collection practices.

A maverick faculty member defended the students’ position, arguing that students concerned with financial accessibility were working with one hand tied behind their backs without access to the same data as the administration. The Dean quickly interjected that the relationship with students was not “adversarial.”

Oh dear, I was getting the wrong impression. My mistake.

The mental health aspect of tuition never came up, though we heard a lot from the administration about postal codes. So that’s cool.

The conversation left little room for questions from the audience. A bold third-year student, armed with a confidence that only a secure articling job can provide, pointedly asked what action the administration will take in response to the SLS requests. “Further [internal] discussion” was the clearly miffed response.

The Skinny If you have ever been exposed to the politics of university governance, things weren’t all that different. Unfortunately, that’s kind of the problem. Mutual trust and cooperation at Faculty Council might cause some to split their wig, and others to rejoice.

I’ll keep my fingers crossed in anticipation.

OPINIONS/DIVERSIONS

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A Better Way to do Financial Aid DANIEL CARENS-NEDELSKY (3L) The Faculty of Law has an exclusively needs-based approach to financial aid. This is wonderful and incredibly important for ensuring that financial need is not a barrier to law school. However, increasing strains are being placed on the financial aid system and it is under great stress.

According to the Faculty’s annual financial aid reports dating back to 2007, the average increase in “effective tuition” for students applying for financial aid is 10% per year, in contrast to the average annual 7.25% increase in total tuition. The Faculty is effectively increasing tuition on its least wealthy students at a rate greater than for its wealthiest students. This should not be the case. I am suggesting a small change to our financial aid system that I believe will help correct this imbalance.

Before I explain my suggestion, here is a quick outline of the current program.

First, the Financial Aid Office combines students’ tuition costs with cost of living expenses to estimate total financial “need.”

The Financial Aid Office then subtracts personal assets, government loans and grants, deemed parental income, and a few other sources of income to determine the student’s “unmet need.”

This need is met through bursaries (one-off grants by the university) and interest-free loans (the university pays interest on private loans). The total funds available for bursaries in a given year is a fixed amount ($2.8 million in 2014-2015), and is divided among students in proportion to each student’s unmet need as a percentage of the total unmet need of all students. Thus, if a student’s unmet need is 0.1% of the total unmet need of all students, they would receive a bursary of $2,800. This means the greater the overall need of U of T students, the smaller each student’s bursary will be.

My suggestion is that rather than having a robust bursary system U of T law should lower tuition and institute a robust “wealth fee.”

Here’s an example using 2014-2015 tuition and financial aid numbers. Instead of setting first-year tuition at $30,230, we set it at the “average effective tuition” ($23,307) and institute a wealth fee that requires wealthy students to pay an additional amount above this, up to the maximum amount allowed by the province. (I use the term “wealth” as a shorthand for the collection of sources of income that the Financial Aid Office imputes to students.)

The least wealthy students would still receive bursaries, the moderately wealthy students would only pay a portion of the maximum allowable wealth fee, and the very wealthy students would pay the maximum wealth fee.

The wealth fee would be based on the same criteria as our current system and can applied so that there is no difference in the tuition revenue the Faculty receives or the effective tuition each student pays. It is merely a reframing of our existing system with no distributional changes. Despite this, I argue there are at least four reasons to prefer this framing of our financial aid system.

1. It exceptionalizes wealth, not financial need The current financial aid system presumes wealth. Students are assumed to be able to afford the law school, and must provide evidence that they cannot in order to partake in the law school’s largess. A wealth fee reverses this presumption. It assumes that the average student requires financial assistance to attend law school and only imposes a fee on those “exceptional” students who do not.

This would better reflect the increasing number of students who do, in fact, require financial assistance. It would also more accurately reflect the distribution of wealth

in the Canadian population as a whole—the vast majority of Canadians, after all, couldn’t afford to come here without assistance.

2. It is more equitable Students who require financial aid spend a significant amount of time and energy applying for it. They also provide a substantial amount of personal information. This is, quite simply, a tax on the less wealthy. Such a distinction is inconsistent with our university’s commitment to equality. If we are willing to demand something from one group of students, equality requires that we demand it of all students (barring a rational explanation for the distinction).

Collecting this information would entail an increase in administrative work, but it would also reduce other types of work we are currently doing. For example, the administration estimates the parental income of the 45% of the class that does not apply for financial aid by studying postal areas of each students’ listed “permanent address.” It also spends time cross-referencing postal area median incomes with data on the 55% of the class who do apply for financial aid. This effort can be spared by requiring that all students submit their financial information.

Having this information will also allow us to more confidently argue that increasing tuition is not negatively affecting the economic diversity of our law school.

3. It reduces “sticker shock” by highlighting how much low wealth students pay

high tuition by explaining our financial aid system. Why not reduce this problem by actually reducing the tuition, thus greatly reducing the sticker shock?

4. It highlights who bears the risk of uncertainty One objection to this proposal might be that it is impossible for the Faculty to know in advance what the average bursary will be in a given year, and thus what to set “expected tuition” at. However, U of T law can still make its best guess as to what “effective tuition” will be, and correct for any surprises, as it currently does with the expected bursary amount provided to students.

If the Faculty sets expected tuition too high (financial need is lower than expected), low wealth students’ bursaries will be larger than advertised. If expected tuition is set too low (financial need is greater than expected), students who have not yet reached the provincially allowable cap will pay a larger than expected “wealth fee” and low wealth student’s bursaries will be decreased.

This is identical to the situation faced by the half of U of T Law students who receive financial aid. However, this new framing highlights that it is currently the least wealthy who are forced to bear the risk of uncertainty, a clearly unjust outcome.

Lowering tuition and instituting a wealth fee clarifies what is at stake for less wealthy students as tuition increases outpace the growth of financial aid. More importantly, it is more representative and equitable, and an important step towards ensuring that less wealthy students are not deterred from attending U of T Law.

The Faculty of Law spends a lot of time and money on recruitment activities across Canada. A key part of which is to convince students not to get “sticker shock” over the

Commitment Issues during In-Firm Week JACOB GEHLEN (2L) If OCIs are the speed-dating of the recruitment process, then in-firms are like one-night stands with jealous and possessive strangers who demand way too much way too quickly.

In-firm guidelines dictate that firms may not make offers to students before offer-day at 8:00 AM, but can hint strongly that students should be expecting their call.

Students glean firm interest from the number of interviews they get, the number of dinners, lunches, and cocktails they consume, and the number of winky-face emoticons prospective employers put in their emails.

“You’re a very strong candidate ;) we hope you’re sitting by the phone tomorrow! <3” – not an actual email.

And fair enough. Students should be able to make reasonable guesses about which firms like them, which don’t, and which would like more face-time before the early morning

deadline rolls around.

What is not OK, and what has become the norm during in-firm week, is for firms to demand undying allegiance before being willing to make an offer. As one recruiter put it, firms want to hear the magic words: “If you call me on Thursday I will accept.”

Anything less and you run the risk of being skipped over for candidates who have expressed unequivocal commitment.

If your number one firm asks you for a “cue,” of course you’ll be perfectly happy to give it. But what about your number two firm? What if you are having trouble making a decision, and are waiting to see which offers actually materialize?

Some students find themselves in a position where their top choice hasn’t made a firm commitment, but other firms are emailing and calling repeatedly trying to get an answer. On the one hand, a student might be

tempted to overstate their interest in their back-up firms as a means of locking them in.

Students who take this route run the risk of over-extending themselves and being forced to disappoint a firm they said they would accept. Even in a city as large as Toronto, the bar is small and lawyers have long memories. Recruiters at multiple firms could recite first and last names (unprompted) of candidates who had reneged on their commitment.

On the other hand, students can be open and up front with firms and hope for the best. I took this route, and didn’t receive a single offer from any of my back up firms.

The twenty-four hour waiting period on offer day is meant to give students some time to deliberate their options, but under the current model these options rarely materialize.

In other aspects of life, we are encouraged

to have contingency plans. I applied to U of T law, but I also applied to other schools in case my first choice fell through. During in-firm week, employers demand that students put all their eggs in one basket.

What’s more, there is a clear disparity in bargaining power between law firms and individual candidates. If a firm doesn’t land all of their dream candidates they will always have a large pool of talented applicants to draw from. They can make as many offers as they need to, and occasionally they will signal their interest in a back-up candidate only to disappoint them on offer day.

Candidates have two fundamental considerations at stake: their future and their reputation. If firms abided by bar association guidelines more rigorously, students would have a better opportunity to attend to both.

DIVERSIONS

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OCTOBER 28, 2015 | 21

Going on Exchange to Toronto BILAL MANJI (3L) AND DAVE MARSHALL (4L) Each and every September, newly-minted third year students arrive at the Faculty of Law just to discover that half of their classmates have gone missing. Their chairs in the reading room filled by naïve, smiling students who have never yet had to write a closed-book torts exam, these “missing” 3L snowbirds have dashed to “educational” institutions around the globe. Armed with only a selfie stick and an articling bonus, these “students” traipse around Asia and pose beach-side next to European castles, all while taking just enough pass-fail credits to graduate.

At least two of us mere non-exchange kids decided that in the face of all odds and increasingly infuriating Facebook posts (yes, Pat, we know you can pour a perfect Guinness), we would take matters into our own hands and go on an exchange of our own…to the beautiful “University of Toronto Faculty of Law” in glorious Toronto, Canada! Built in 2019, this historic school (and its namesake city) is a beautifully rewarding place for an exchange. See for yourself on Instagram at daveandbilal_do3L. A small sampling of photos is available below.

Boarding passes? Check.

Toronto, here we come.

Getting Travel Shots for Toronto.

Attending a Toronto Maple Leafs Game.

Learning democracy through Harper Memes.

In-Firm Interview Tips AMIR EFTEKHARPOUR (2L) With in-firm interviews coming up soon, Ultra Vires has you covered with a list of helpful tips and tricks.

Use these to make the most of your time with potential employers. Ultra Vires guarantees that these tips will get you an offer, or Editor-in-chief Brett Hughes will personally pay back the entirety of your accumulated debt.

1. Arrive a few minutes early!

The early bird gets the worm – or in this case, the job at that sweet boutique.

2. Wear your best business attire.

Not your second-best business attire.

3. Wear some fun socks!

You are an individual.

4. Look for your friend Matt outside the building, on Adelaide St. It shouldn’t be too hard to find a brownhaired white guy wearing a dark suit, in the morning crowd.

5. Become disappointed when Matt says he doesn’t want to switch interviews with you, Freaky Fridaystyle.

Whatever, you’re late to your interview with Norton Rose.

6. Answer their question about your greatest accomplishment by telling them about the time Matt went to Africa.

He saw a lion.

7. Dodge their question about your greatest strength.

Show them the picture Matt took of the lion.

8. After the interview, follow up by sending them a digital copy of the picture.

Make sure to CC Matt.

9. Ask Matt how his interview went.

Probably not as well as yours.

10. Start prepping for your cocktail reception on Tuesday night.

Ask Matt if he wants to practice doing handshakes.

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DIVERSIONS

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Interviews I Have Known and Loved BECKY ROSS (4L) Most of us agonize throughout the interview process, mulling over every gesture or exchange. Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell you to just “try to enjoy the moment.”

Rather, I want you to know that I have said and done some spectacularly unfortunate things. Since this likely surprises absolutely no one, I want you to know that I have charming and successful friends who have also had cringe-inducing moments during the process!

Time turns shame and hysteria into amusement and indifference. This is a list of some of our favorite moments from that emotional roller coaster:

3. Accepting an incorrect name tag and proceeding to interview as "Rebeca Rose" for an entire in-firm. [Okay, this person was definitely me… OR WAS IT?].

person just thought they looked nice].

4. Freezing in panic after being told half-way into an OCI that there was clearly nothing left to say and it was best for the interview to end. [This person is awesome and that interviewer sounds rude].

9. Asking a Managing Partner if their job entailed “solving locker room squabbles” and other such troublesome nonsense. [This person claims to have never used the word “squabbles” before or since.]

5. Attempting to eat a piece of fake fruit from the table center-piece during lunch.

10. Saying your favorite TV show was 16 & Pregnant because it just made you feel better about yourself during a firm tour.

1. Having a 45 minute conversation with a lawyer about The Lego Movie after lying about having seen it.

6. Describing the OCI booth as a cramped airport gate which was currently under construction to a disturbed interviewer who said most people just made an awkward joke about speed dating.

2. Sending follow-up emails with thoughtful personal details to the wrong people.

7. Laughing out loud after being told that your choice of outfit was “brave”. [This

8. Asking the head of student recruiting at a firm if they liked your new haircut.

11. Hysterically calling your mom from the PATH to complain about how your face hurt from smiling too much. [This person’s mother is still concerned their child does not know the difference between smiling and baring their teeth].

The Muffin Manifesto JORDAN STONE (3L) The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of struggles over pastries. Indeed, the revolutionaries of France were galvanized into action when the callous Marie Antoinette proclaimed, “Let them eat cake.”

They didn’t want cake, they wanted croissants, and so they overthrew the monarchy.

Today, the revolutionaries of U of T Law, at the vanguard of democracy, proclaim that we will not eat muffins until the tyranny of “Yak’s Snacks” is replaced with its rightful name: “Iacobucci’s fiduciary snack duty.”

When Mayo Moran stepped down as Dean last year, the first thought on everyone’s mind was naturally, “What do we name the new breakfast hour?” There was an excitement in the air—change was on the horizon.

However, to the disappointment of everyone, the new breakfast hour under interim Dean Jutta Brunnée was uninspiringly titled “Brunnée’s Bakery.” Luckily, a brilliant and handsome individual took to the U of T Law Facebook group and asked, “Is anyone else upset that Mayo's Muffin Madness is now Brunnée’s Bakery instead of the infinitely

better title, Brunnée’s crème brûlée mêlée?”

With that, a revolution was born.

The post received 88 likes, a petition was circulated, and ultimately interim Dean Brunnée yielded to the rising tide of democracy. The people had spoken and they wanted crème brûlée. Months later, when Ed Iacobucci was appointed as the new Dean, speculation as to the new name for our beloved breakfast hour reached a feverish pitch. We turned to our most trusted democratic process, Facebook likes, to determine the new name. The landslide winner was “Iacobucci’s Fiduciary Snack Duty.” The people had spoken. This time they wanted snacks. Dean Iacobucci assented to the new name and democracy had won the day.

Yet law students were unceremoniously welcomed back to school this year with an invitation to attend “Yak’s Snacks.” This email was nothing less than a trampling on the democratic rights of each and every student at the school. There was no referendum on Yak’s Snacks—it was a decision

made on mountain high by oligarchs stuffing their mouths with delicious pastries. The institution of “Yak’s Snacks” is nothing less than the death of democracy at the law school.

By replacing “Iacobucci’s Fiduciary Snack Duty” with “Yak’s Snacks” the Faculty has chosen banality over imagination, myopia over innovation, vapidity over artistry. All this while tossing away the democratic rights of students as hastily as they tossed away the mountains of leftover food at the last Yak’s Snacks. Yak’s Snacks has been so sparsely attended this year because we, the students, know there is no such thing as a free lunch (or, in this case, a

free muffin). If we eat your muffins, we tacitly accept autocracy at the law school.

Students of U of T law, unite! Let the ruling classes tremble before our revolution. We have nothing to lose but our muffins. We have a world to win.

Professor Alarie announces plan for new “hunt down, kill” feature of Blue J Legal computer AMIR EFTEKHARPOUR (2L) Professor Ben Alarie announced last month that Blue J, the computer technology based off of IBM’s Watson, will include a feature that allows the computer to hunt down and terminate those who are found to be in violation of the law.

“Blue J was originally designed to be a legal research tool that could develop its understanding of the law,” said Alarie, hiding behind the desk in his office. “It was designed to help corporate lawyers figure out if their companies were liable under antitrust rules,” he continued, poking his head above

his desk to see if the death-bot, roaming the hallway outside his office, had heard him.

Alarie reported that the idea for Directive 43—the bit of code that compels Blue J to seek out and terminate those in violation of tax statutes—struck when he made a graph

showing a need for greater enforcement resources in the area of corporate compliance. “I am extremely excited for the possibilities that this new technology will create for lawyers and regulators alike,” he said, whispering so as not to trigger the killing machine’s sound-seeking sensors.

DIVERSIONS

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Blast from the Past: Ultra Vires Headlines from history MAUD ROZEE (1L) AND AMANI RAUFF (1L) January 25, 2000 – “Faculty Proposal for Increased Salaries Draws Mixed Support,” by Richard Meloff and Jeff Torkin Ultra Vires confirmed that faculty had brought a proposal to the U of T administration to increase salaries dramatically. First year fees had already skyrocketed from $3,500 to $8,000 in four years due to the deregulation of tuition at professional faculties in Ontario. An anonymous professor worried that, if salaries increased, “the tuition would go even higher, perhaps as high as $15,000.” The professor also wondered “how many potential students fail to apply to the Faculty because they find the tuition so exorbitant.”

September 12 2000 – “Law Society Changes Fall Student Recruiting Procedures,” by Jeff Torkin OCIs were introduced to U of T for the first time, as an “attempt to level the playing field between recruiters at Toronto law firms and their counterparts in the United States.” The

Assistant Dean of Career services warned that OCIs might be stressful: “With interviews lasting only 20 minutes, students could potentially be rushing between twenty firms in one day in a ballroom full of ‘pipes and drapes.’”

October 17, 2000 – “U of T to get JD Degree: Opinions divided over whether new degree is forward thinking or a sign of Americanization,” by Joseph AG Berkovits U of T introduced the JD degree to emphasize the fact that students are earning a second-entry degree. Not everyone was convinced of the benefits: Professor Réaume maintained that “no matter what, Canadians will have to prove they’re as good as Americans and a change of degrees won’t make that any easier.” Students, however, predicted that an LLB “might appear to be ‘dated’ in the future.”

November 21, 2000 – “A Law Student’s Guide to the New Grad Residence,” by

Simon J Proulx A forward-looking review predicted that “in 20 years, when the building is nothing but a leaky pile of rust with dirty, unwashable windows, the university will be able to turn around and sue the architect in negligence for not thinking that experiments with materials do not withstand Toronto’s climate as well as they do California’s. Even pedestrians who get whacked by icicles raining down from the “O” can join the fun and bring a tort action.”

February 13 2001 – “News in Brief: Laptop committee to continue work this term,” by Andrey Anishchenko, Colin Grey, and Stephen Parks The laptop committee was formed “in response to a letter by the Law Union to the dean […] There were concerns about equity because of the fear that exams written on laptops may receive better grades than those written by hand and about noise in the classroom.” The committee received “what [committee member] Shinewald described as

“tremendous” response from the student body, split virtually down the middle.”

March 20 2001 – “Professor Survey Fails Miserably for Lack of Response,”

by Laurie Jessome An intrepid Ultra Viresian tried to survey professors on their youthful ambitions. Most of her respondents are still on the faculty: • “I wanted to be a Mountie and worried that I would not be tall enough. This may explain more of my life than I want people to know.” – Kent Roach • “In no particular order: significantly taller, a lawyer (really), prime minister, and a navigator.” – Colleen Flood • “I wanted to play rugby for England. I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.” – Jim Phillips • “A nun (6 yrs) and then a pilot (8 yrs)” – Catherine Valcke

Earning Your Professional Degree in a Featherbed HARRISON CRUIKSHANK (3L) If anyone has told you being on exchange is easy, they lied. In actuality, being on exchange is really REALLY easy.

I’m studying in Lyon, considered to be one of the hardest exchange programs. I have mandatory attendance for one-week intensive classes, each with about 16 hours of class time, and a take home exam every weekend.

Still, it’s not that bad. “Mandatory” is a more flexible term than you’d think, and the exams are manageable. I drink a lot of wine.

Given my experience in a supposedly hard program, I wondered how students were faring in other countries. So, I put on my Sherlock hat and spoke to my peers.

I first turned to the students in London, studying at the prestigious Center for Transnational Legal Studies. The ghosts of exchange students past indicated this program was as challenging as Lyon, or close to it. They too have mandatory classes, but much like my experience at Lyon, no one seems to find classes too difficult. Without weekly exams they also have plenty of time

for weekend getaways. The exchange experience, from an academic perspective, seems to go downhill from there.

According to one student, Geneva’s difficulty level is set at “guilt-inducing easy,” with the exception of the French language classes. Let me emphasize, this student is taking classes in French and still describes the program as “easy-peasey.” Students in Amsterdam only have 4-6 hours of lectures each week. Still, the courses are so manageable that students often cut class to take longer trips (Out of the city! Get your mind out of the gutter!).

Glasgow was described to me as “like U of T law but you actually get to be happy and enjoy life.” The student could not elaborate further because she was “VERY busy frolicking in the highlands and not reading case law.” Copenhagen? An “insane joke.”

Hong Kong? Check Facebook.

Still, it’s not all roses. Some students have had to face the dark side of exchange. Shaanzéh Ataullahjan described to me one

challenge she faced in Singapore: At U of T I’d definitely never moot in front of an expert in the field without going to any of his classes or doing any readings. Oh my God, what am I doing? I haven’t done any work! … what if I fail? … then you win the moot and book some $100 roundtrip tickets to Bangkok because after all that stress you deserve to take a break this weekend.

Harrowing stuff.

Notable pub night attendee Pat Chapman is also having difficulties in Ireland. Strained by his seven hours of class per week, Pat’s stress is compounded as he tries to adjust to his new surroundings: “The water here is a foamy black colour. Quite filling. But it does tend to tire you out after a few glasses. Don't know why Dublin hasn't figured out water treatment yet.” As Shaanzéh puts it, the University of Toronto “does not properly prepare you for how to deal with the easy life.”

To be fair, a lot of this comes down to the 3L attitude. If you wanted to, you could

probably approach exchange with more rigour, but why do that? You probably have job lined up, and no one at that job expects you to come back from exchange an expert on your host nation’s law. They want you to come back with the sort of travel anecdotes that are the sweetest plum of being on exchange. If you told them you spent your entire semester abroad in some foreign library, they’d laugh you out of town and never hire you back and tell your friends that you are boring.

So, if you’re considering exchange, heed my warning: the Canadian dollar is terrible and things are expensive. Otherwise exchange is really REALLY easy and fun sunny all the time beach party let’s go why not.

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Halloween Costume Ideas MAUD ROZEE (1L) AND CLARA ROZEE (3L) A Mandatory Professionalism Seminar on a Friday Wait until 1 a.m., then tell everyone at the party that they need to be in EM001 at 9 a.m. the next morning. Then just punch them in the face for good measure.

The Jackman Hall Law Building Wear whatever. When people ask you where your costume is, say, “I’m still working on it— it should be ready for next year.”

Closed Book Exam Whenever anyone asks you a question, begin to panic and start rambling desperately about everything you remember. Hope for the best.

The Socratic Method Dress normally and go around asking people “What am I dressed as?” Don’t back down if they can’t figure it out – keep pushing. If you don’t push them, how will they learn?

Osgoode Student Go to “wikipedia.org/wiki/law” and print it out. Carry it around with you and reference it frequently. Wear a look of dejection but also put several thousand dollars in your wallet.

The Ghosts of My Family and Friends Who I Never See Anymore A white sheet with two holes cut out. Or, I dunno, maybe just call your parents.

Group costume: Dean Iacospooky, Sara Scareherty and Alexis Archiboo Fairly self-explanatory.

Work-life balance Wear one of those milkmaid’s shoulder yokes with a bucket on each side. Fill one bucket with your textbooks and the other one with your tears!

Meet our students: Todd’s Story Privileged upbringing and private school education led him to law school BRAD VALLEY (3L) Todd Smith was only 16 when he knew he wanted to work in the corporate world. “The Great Recession had just happened and the economy was in rough shape. The media was reporting on how all those responsible were avoiding penalties. It was unbelievable. I literally couldn't believe how much these lawyers and executives were making.”

Since then, Todd has pursued his passion for the markets with relentless zeal. First, by obtaining a degree in business administration from the Ivey School of Business at Western, and now by working toward a law degree at the University of Toronto. “I've always had an interest in money, and how it is used to gain power and exercise control over those with less. Going to U of T Law seemed like a natural next step.”

Outside the classroom, Todd is an amateur

ornithologist—though he prefers the term “twitcher”—and is actively involved in his community. At press time, he had spent the past 78 days donating his time to his local MP's failed campaign. “It's really about networking. We are all trying to be part of an elite, insular, and incestuous community, so I thought I would get a head start by shaking hands and earning favours from powerful men.”

Todd hopes to continue his political engagement at the law school. He said that a run for Student Law Society president may be on the cards. “I think I would perfectly represent the U of T law student body. I would focus on issues that affect all law students instead of policies that affect only certain segments, like financial aid.”

The son of a lawyer and a CFO from

Leaside, Todd is a first-generation University of Toronto Law student. “My parents are just happy they don't have to pay $40,000 a year like they did for my K-12 years!”

Todd recently completed an internship at a corporate law firm that represents his dad's employer. He said that he felt at home within the firm's culture and is looking forward to in-firm interviews and finding the perfect Bay Street firm. Todd encourages students worried about job prospects to just be themselves and act as they would at the golf course or country club.

The Faculty’s Macleans ranking, and the option for the combined JD/MBA program, attracted him to this law school. “Law is fascinating because it allows you to greatly profit off the work of others, without rolling up your sleeves yourself. A year at Rotman

gives me a great way to meet future members of the business community and begin marketing my personal brand.”

However, don't think he came to this prestigious institution just for the prestige.

He was also attracted to its diversity in students. “I've met people from the uppermiddle and upper class, from Queen's and McGill. And a black guy!” As for the faculty, “There are adjuncts from all seven of the Sisters!”

For Todd, a law degree from U of T means he has the power to choose his career and he plans to stay open to different career paths.

“I can see myself doing mergers, but I can also picture myself working on acquisitions.”