Ultra Vires Vol 18 Issue 6: 2017 March

MARCH 30, 2017 | ULTRAVIRES.CA

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

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE RACIALIZED STUDENTS TOWN HALL

RECRUITMENT SPECIAL FEATURE

BLUE J LEGAL & ACCESS TO JUSTICE

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NEWS

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Ultra Vires is an editorially independent publication. We are open to contributions which reflect diverse points of view, and our contents do not necessarily reflect the views of the Faculty of Law, the Students’ Law Society, or the editorial board.

Editors-in-chief News Editors Features Editors Opinion Editors Diversions Editors Copy Editor Foreign Correspondent Layout Editor Photo and Design Editor First-Year Editors: Business Manager

Nick Papageorge & Maud Rozee Shari Nathan & Amani Rauff Aidan Campbell & Melissa Smith Cory Bettel & Scott Dallen Rabiya Mansoor & Kevin Schoenfeldt Kassandra Shortt Rona Ghanbari Alexandra Fox Davina Shivratan Louell Taye, Norm Yallen, & SuJung Lee Cory Bettel

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Letter from the Editors NICK PAPAGEORGE (2L) AND MAUD ROZEE (2L) It’s hard to believe we’re already writing about the end of another school year. From the Grand Moot to OCIs, Follies to Law Ball, and Convocation to Stickergate, these past eight months have been f illed with their share of highlights and controversies.

Ultra Vires has been proud to provide you with plenty of top-notch commentary and snide remarks covering all that this past year has brought. We never ceased to be awed and impressed by the quality of the contributions we received. We would like to extend a heartfelt thanks to our Board members and to all of you who wrote for us, and we encourage you to keep up the good work next year!

We would also like to take this opportunity to introduce Aidan Campbell as the Ultra Vires Editor-in-Chief for the 2017-18 year! Aidan has been a committed member of our Board this year, and a stalwart contributor to the ongoing discussions around tuition, f inancial aid, and mental health. It is safe to say that those important topics will continue to be pursued with great vigour under his watch next year.

That’s it for us. To all of you graduating this spring, congratulations on your tremendous achievement! We’ll miss you! To everyone coming back next September: take a deep breath and calm the hell down. Oh, and we wish you good luck on your exams!

Have an enjoyable summer, everyone!

Students Discuss Recruitment, Diversity Training at SLS Racialized Students’ Town Hall AMANI RAUFF (2L) On February 28, the SLS held a Racialized Students’ Town Hall, open to all students and facilitated by SLS Equity Off icers Peter Pai and Shari Nathan. Its aim was “creating a forum for racialized students to share their thoughts and concerns about their experiences of the law school.” The event was well attended and created discussion on a variety of issues affecting racialized students.

One problem flagged by a number of students was the tendency for professors to mangle, belabour the pronouncing of, pronouncing, “foreign” names—“despite happily speaking Latin.” Students pointed out that the concern was not so much the improper pronunciation but rather “the need to editorialize.” A solution that was suggested was having students provide the phonetic pronunciation of their names for addition to their professor’s class list ahead of time.

A broader issue that participants brought up was that “people just don’t recognize race to be an issue” at the school, or in the profession generally. One student suggested that the school

thinks about diversity more broadly—“diversity of backgrounds”—and so thinks it is doing well and looks good on metrics. But, looking beyond the Admissions Handbook numbers, the student pointed out that there are three black students in 2L. Many students were concerned with the diversity training provided by the school. This year, the training for 1Ls only occurred midway through the year and was described as “lacklustre” and “half-baked”; meanwhile, upper years do not participate in any diversity training. One student commented that “the problem with diversity training at the law school is that it is diversity training for white people—‘Don’t say this racist thing because it will impact you negatively.’” A suggested action item was to spend more on the session and secure someone who will provide the training properly. Students also wanted better signalling from the Faculty, pointing out that even if an engaging speaker is brought in, nothing will change if the Faculty doesn’t signal that it should be taken seriously.

Some students took issue with a perceived SLS agenda to over-emphasize racial issues at the law school. For instance, an anonymous online submission stated: “I've always found U of T Law to be a very pluralist and tolerant environment where we go above and beyond to make everyone feel welcome, including through accommodations. This just isn't Mississippi. Ms. Bittman and Ms. Longo are tilting at windmills in their pursuit of a cause that f its their ideological worldview rather than focusing on core issues like tuition.” A student at the town hall pointed out that the response of most students in the room to that comment—laughter—created an atmosphere that did not welcome dissent on these issues.

Another major concern students brought up was with the recruitment and OCI process. Students mentioned racial comments made by recruiters in passing during interviews; one was told by an employer that it was “nice” that she didn’t speak with an accent. When the student went to the CDO with regards to that specif ic incident, the

response she was given was that now she understood that her values did not match that f irm’s values. As one student put it, “If you go and talk to the CDO about any of this, they just shrug.” In this particular area, students wanted U of T to recognize that it wields “an extraordinary amount of power” as a feeder school to these f irms; it has the sort of sway that would allow it to confront f irms directly about this sort of behaviour.

One student commented that encouraging students to self-select out of applying to certain f irms because of this behaviour is not conducive to change. Others pointed out that even top Bay Street f irms are now trying to foster real conversations around diversity in the legal profession and at their f irms, but the CDO still equivocates when asked whether students should bring these issues up in the interview process. Overall, while students recognized that this is a systemic issue that goes far beyond the law school, they wanted the CDO to take on a more active role in trying to address these problems.

NEWS

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Panel Discussion: Terms of Reference for the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls AMANI RAUFF (2L) On February 28, the Indigenous Law Students’ Association, the Aboriginal Law Club, and the Feminist Law Students’ Association held a panel discussion on the terms of reference for the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (“the Inquiry”).

The panelists were Pam Palmater, a Mi’kmaq lawyer and an Associate Professor and Chair in Indigenous Governance at Ryerson University, and Mary Eberts, founder of the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF) and litigation counsel to the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC). The panel was moderated by Ronda Bessner, a Visiting Professor at Osgoode who has been Senior Legal Analyst at five public inquiries in the past.

The discussion canvassed a number of topics, including the wording in the terms of reference, the powers of the commission conducting the inquiry, and issues of standing, examination, and cross-examination of witnesses.

Terms of reference, Professor Bessner explained, are drafted by governments when they call public inquiries; they are guidelines that govern the operation of an inquiry, including its mandate, its pur-

pose, and what powers it will have. Terms of reference also name a commissioner, or commissioners, to carry out an inquiry.

According to Professor Bessner, the language used in the terms of reference for this Inquiry is relatively broad; the terms are also unique in that they came out of consultation across the country and took months to draft. She noted that this contrasts with inquiries like Walkerton, which was called and completed so quickly that the commission did not pay much attention to the terms.

During the discussion, the panelists expressed three main concerns about the terms of reference.

First, there had been a lot of pressure for the Inquiry to be given a specific mandate to use a human rights lens in investigating the violence—particularly since that was the approach taken in the Stolen Sisters report by Amnesty International, the release of which brought the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women in Canada to the public’s attention for the first time. Despite the pressure, the Commission was not directed to use any particular lens.

However, Ms. Eberts pointed out that the Commission can voluntarily adopt a human rights lens in its investigation.

Second, the terms of reference contain what families of victims and activists have called a “police offramp”: it states that the Commissioners are to remit any information regarding misconduct to the authorities. This limits what the Commission can do—particularly as there won’t be any investigation of specific cases where police negligence or misconduct has contributed to the perpetuation of violence, according to Eberts. Where the Commission is stymied by its terms of reference, she said, activists will have to provoke review by other bodies in order to have particular cases, and not just systems, looked at.

Professor Palmater felt similarly, saying that the root of the problem is that police do not investigate complaints—that these women’s police files are empty, or that the police themselves can be the abusers—so the direction to remit any concerns about police misconduct to the police just reinforces the problem.

The third concern was a lack of protection for witnesses. The terms of reference set out the importance of cultural supports and counselling for witnesses who will be testifying in front of the Commission; however, it isn’t clear what happens after the fact, or what sort of protection witnesses will have from retaliation. Professor Eberts pointed to the Val-d’Or Inquiry, during which seventeen po-

lice officers were investigated for physical and sexual abuse of native women but only two were ultimately charged. After this, everyone in the community became afraid to speak to the investigators. Given that the time period set for the inquiry is September 1, 2016 to December 31, 2018, the Commission is already well into its mandate.

But, according to the panelists, very little has yet been said about procedures for reaching out to victims and families, nor about getting them the information and support they need to come forward and tell their stories.

Overall, the panelists felt that there needed to be more specificity regarding procedures by which witnesses will gain standing, representation, and protection, and also with regards to how the inquiry itself is conducted. According to Professor Palmater, the focus should not be on these women’s circumstances, poverty, or vulnerability, because these are topics that have been covered. The focus, she said, needs to be on the sources of the violence, sources that include the police: “If we just do the systemic stuff, you can just cut and paste RCAP, just cut and paste TRC... If we’re just going to do a paper on the sociology of Canada and poverty in Canada, it won’t be worth the paper that it’s written on.”

Faculty Council: Mooting Committee Recommendations MAUD ROZEE (2L) Faculty Council on March 8, 2017 delivered the usual delicious sandwiches and some intriguing reports about PBSC, mooting, diversity surveys, and the collection of professor citation metrics.

and experiential education. According to Prof. Stewart, the committee focused much more on mooting, and did not have enough time to cover clinical and experiential education in depth. The Dean expressed concern that there are already too many committees.

PBSC Report A report from PBSC’s national coordinator summarized the many opportunities the program provides for law students. 123 U of T Law students participated in thirty-six PBSC projects this year. The national organization is putting together a national board; Dean Ed Iacobucci will be its Chair and Assistant Dean Alexis Archbold will represent U of T. PBSC is also working on developing a pro bono guide to firms, which will outline pro bono policies and opportunities for students and give each firm an objective ranking on a “national report card.”

Clinical & Experiential/Mooting and Advocacy Committee Report Professor Hamish Stewart, Chair of the Clinical & Experiential/Mooting and Advocacy Committee, presented four recommendations to the Dean:

1.

The committee should be divided into two: one focused on mooting, the other on clinical

2.

The description of the Commonwealth Moot in the law school’s curriculum should state that the school will support our Gale mooters “in the event that they are selected” to compete at the Commonwealth Moot, i.e. that the Faculty will support the team even if they do not win first place at the Gale.

The Dean responded by saying that this issue has budgetary implications and involves two policies: that only the winners of the Gale are supported to go to the Commonwealth Moot, and that the Faculty does not allow mooters to self-fund. The Dean said that the “right question is not ‘should we do more things’—the answer would always be ‘yes’— but ‘what do we give up when we do this thing?’” The Dean stressed the budgetary consequences of supporting a Gale team to go to the Commonwealth Moot in every case. He stated that if the Gale team won and went to the Commonwealth Moot every

year, the school would have to reconsider its policy of supporting this.

3.

There should be discretion to accept invitations to moots when a shorter timeframe dictates that the usual procedure can’t be followed, and written policy should reflect that.

4.

The policy on students’ self-funding to go to moots should be written down. Professor Stewart also emphasized the difference between situations where students are invited to moots as representatives of their schools, and situations where students are invited to moots as individuals. Professor Stewart volunteered to draft the self-funding policy. The Dean said that not all policies need to be written down, citing the CDO’s unwritten policy on not posting unpaid internships on the online job board. [Editor’s Note: The CDO does post unpaid internships, but adds a note about potential funding sources.]

Gender, Accessibility & Diversity Committee The Gender, Accessibility & Diversity Committee will be administering a survey to measure students’

experience of the climate at the law school.

The committee’s report is also accompanied by an appendix: a vision statement written by Professor Anver Emon. The statement takes a more systemic view of concerns about equity and diversity, and focusses on the experiences of faculty and staff as well as students. The statement is not endorsed by all members of the committee, but has “generated many questions” for them.

Library & Technology Committee The Library & Technology Committee mainly discussed efforts to more effectively track citation metrics to see how often faculty members’ work is being cited. Head Librarian Gian Medves discussed the Committee’s efforts to determine why these metrics are important, querying whether they will be used to back up the intellectual reputation of the Faculty, or for promotions. Medves raised concerns that these metrics could generate long-term pressures on scholars to change the areas they write on. The Committee wants to spend more time thinking about what data to gather, and why, before it begins.

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Dear @UTLaw, @BlueJLegal is Not an Access to Justice Tool ELLIE MARSHALL (2L) I have a confession to make: I hate technology.

Let me clarify. I specif ically hate the idea that technology is special or, worse, that “technology will save us.” As a result of this revulsion (and hours spent aimlessly refreshing Twitter instead of studying for exams), I have a bone to pick with our dear Faculty’s Twitter account.

Most shockingly, the @UTLaw account also, without explanation, promoted Blue J as a tool capable of improving access to justice at a reception for donors to the Jackman Law Building—where Blue J was given exclusive access to Minister Chrystia Freeland and MP Arif Virani:

If our Faculty wants to enter the growing legal technology space, shouldn’t it—as a public law school—be using its Twitter account to responsibly reflect the debates in this field, which are alive and well?

If you follow the Faculty, you may have seen one of over a dozen promotional tweets for Blue J Legal. Led by Professors Alarie, Yoon, and Niblett, Blue J is a startup that sells software designed to help tax lawyers predict how a judge may rule in a given case. It must be said upfront that Blue J is an excellent and valuable contribution to tax law, one which will improve that area of practice substantially.

However, my disdain for positioning technology as a stand-alone solution for any of the world’s ills has made following @UTLaw unbearable at times.

Tweets about Blue J often emphasize the importance of artif icial intelligence (AI) to the future of law and the resulting boom in the legal technology startup space. Take, for instance, this tweet, which links to a Maclean’s article highlighting the potential for AI to replace traditional lawyer roles:

To me, this simply doesn’t add up.

Unlike other legal technology startups, Blue J is not primarily concerned with the importance of securing equality before the law or maintaining the rule of law in our legal system. Blue J is a “tax foresight” startup that allows professionals to simulate the judgment of a court in a new situation; it is built off of IBM’s Watson, a sophisticated question answers computer system.

It parses natural language legal decisions and returns answers that are statistically related to similar tax situations the software has seen before. As Blue J itself explains, the ideal user of this tool is a tax professional that wants help navigating “uncertainty where there are competing reasonable arguments.” Thus, the ideal user of Blue J is likely already accessing justice the wayI access Riverdale on Netfl ix: frequently and with confidence.

Why, then, is @UTLaw overemphasizing both the type and promise of AI behind Blue J, and making inflated claims about it as an access to justice tool? Does the school not know what it means by access to justice?

Or this one, which links to an article in PrecedentJD about how many students will be hired by the startup:

cause of the immensely close ties between the University of Toronto and the startup. Does the Faculty truly believe tax foresight tools will lead to democratization of the law? Or, does it just feel safer to use a public law school’s Twitter account to promote a side business when they use buzzwords like “access to justice?”

The Faculty of Law surely is aware of the access to justice problem in Ontario. This is evidenced by its many projects, such as the Middle Income Access to Civil Justice Project, which issued a report about “an acute lack of access to justice for the working poor and middle class in Ontario” and “the increasing phenomenon of unrepresented litigants.” There are dozens of tweets from the #FlipYourWig campaign and maybe a hundred other tweets about access to justice (type: “from:utlaw access to justice” into the search bar on Twitter to see for yourself).

It is important to ask these questions about the Faculty’s Twitter account and this seemingly cavalier use of the term “access to justice” be-

Without more, these tweets exemplify a common misunderstanding about the state of machine design that permeates the thinking of AI proponents. The underpinning argument is that access to justice will improve where lower costs of producing information reduce the cost of understanding legal rights and obligations.

Costs of producing information will be lower because computer programs will read and synthesize court cases instead of humans. As Prof.

Alarie predicted in a recent University of Toronto Law Review article, the result of this revolution will be the “legal singularity,” which arrives “when the accumulation of a massive amount of data and dramatically improved methods of inference make legal uncertainty obsolete.”

By implying that AI driven cost reductions will increase access to legal services as if this were self-evident, Blue J and the Faculty make the common mistake of suggesting that because something is logically possible, it is plausible. It is true that technology can do more and more things better or quicker than humans can. However, as Luciano Floridi (a professor of philosophy and the ethics of information at the University of Oxford) notes, this does not mean the technology is limitless: “It is like a two-knife system that can sharpen itself.” What’s the difference? The same as between you and the dishwasher when washing the dishes—machines are better, but not necessarily smarter. Further, who is to say these cost reductions will be passed on to clients?

The Blue J team is prepared for skeptics, like me, who think law is special and cannot be reduced to a mere algorithm. In their writings, they say that this same skepticism led people to believe a computer could never win a chess match, and that humans “underestimate the importance” of technological change. However, there is a critical difference between chess and the legal system. The algorithms that underpin machine learning can only work if you can defi ne their limits. Chess is simple for learning machines to understand because the game has well-defi ned limits. The Blue J team does not address how we can specify similar limits around the entire legal system.

More importantly, by suggesting that democratization of the law can be accomplished with AI because machine learning tools are “devoid of emotion and bias; free from fatigue,” the Blue

J team fails to address how difficult and resource-intensive it is to test for confi rmation bias in artificial intelligence. As a significant (and growing) body of literature dedicated to this issue explains, machine-learning algorithms may be neither transparent nor predictable because they are inscrutable by their very nature. Thus, it is especially important to highlight overstatements about the capabilities of AI in the context of legal applications because of their ability to disregard the law’s built-in ethical considerations, such as the principles of transparency and openness. Without access to participate in the creation or enforcement of the law, a society cannot be said to be ruled by law, nor can it provide for equal distribution of legal statuses.

The capabilities of machine learning today simply shift the responsibility from the legal code and people that uphold it onto an algorithm and the designers of that algorithm. A claim that machine-learning algorithms will eliminate the need for ex post ethical considerations neglects to consider that relying only on one regulatory constraint, technology, requires giving up control of the legal system. Fundamentally, the motivation to promote machine learning as the path to access to justice boils down to a legal positivist anxiety: humans are imperfect and will never perfect the legal system, so we ought to code something outside of ourselves that shifts the burden of responsibility.

Promoting Blue J as an access to justice tool, without interrogating the biases (e.g. profit) underlying its development (or even those in the Tax Code itself), misunderstands an essential factor of technology in general: Technology, like the law, is neither essential nor neutral. It is predicated on social context, embedded with assumptions, and limited by the boundaries of its design. Technologically determined solutions that do not assess the power dynamics responsible for existing barriers to justice in Anglo-American law cannot democratize that law.

Suggesting that technology alone can improve access to justice obscures the significant risk that these applications will solidify existing distributions of legal power, making it “easier” to access justice only if one accepts the status quo.

I am incredibly excited for the Faculty to become more involved in legal technology and continue to support theoretical and practical inquiries into this space (as it has with the recent Artificial Intelligence, Technolog y and the Law conference). However, any promotion of forprofit enterprises that claim to be access to justice tools should be qualified by specifying what is meant by that phrase, or at least also give time to important theoretical debates taking place.

Blue J cannot democratize the law on its own, nor any other artif icial intelligence tool. Changing the distribution of legal resources will, as always, require signif icant political and social will. I simply think the Faculty’s tweets should ref lect this reality.

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The Anita Krajnc Trial: Compassion, the Public Interest, and the Case for Animal Personhood JEREMY GREENBERG (1L) The Toronto woman charged with criminal mischief for giving water to pigs destined for slaughter was acting in the public interest.

This was the central defence put forward by selfdescribed vegan lawyers James Silver and Gary Grill in an animal rights case that has made headlines around the world. I was among those in attendance at a packed Burlington courthouse on March 9 to hear their closing arguments. (Justice David Harris will deliver his decision on May 4.)

Anita Krajnc, founder of Toronto Pig Save, became the unexpected voice of the international vegan movement in 2015 after she was criminally charged for giving water to pigs in a stopped truck on a hot summer day. The seeming absurdity of criminalizing an act of compassion cast a spotlight on the treatment of livestock in Canada and turned Ms. Krajnc’s case into something of a cause célèbre: in the wake of her arrest, dozens of “Save” groups sprung up all over the world, and Krajnc herself has drawn support from celebrity activists such as actress Maggie Q and the singer Moby.

Ms. Krajnc’s case raises a whole host of provocative legal issues—issues that Grill and Silver were happy to talk about, both at U of T and during their closing arguments. Interestingly, they are advocating for Krajnc to be cleared not because of the dubiousness of the charge, but because she was “acting in the public interest.” This novel justification (it is not a defence, per se) has rarely, if ever, been used in this type of case—partly because of the inherent risks to the accused. It operates from the assumption that her actions were, in fact, illegal and then asks the court to accept a retroactive justification. Indeed, during a spirited back-and-forth in which Grill compared his client to social justice icons like Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, Justice Harris pointedly asked whether Grill was really asking for Krajnc to also be convicted as those iconic figures were. Grill responded that he hopes for the court to be “on the right side of history” this time.

This justification can only succeed if the court accepts that anti-meat advocacy serves the public good and that, on the question of mens rea, Krajnc not only lacked the intention to cause harm but rather set out to prevent it. Thus, Grill and Silver devoted much of their remarks to the deleterious impacts of the meat industry. They cited its unsustainability and its role as the single largest contributor of global greenhouse gas emissions. They repeated the oft-overlooked science on the dangers of processed meat—according to the World Health Organization, it is a Group 1 carcinogen, as are cigarettes—and repeated Krajnc’s controversial statement that feeding bacon to children is “an act of child abuse.”

Animal Personhood Perhaps most significantly, there was a lengthy exchange over the legal quality of “personhood” as it applies to animals. Under Canadian law, pigs are legally treated as property, and can be transported for up to thirty-six hours without food or water. According to Grill, such suffering (an expert witness previously testified that pigs in the truck were “in

severe distress”) underscores the need for updated laws on humane treatment of animals. Grill argued that the best route towards such treatment was establishing legal personhood for animals, which would afford protections such as being free from cruel treatment.

This idea of “nonhuman rights” has been gaining currency over the past decade, popularized in the academy by ethicists such as Peter Singer and in the courts through some high-profile cases. For example, a writ of habeas corpus was issued in 2015 for two chimpanzees living in captivity in New York State (although the writ was later overturned). In 2008, the Spanish parliament recognized great apes as “non-human hominids” with attendant rights.

In their talk at U of T, Grill and Silver acknowledged that this case was unlikely to result in profound changes to the law. However, by discussing animal personhood in a Canadian courtroom, they hoped to raise awareness about an area of widespread scientific consensus: the extraordinary cognitive abilities and emotional complexities of animals.

As neuroscientist Dr. Lori Marino testified during the trial: “Pigs are persons. They are at least as emotionally complex as dogs and as psychologically complex as primates. It sells pigs short to say they are as sophisticated as a human toddler, for they are more complex than that.”

Interestingly, Justice Harris seemed to accept much of this argument, even volunteering his own comparison between the legal status of pigs today and those of women in Canada nearly a century ago. Though careful not to make any legal pronouncements, Justice Harris suggested that, just as the Persons Case brought a long-overdue recognition of women as legal persons, so too might the law eventually “catch up” with the scientific and moral justifications for animal personhood.

The Future of Animal Rights Outside the courtroom, I spoke to several of Ms. Krajnc’s supporters. Among them was PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk (who flew in from Washington, D.C.), who said that the world should expect “exponentially more such cases in future” and described Krajnc as a hero. “All social justice movements need faces to go with the cause. Not just the victims of oppression and abuse and violence, but also the faces of those who have fought for them.”

I also spoke with U of T alumna Camille Labchuk (JD ’14), who is the Executive Director of Animal Justice, Canada’s only animal law advocacy organization. Ms. Labchuk underscored the landmark nature of the case, particularly how the court was confronted with incontrovertible evidence of the harmful effects of Canada’s red meat industry.

The question of animal personhood was equally important to Ms. Labchuk: “It’s the kind of change that seems inevitable. I feel like this case just helps usher us down that path, in a small way, towards a day when animals are no longer considered mere property without any rights.”

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Faculty of Law Dominates Intramurals ALEXIS VAUGHN (2L)

Disclaimer: The above headline may or may not be clickbait and/or fake news. A more accurate (but less grammatically correct) headline would be “Faculty of Law Does OK at Intramurals.”

This year, the Faculty of Law enjoyed a monumental intramural season. The Faculty fielded sixteen teams across eight different sports and surprised all opponents with higher-than-expected levels of athleticism and handeye co-ordination.. Over 130 law students participated in one or more teams, and fun was had by all. Although we may not have always been the most skilled team to take the ice/field/court/pool, we consistently heckled the hardest and complained the loudest. On March 9, the Faculty of Law Athletic Association hosted its inaugural Awards Nights to celebrate the achievements of its many outstanding athletes.

Team Co-ed Basketball

Most Valuable Player Anna Spieser

Most Improved Player

Men's Basketball A

Aaron Haight

Men's Basketball B

Ben Bouwman & Marco Wei

Women's Basketball

Andrea Barragan Verduzco

Catherine Hart

Graham Henry

Quinn Keenan

Co-ed Flag Football

Joffre Brunet

Davina Shivratan

Men's Flag Football

Aaron Haight & Dylan Cooke

Co-ed Dodgeball

Co-ed Hockey

Jesse White & Kieran May

Men's Hockey

Jesse White & Andrew Mingay

Co-ed Innertube Waterpolo Men's Soccer

Brendan Bohn

The men of the Law A and Law B basketball teams display camaraderie after the most intense grudge match of the year. One of the Law teams defi nitely won.

Jérémie Lachance

Catherine Hart

Ben Fenech

Nick Reynolds

Women's Soccer

Sarah Bittman & Alexis Vaughan

Co-ed Ultimate Frisbee

Jonathan Farine

Rachael Sider

Co-ed Volleyball A

Jessica Kras

Matthew De Lio

Co-ed Volleyball B

Josh Favel & Natalie Marsh

Crystal Li

Jackson Foreman

Glen Tucker

Men's Volleyball

Law's fi rst ever co-ed hockey team strikes fear into the hearts of their opponents.

The women's soccer team look surprisingly happy after a heartbreaking loss in the Division 1 Championship match.

Dodgeball heroes Graham Henry (MVP) and Quinn Keenan (MIP) receive their awards from captain Scott Dallen at the inaugural Faculty of Law Intramural Sports Awards Night.

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Oh, The Places You’ll Go! Personal Statements for the Class of 2017 MELISSA SMITH (2L)

A lot has changed since 2014. In the United States, a black president passed the baton to a white nationalist; in Canada, Stephen Harper gave way to the international heart throb that is Justin Trudeau. Gay marriage became legal in eighteen more American states, while Pope Francis of f icially endorsed evolution and the Big Bang Theory. We welcomed Justin Bieber back into our hearts after he pushed us to ask dif f icult questions such as, “What do you mean?” and “Is it too late now to say sorry?” Finally, and most signif icantly, Kylie Jenner’s lips spontaneously emerged in all of their spectacular glory.

I know what you’re thinking: The emergence of Kylie Jenner’s lips was truly inspiring, but how has the Class of 2017 changed since 2014, when they f irst applied to law school? Did they follow their childhood dreams? Have they cultivated their passions? Did they all sell out and go corporate?

Find out the answers to these questions and more by reading the following excerpts from the personal statements of members of the graduating Class of 2017, paired with updates on their post-grad plans.

I want to root out the injustices and ineff iciencies of our legal system and f ind new ways to deal with problems such as police violence, the persecution of marginalized groups, and the problems of free speech and its suppression… Using the resources available, whether it be from the Asper Centre or IHR P, I want to involve myself in constitution and precedent building in developing countries –largely in the Middle East and North Africa–before f inding a place for myself within the nexus of human rights, constitutional law, and public policy in Canada, applying tested practices to regional and national problems.

This students feels that he checked of f most of the boxes that he set up for himself when he applied to law school, including getting involved with the IHRP and the Asper Centre, and working in constitutional law both in Kenya and Canada. For him, law school also ignited an interest in Aboriginal and Indigenous Law. He plans to begin articling at a mid-size civil litigation f irm in Vancouver.

studying law because he hates reading, and he also hates writing. However, he has found opportunities through school to continue his public interest advocacy work, including for indigenous rights. Upon graduation, he will begin articling at the Ministry of Child and Youth Services.

---------My goal after attending law school is to work as a defense attorney with an emphasis on Charter right infringement cases. I want to engage with criminal justice and advance Canadian law both by representing clients whose rights have been violated, and through critical analysis of the interaction between the Charter and the Criminal Code.

Charter cases would allow me not only to stand up for the freedoms of my client, but also to interface with criminal law as a whole and inf luence it in a more ethical direction for all Canadians.

This student has realized that criminal law is a lot more “drive from courthouse to courthouse” than it is “changing the law and saving lives with balloons and ribbons.” Nevertheless, criminal law is still his passion. While he does not yet have an articling position lined up, he is hoping to go into criminal defense, and to gain exposure to appellate and constitutional work as well.

---------My experience leading the campus team promoting a sexual-assault free campus, as well as my work with at risk youth, cognitively impaired older adults, diverse populations, and young university minds has reinforced my desire to advocate for these vulnerable populations either on an individual basis or through policy. It is my view that the most effective place for me to promote action for their benef it is through a legal lens. Engaging in my community in a meaning ful way, for the benef it of my own personal growth and for those in need continues to be my lifelong goal.

This student will article at a family law boutique in Toronto. She hopes to use the skills she develops there to assist lower income individuals with family law issues.

----------

----------

Lawyers are constantly engaging their minds.

T hey dissect facts and scrutinize the application of the law to these facts. Lawyers make a difference in the world. Our political system can make laws just, but our justice system applies these laws. Lawyers sustain our justice system by guiding and advocating for their clients. I believe that a career in law would allow me to say, “I enjoy my job, and I am good at it.”

I wasn’t the most popular student in my fourthyear human rights seminar. During one discussion that revolved around bringing Muammar Gaddaf i and his aides to justice, I argued that, regardless of the magnitude of the crimes, upholding essential aspects of the law such as due process should be prioritized over punishing the human rights abusers, lest we engage in a medieval-style witch hunt. Even the professor proceeded to cast a curious glance my way.

This student has realized that he hates

This student will be articling at a criminal defence f irm, where he hopes to continue f ighting for due process and strategically of fending people.

---------Poverty law and policy is interesting to me because it allows me to engage in interdisciplinary explorations of multiple perspectives, and I am beginning to see real world implications of policies… A legal education would give me the opportunity to explore a variety of issues in a variety of ways and to utilize the critical thinking and problem solving skills I have developed.

This student is excited to continue dabbling in multiple perspectives while articling at a full service Bay Street f irm.

---------I plan to become a human rights lawyer with my JD. Most of my studies, volunteerism, and professional experiences have been related to misog yny and social injustices against women. I can see myself working at the international level with the United Nations or Human Rights Watch, addressing human rights violations such as sexual violence and human traff icking This student will be articling with the Ministry of the Attorney General, Crown Law Of f ice Criminal, focusing on sexual assault prosecutions and domestic violence policy work. A lthough now unsure about how exactly one becomes an “international human rights lawyer,” she still intends to f ind out!

---------Upon graduating from the University of Toronto's Faculty of Law, I plan to pursue a career specializing in employment and labour law… My initial interest in the f ield of employment was sparked by a family experience. While still in primary school, my mother was on and off work due to recurring serious health issues. Despite the advice of her doctor to not return to work , her insurance company ultimately refused her disability claim. Although it took several years, it was with the help of an excellent employment lawyer that my family was able to obtain a fair and just settlement. As a lawyer, I believe that I too can help families achieve closure and a fair settlement, and work towards the fair and equitable treatment of all workers.

This student has remained true to her personal statement. After graduation, she plans to begin a union-side labour position. She is happy to report that she has now learned dif ference between labour and employment law.

8 | March 30, 2017

FEATURES

1L Hiring Report for 2017 DAVINA SHIVRATAN (1L) This year’s 1L recruit took place during the week of February 20. Toronto law fi rms and the Ministry of the Attorney General (MAG) offices hired fi fty-five students, a decrease from the sixty-three fi rst year law students hired in 2016.

The total number of students hired by Toronto fi rms remained relatively consistent; forty-three fi rst year students were hired by Toronto law fi rms, compared to forty-four in 2016. Overall, an increase in hiring at some fi rms balanced out a decrease at other fi rms. Specifically, Blakes, BLG, and Sherrard Kuzz hired more 1Ls this year, with fi rst-year hiring at Blakes more than tripling. Bereskin & Parr, Davies, and Dentons were amongst the fi rms whose hiring decreased, while Cassels Brock and Goodmans did not participate in the recruit at all. Aird & Berlis kept its hiring consistent with its 2016 levels, as did Bennett Jones.

Out of the fi fty-five 1Ls hired overall, twenty-five were University of Toronto students—a notable decrease from the thirty hired in 2016. It should be noted that the formal 1L recruit only makes up a small fraction of fi rst-year summer hiring; many fi rst-year students will work as research assistants at the Faculty of Law or caseworkers at legal clinics, while others may work at law fi rms that did not take part in the formal recruit, or at jobs unrelated to law.

Some, of course, will choose to spend their last summer of freedom nowhere near anything law-related.

ultravires.ca

FEATURES

ultravires.ca

March 30, 2017

Student Experiences of Mental Health Accommodation Editor’s Note: The entries below contain various subjective experiences of the Faculty and wider university’s healthrelated accommodations processes. The students who came forward with testimony had particularly negative experiences but this should in no way discourage students from seeking accommodations to which they are entitled. This piece is meant to highlight the ways the existing system could be improved. These stories have been condensed for print find the full stories online at ultravires.ca.

Student #1 I first sought accommodations in November 2014, after sustaining a pretty severe concussion (and starting down the road of post-concussion syndrome). This was the year Alexis Archbold was at Rotman, so the Assistant Dean I was in contact with was Judith McCormack. Nothing but good things to say about Assistant Dean McCormack.

Compassionate, warm, reassuring, etc. We adopted a wait-and-see approach with respect to whether I would drop courses and when I would write exams.

The second time was in December 2015, after another slightly-less-serious-but-still-serious concussion. Assistant Dean Alexis Archbold was the point person this time. Rather less compassionate and warm. A complicating factor here was that I sustained the injury right before exams, rather than halfway through the semester, so I had less time to gauge how I was doing and forecast weeks down the road. I also had three papers to write instead of exams, which are more time-consuming. We first agreed on a deadline of the first day of the winter semester; however, I was still fairly messed up by that time and I was given a second deadline of the end of the second week of January (I was informed that there would be no third deadline—while I could turn in my papers later without penalty, I would be required to drop out for the winter semester if I did so). From the first meeting, I did feel rather pressured by her to drop out for the winter semester, even though I would otherwise be on track to graduate on time. I actually felt

compelled to misrepresent my progress on my papers at the beginning of January, in order to convince her not to pull the plug. On the other hand, to be fair, I was scheduled for 17 credits in my winter semester, so it wasn't clear to her that I would be able to survive. As it turned out, I got all three papers in on time (barely, and through an almostcertainly-unhealthy haze of sleep deprivation and concussion symptoms), and finished a very heavy semester intact and with decent marks.

I was on the same antidepressant and dosage for six years before U of T law. Now I’m on a higher dosage of a stronger medication and regularly taking anti-anxiety medication. having this option is a luxury that not all of my classmates have. No one should have to choose between passing their classes and taking drugs. So far in my time here I haven’t seen any actions by the administration change that, hopefully it might by the time I leave.

Student #2

Student #3

I’ve often had to be accommodated in one way or another. It didn’t always have official diagnosis and documentation. However, my teachers and professors always saw how hard I worked and participated in class so when they anxiety hit they always felt comfortable giving me extensions. This is the first place I’ve studied where the professors did not have the power to do that.

When I was in crisis, I was in part accommodated effectively. My exams were moved to the deferral period with very little trouble. I am certain this was because I was very open with the faculty about my difficulties, and because I had had a rather successful semester just before. I wonder, however, whether the options available to students with respect to accommodations are adequate.

Pushing exams by two weeks, and then insisting that students write them all in a three-day period seems beyond harsh. My condition had worsened, not improved, by the time the deferral period rolled around. Nevertheless, I was told that if I did not write in that period, I would fail the year and be barred from enrolling in upper year courses.

Further, writing three exams in a fifty-hour period is grueling. Few students would willingly opt into that. Indeed, first year exams are typically spread over a week period precisely in recognition of how brutal a condensed schedule can be. Obviously, this challenge is exacerbated by illness. I was exhausted and downtrodden throughout the process; I am sure my academic performance and recovery suffered as a result.

I appreciate the objectiveness of the process but find it frustrating that my “proof” is never enough.

It’s frustrating that administrators who only meet with me at the beginning of the semester or see my pseudonym on paper are deciding how capable I am and how much I “deserve” to be accommodated. I have an accessibility counselor who I’ve met with many times and understands why I can’t do certain things and wants to see me accommodated. It is frustrating when the administration tells me to my face that my counselor’s recommendations will be respected and then calls her behind my back to tell her to change the accommodation.

It’s frustrating to be told that listening to lectures is essential for the curriculum but that I can’t be accommodated beyond a notetaker. It is infuriating that I can only make requests for accommodation appeals in writing and that the request is presented to the appellate panel by the same person who initially rejected it. I should have been allowed the accommodations that my counselor stipulated instead of having to rely on an utterly unreliable notetaking service.

Some things went plain poorly. I noted time and time again that I had serious sensitivities to the subject matter of one of my exams, and that it was going to be a particular challenge for me. On multiple occasions I asked for a private room in which to write the exam, mostly for the sake of my colleagues who shouldn’t have to be distracted by my crying through the exam. Each time, I was re-

fused. I was told that either the faculty did not have enough physical space to have me write alone or that they would be unable to find a proctor to supervise. I should note that this was nearly a month before I was scheduled to write my exams, and that I was writing during the deferred period when only one room was otherwise being used for writing.

When I met with the Assistant Dean, she pried pretty adamantly into information that should be considered private. She asked me if I had experienced this level of stress before, and if I thought it was attributable to being newly in law school.

When I told her I was confident it was not, she asked me about my academic performance up to the point that my illness began. I felt like I was being screened for deserving accommodation. She also asked me about my treatment plan going forward, and offered medical advice contrary to what my physicians had told me. Given her position of authority, it felt like her advice was more a set of demands. She obliged me to keep her apprised of my treatment (especially the effects of new medication) and progress. This is not information to which she ought to be entitled, and yet I felt like I had to provide it in order to get the help I needed.

Student #4 After my accommodations were granted, I was called in for a meeting with Alexis. She spent the duration of this meeting pressuring me to take a leave of absence even though I made clear that I did not feel it was appropriate for me. Despite not having any detailed information about my circumstances, she lectured me on what would happen to my employment prospects if I failed or got an LP. As someone with anxiety, this kind of pressure significantly exacerbated my symptoms and made me feel unwelcome at the school.

OPINIONS

Graduation (Friends Forever) KEVIN KACZMARA (3L)

“Two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of them says, ‘Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.’ The other one says, ‘Yeah, I know, and such small portions!’” Alvy Singer, the protagonist in Annie Hall, says that’s how he feels about life. I think that many people would f ind this metaphor equally applicable to the law school experience. That is, it’s full of loneliness, misery, embarrassment, and suffering—but it’s all over much too quickly.

I miss approaching people in the library the evening before the legal research memo is due and asking them whether they’ve started the legal research memo. I miss watching my chances at romancing a 1L spontaneously combust when the entire female Class of 2019 cohort blew my comment on the students’ Facebook page way out of proportion.* I miss spacing out in a moot tryout and feeling like a fool afterwards.

As I write this, and assuming that I don’t fail Labour and Employment Law, I have about a month left in law school. Yet, in a way, I’m already nostalgic. I miss saying “good morning” to OCI recruiters at four in the afternoon, then having to look at their business cards just to remember who I was interviewing with. I miss turning down the brightness on my laptop in property law when I was too embarrassed to have the person next to me see me Google every second word coming out of Professor Katz’s mouth.

Rather than shying away from these things, embrace them! Laugh in the recruiter’s face when they remind you that it’s the afternoon. Try out for moots for which you feel wholly unequipped. Turn the brightness on your laptop as far up as it can go. I think we should embrace all these feelings of misery and embarrassment. I think that any honest law student will tell you they share all these feelings with you. Plus, an overpriced cup of Goodman’s Cafe coffee might spill on your diploma tomorrow and ruin it. But nobody will ruin your mem-

ories of misery and embarrassment!

Short of acting like a complete muppet, I urge you to go out there and be miserable! Go out there and embarrass yourself ! To paraphrase Lamont “Big L” Coleman, law school without the misery is like the Bulls without Mike, or crackheads without pipes. If you embrace this as an inevitable by-product of your law-school experience, you’ll have a much fuller and more rewarding experience. Plus, misery loves company, right? Enjoy it while it lasts.

When it’s almost done, I think that you’ll f ind it’s all over much too quickly. *The incident I am referring to is my response to Snailgate. I said, in jest, “grrrr my dad didn’t pay $35,000 for me to study next to snails in the library.” This comment was grossly misinterpreted to somehow suggest that only a dad (and not a mom) could possibly finance their child’s education. It appears that I have inadvertently set women’s rights back several decades.

OPINIONS

10 | March 30, 2017

ultravires.ca

We Are Not Alone ANONYMOUS The other day, I made a joke about not doing laundry and readings because #3LOL. But really, it’s because I spend my nights crying on the floor and passively hoping everything will end. Sometimes, I just sleep all day.

You might feel like you are alone. I definitely feel like I am. I do know, in an intellectual sense, that I’m not. You also hear often that you should talk about things when you feel like I do. I’ve spent a lot of my life not talking. Despite what they tell you in law school, it’s not always about reason. That’s the depression.

You may or may not know me. I’m around.

We’ve almost certainly passed in the halls. We might even share a class or two. I probably smiled at you—I’m good at faking it.

To pull back the mask, I have to go back to high school. At sixteen, during my first depression, I didn’t have the words to explain it. It eventually went away. But it came back later, and worse. I spent over half my undergrad in the thralls of depression. Three hospitalizations; eight medications; one suicide attempt.

Nothing would get better, until it did again, for a

time. I don’t know what made it better—I honestly preferred not to question it and certainly never to talk about it. The cosmos smiled on me and I came to U of T Law with a naïve hope to put it all behind me. I could be an entirely new person. No history, no baggage. And I was, for two wonderful years.

Of course, it didn’t last.

Along came my final year of law school, when the dark days of winter crept outside my window. I stopped eating for a while. Everything got harder.

Nothing seemed like it mattered. The depression came back. When I do come to campus, I rush through the atrium to the sanctuary of the silent library, in the hopes no one will talk to me. Then I don’t have to put on the mask. I slouch in class, again hoping no one will look my way. Then I don’t have to put on the mask.

This past December, I wound up in an office asking about accommodations. I’d heard from friends both good and bad experiences. Mine was okay— rigid in terms of policy, but okay. I had the paperwork; I just had to make the final call. Despite a visit to CAMH emergency earlier that week, I wrote the exams. This is U of T Law. This is what

we do, isn’t it? I got my exams written on time.

This is excellence.

It’s really not. I made a choice to put the exams ahead of my health. Sure, I avoided awkward conversations about deferring and I kept those two weeks without law school dangling over my head.

I even earned excellent grades in the end—but I also almost died.

Was it worthwhile? It’s hard to say no with the benefit of hindsight, but the markers of paradigmatic law school success that I’ve achieved don’t tell the story of my happiness and mental well-being.

You’re well aware that law school can be stressful. It is. But how much of it is self-imposed? How much of it is necessary? I don’t claim to have the answers, but these are questions worth contemplating. I’m glad to see the conversations at the law school this year—about the Mental Health and Wellness Committee, the draft Strategic Mental Health plan, the art showcase. We should continue these discussions and critically consider law school culture, law school policies, and the discourse surrounding mental health.

It’s impossible to say if my experience would be the same elsewhere. This is part of who I am. I’ve certainly made both good and bad choices along the way. But the environment matters.

Law school culture and policies affect us all and should not be characterized as immutable realities. There is an unfortunate tendency at this law school to look at accommodations not as promoting an equal playing field, but as an unfair advantage that undermines the integrity of the grading curve. As an institution that founds its identity on excellence, we have an opportunity to change and demonstrate excellence in accommodations. This means accepting that accommodations for mental illness are legitimate, and have a legitimate place in our grading system and at our law school. This means fostering a culture where we can speak frankly about our mental health with our peers, professors, and administrators. This would be excellence.

To the law school community: please keep talking. We can do better.

To anyone who feels like me: please reach out.

Talk to your friends; ask for accommodations; seek medical help. We are not alone.

Bestiality, Statutory Interpretation, and the Baffling Injustice of a Narrow Approach CHARLIE MILLAR (2L)

“Do you think that today’s Supreme Court bench would interpret a piece of legislation in a way that protects the purpose of said legislation, or limit itself to recognize only what is explicitly written?”

Brian Langille’s question stemmed from the 1944 case of Steeles v Louisville & Nashville Railway Co., wherein the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) interpreted the Railway Labour Act to hold that a union must represent all employees without discrimination. It so ruled despite there being no specific prohibition on racial discrimination in the Act. The SCOTUS decision reflected a deft understanding of legal principles and moral values, allowing it to be unfettered by a “gap” in the legislation that the union was trying to exploit. Had the Court used a more conservative, narrow interpretation of the Act, perhaps it would have permitted the union to continue to discriminate against African-Americans because doing so was not explicitly forbidden.

So, the question for us is whether the Supreme Court of Canada, in similar circumstances, would uphold the purpose of legislation or limit itself to only what is explicitly written.

Well, in 2016, the SCC was confronted with exactly this question.

In a 2016 case, R v D.L.W., the SCC was asked to consider the case of a man charged with fourteen counts of various crimes. Charges included sexual assault, sexual interference, invitation to sexual touching, sexual exploitation, making and possessing child pornography, bestiality,

and compelling to commit bestiality. The accused was found guilty of thirteen of those crimes at trial. However, on appeal, the bestiality charge was dropped. Accordingly, the Crown appealed to the SCC to have the bestiality charge reinstated.

The accused was charged with bestiality after he compelled the family dog to perform oral sex on his sixteen-year-old stepdaughter. The defence argued that the charges of bestiality should be dropped since the 1955 law prohibiting bestiality only specified “buggery” (i.e. anal penetration) of an animal as bestiality and, although the dog was engaged in a sexual act, the act itself was not bestiality because the animal was not itself penetrated.

So, technically, (*insert air quotes*) the defense is correct (*air quotes*) in saying that the 1955 legislation on bestiality did not specifically prohibit oral sex with an animal. However, to claim that this omission should exonerate the man is plainly playing semantics with a decade’s old law—not to mention insulting to common sense.

For example, if your mother tells you to refrain from eating cake before dinner, will you escape punishment by instead eating cupcakes? Although your mother did not specifically prohibit cupcakes before dinner, a rational interpretation of her rule would suggest that the intended purpose was to prevent one’s appetite being spoiled by prior consumption of sugar.

Consequently, it is unlikely that, upon discovery of your actions, your mother will shake her fists and say, “Drat! Such cunning! I cannot punish you!” Although you adhered to the letter of your

mother’s rule (do not eat cake before dinner), you have broken the purpose and spirit of her rule (avoiding sweets before dinner).

Cupcakes aside, the SCC was faced with a similar argument in R v D.L.W. from the defence: that since only penetration was listed under the 1955 bestiality provision, every other sexual act with an animal was fair game. This frankly inane argument was a clear exploitation of an imagined loophole from antiquated legislation. Certainly, our Supreme Court bench won’t fall for such a ruse?

They have heard my cupcake analogy before, right?

However, this case was not about cupcakes. This case involved a man forcing an animal to sexually abuse a child. Moreover, instead of a spoiled appetite, the SCC’s decision involved convicting a man of a crime under the Criminal Code. Consequently, the SCC is grimly charged with considering all interpretations in a rational and fair manner.

I wish I could say that the SCC saw through the ruse and protected the dignity of the animal; regrettably, all but one of seven justices were convinced by the defence, ruling that the man was not guilty because the 1955 provision did not clearly spell-out that “compelling an animal to commit oral sex on a child” was bestiality. Thus, by adhering to a rigid interpretation of antiquated legislation, the SCC produced a baffling precedent: so long as there is no penetration, sexual acts with an animal do not amount to bestiality.

Only one Supreme Court Justice saw through the exploitation of the anachronistic legislation and recognized the man’s actions as bestiality, and I bet ev-

ery law student in the country can guess which one.

It was, of course, Justice Rosalie “The Living Legend” Abella.

In her dissent, Justice Abella advocated for common sense, writing that: I do not see the absence of a requirement of penetration as broadening the scope of bestiality. I see it more as a reflection of Parliament’s common sense assumption that, since penetration is physically impossible with most animals and for half the population, requiring it as an element of the offence eliminates from censure most physically exploitative conduct with animals.

Indeed, what is the purpose of the bestiality legislation, if not to protect animals—who cannot possibly consent—from sexual abuse? Unfortunately, there is only one Justice Abella, and so the exploitation of the legal system carried the day, and a man who should have been found guilty of this grotesque abuse of an animal was instead acquitted by the current bench of the Supreme Court of Canada.

In the wake of this animal abuse case, we return to my professor’s question: would the current bench be shackled by exploited loopholes in legislation, or could it interpret and protect the legislative purpose? Our class was left in a heavy silence by this question. Only Professor Langille’s bittersweet remark broke the stillness: “Well, most likely Rosie would”.

I hope that we might see more jurists of the same caliber as Justice Abella on the Supreme Court bench soon.

OPINIONS

ultravires.ca

March 30, 2017

The LPPE Puzzle SUJUNG LEE (1L) Here is the LPPE puzzle: the subject matter of the class is probably the most straightforward compared to other 1L courses, but the classes themselves are some of the most convoluted.

This boggles my mind. LPPE is arguably the most practical class taught in 1L—even more so than Legal Research and Writing, since research and writing skills are usually developed outside the classroom. Unlike case law in other, more theoretical courses in 1L, the Rules of Civil Procedure are something we will actually need to use as soon as we begin practicing. As such, it seems important that we take advantage of our classroom time to get a good grasp of the material.

Moreover, an alarming number of upper years have managed to receive an H or higher in LPPE without attending a majority of the classes. This implies that the subject matter in the course is not actually that difficult. So, most students can get away

with teaching themselves all the material in the last few days, maybe a week, before the exam. This effectively signals to students that it might be worthwhile using the class time during the rest of the term to work on other things.

What’s even more confounding is that the instructors for the course, Professors Simon Stern and Albert Yoon, seem to genuinely care about their teaching. Professor Stern has openly invited past students into his office to criticize his course; Professor Yoon tries to engage his students with various pop culture references (albeit by spoiling Sherlock for half the class). Both instructors have amply demonstrated their well-intentioned dedication to providing a better classroom experience. I just don’t understand why the classes continue to disappoint students year after year.

Perhaps it is because the professors know so much and we know so little that there is such a large dis-

connect in the classroom. Professors Stern and Yoon are distinguished scholars who represent some of the leading minds in civil procedure. In all likelihood, they are probably so deeply immersed in the nuances of their field that they sometimes forget what it was like to be a law student, i.e. someone who has never heard of Rule 14 before.

There are undoubtedly many legal issues that challenge the apparent simplicity of the rules we learn. Unfortunately, these issues are not clearly communicated in class, making it difficult for interested students to properly engage with them.

Instead, we end up getting lost in the fast-paced, soliloquizing lectures. Instead of exerting the mental effort required to discern the somewhatrelevant points from the purely tangential ones, we decide it’s better to tune out and scroll through Facebook—or abstain from attending class completely.

While we may take solace in having one less course to worry about, most of us would still prefer to have a more worthwhile classroom experience. We want to learn from our accomplished professors, and to get value out of the classes we paid all that tuition money for.

While other students will have their own thoughts on the course, these are some of my own suggestions: invite more practicing lawyers to speak about their perspective on the topics in class; use PowerPoints more effectively by not including so much text in the slide; and maybe just dumb down some of the material in general.

I can’t help but think that maybe the entire LPPE experience is a metaphor for law school (think Stickergate 2017), or even life itself: we tend to make things into a bigger deal than they sometimes really are.

Non-Competitive Advocacy: Building a Better Mooting Community for Everyone GRAEME ODDY (3L) In October 2016, I wrote an article about U of T Law’s competitive mooting program. I discussed how a success-based valuation of the program leads to inequalities among prospective mooters; that aspects of the program are incongruent with maximizing participation; and that the administration is letting us down in terms of support for the program and the number of moots available.

I wrote that article, in part, because most of the dialogue about competitive mooting happens between (and is about) those already involved in mooting. It seemed valuable to share the perspective of someone on the outside of the program to broaden the discussion.

I concede that I was also motivated by my disappointment at not receiving a competitive mooting spot. In retrospect, I should have sought to gain more experience by trying out before 3L. Still, I was frustrated and confused to see peers receive their second or third mooting opportunity when I couldn’t get just one; I was discouraged that I could not see my scores or ranks, or determine how close (or far) I had been. Given that approximately 140 students tried out for around sixty positions, I doubt I am the only one who felt this way.

I could have written parts of that article with greater clarity, and I should address one particular line that described the Moot Court Committee’s (MCC) 2016 recap article as “lacking the honesty and introspection” of its predecessor. This was not a depiction of its authors as dishonest. It was a comment on the article itself—on its “boosterism” for the moot program—as compared to the insights from the 2015 version.

In this article, I outline some further approaches I believe can improve the mooting experience for everyone and strengthen the community. This year’s MCC has taken significant steps to improve the mooting program, and my ideas are intended to build on those.

Transparency

Advocating for Accessibility

In March 2015, the then-MCC made suggestions for the next year’s committee in a section entitled “We need more transparency,” stating that the lack of transparency was the largest hindrance to fair and effective try-outs. They suggested that mooters who wish to see their rank and score sheets should be able to. However, that policy has not yet been implemented.

In their October 2016 article, the MCC acknowledged the value of the “norm” that students only participate in one upper-year competitive moot. Yet their response to my suggestion of a limit was that since the Faculty’s formal course criteria doesn’t prohibit participation in multiple moots, they can’t prohibit it either.

I asked this year’s MCC why I couldn’t see my scores, and they replied: “The MCC doesn’t release scores and rankings because [they] are purely numerical and would not provide the student any meaningful substantive feedback. Additionally […] we do not disclose scores in part to protect the privacy of judges and the integrity of the process.”

With respect, I see things differently here. Scores out of ten are intuitive; scoresheets would provide multiple values that together would yield a reasonable picture of how students performed, especially if statistics on median, average, or cut-off scores were included. Overall ranks would give an idea of how far students were from selection. Judges’ names could easily be redacted to maintain privacy. Making scores available would improve integrity, rather than harm it, by motivating judges to maintain consistency in their approach to scoring (a concept also put forward by the 2015 article).

Yet the strongest argument is a principled one. The value of transparency is apparent in most aspects of law school life, including many of our recent controversies: committee meetings being private; questions about whether financial aid is being distributed properly; the convocation debacle; and the decision to block the Gale Cup competitors from participating in the Commonwealth Moot.

Student support for transparency is robust, and transparency should be just as important for the MCC as it is for other organizations in the community.

But regular course enrollment is not awarded to students based on performance and merit; this would be like the Faculty restricting registration in certain courses to students with HHs. Competitive moots are not like other credit courses.

If the “norm” is valuable, then the MCC should work to formalize it. In February, the MCC issued a highly critical statement to the Dean regarding the Gale controversy. MCC members showed they are quite willing and able direct their advocacy skills against Faculty policy. While these circumstances were unique, I call on the MCC to advocate for greater mooting accessibility with that same vigour.

The MCC should also be more vocal about advocating for new moots at the school, and about other accessibility initiatives. With nearly all mooting conversations focused on wins, awards, and advancements, it’s hard to know what else the MCC is pushing for.

It would be great to hear the MCC publicly advocate on behalf of the entire student body. I would like to see a willingness to openly challenge the administration’s policies and actions beyond situations where mooters’ interests are on the line.

Approachability To be frank, the general response to my first article was hostile. It was commented on almost exclusively by current and former mooters or MCC members.

Though a number of students messaged me, none who were offended by my article did so. No one even wrote out my name—I was just the “author.” I was not wanted at the table.

I think it would be worthwhile for the mooting community—past, present, and future—to really consider this: Is the conversation only open to mooters who have “made it” competitively? Is hostility and dismissiveness the appropriate response to suggestions for change?

My experience has shown me that U of T Law students are dedicated to promoting fairness, inclusion, and critical thinking. There is no reason that the mooting community should be any different.

But, in practice, that means inviting the student body at large to the conversation, and being approachable for those not already part of the club.

Final Thoughts The MCC invests significant time and effort into our mooting program, and I know they and their future iterations will continue this work. My suggestions are not meant to devalue these efforts or disregard the positive impact they have.

The administration is ultimately the gateway to more mooting opportunities. If we want to moot, we should all take an active role in telling the Faculty. The MCC created a survey in the fall to poll student interest in new moots. I hope responses are abundant and the administration listens.

I stand by my first article. Many prospective mooters are being left behind, and something about the competitive mooting program needs to change. But, I would suggest that cooperation and community building are better ways of making this happen than hostility and exclusivity. We work better together than apart. As one student has put it, “collaboration is essential to every part of the law school process.”

If anyone has thoughts, please reach out to me or your SLS representatives. I also encourage you to talk to the MCC, to attend moots, and to write about it. The more people who join the discussion, the stronger the community will be.

12 | March 30, 2017

OPINIONS

ultravires.ca

Sessions is Now in Court NORM YALLEN (1L) Donald Trump and his administration have been constantly in the news, making it difficult to keep track of all the different players and their scandals. So, in the spirit of law, let’s check in on one of those players: newly minted Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Q: Why has Jeff Sessions been in the news?

A: Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III was accused of past racism before his confirmation hearing, then was accused of lying under oath about his contacts with the Russian ambassador at that hearing.

Q: Wow, that’s quite the full name. Why was he accused of racism?

A: For starters, Jefferson comes from Jefferson Davis—first and only President of the Confederate States of America—and P. G. T. Beauregard was a Confederate general. Obviously, people don’t choose their birth-names, and a Confederately coloured name is not itself evidence of racism. However, Sessions has a record of discrimina-

tion from his time as a US attorney in Alabama, where he unsuccessfully prosecuted three AfricanAmerican community organizers for voter fraud in 1985. Then, in 1986, President Ronald Reagan nominated Sessions for a federal judgeship, a position voted on by the Senate; unfortunately for Sessions, he was voted down by the Senate Judiciary Committee—only the second person in fortyeight years to have that dishonour. The reasons he was voted down included that 1985 prosecution, the discovery of flattering quotes he had made about the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), and an unflattering instance of calling an African-American attorney “boy.” Coretta Scott King, widow of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., personally wrote a letter to Congress advocating against his nomination.

Q: What were the flattering quotes about the KKK? A: Sessions once said that he thought the KKK was “okay, until I found out they smoked pot.” Jeff Sessions is fine with racism, but he is against marijuana. As Attorney General, he has promised

harsher enforcement of drug laws.

Q: What is the job of the Attorney General?

A: As the Attorney General, Jeff Sessions is the head of the Department of Justice as well as the chief law enforcement officer and chief lawyer of the United States government.

Q: What happened with Jeff Sessions and Russia?

A: During his confirmation hearing, Sessions was asked what he would do if he learned that members of the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian government during the 2016 campaign. He responded, “I’m not aware of any of these activities. I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I did not have communications with the Russians.” Subsequently, the Washington Post broke the story that Jeff Sessions spoke with the Russian ambassador in 2016. Sessions claims that he was not lying because he did not speak with the ambassador about the campaign. At best, Sessions was being some-

what deceptive. At worst, he lied under oath.

Q: Isn’t lying under oath a crime?

A: Yes, but as the head lawyer of the country, I am certain no one will be prosecuting Jeff Sessions anytime soon. In response to the story, Sessions recused himself from any investigation of the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia. His stated explanation was that, as a prominent surrogate of the Trump campaign, he would not have the appearance of impartiality. That probably means he should have recused himself for the beginning.

Q: Who oversees any investigation of Trump and Russia then?

A: Dana Boente, the Deputy Attorney General.

His bosses are Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump. I am sure he will be impartial.

Q: So, the Attorney General is a known racist who may have lied under oath?

A: Yes, but at least he will aggressively prosecute people for smoking weed.

Challenging Judicial Attitudes to Systemic Racism SHYAMA TALUKDAR (2L) As law students, we are party to a legal system that we know disproportionately disadvantages black people. What do we owe a protest movement working to upset this status quo?

According to the latest Annual Report of the Office of the Correctional Investigator, there are 70% more black Canadians in federal prison than there were ten years ago. Black inmates make up 10% of the federal prison population while making up only 3% of the civilian population. And despite representing only 3% of Toronto’s population, black people are involved in 27% of carding incidents; overall, you are three times more likely to be carded if you are a black Torontonian1. The obstacles that some Torontonians face for being racialized as black are well documented.

A group that has successfully demanded political action on these issues is the Toronto chapter of Black Lives Matter (BLM). The group has engaged with Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne and Toronto Mayor John Tory on issues such as overhauling the Special Investigations Unit and eliminating carding. However, BLM has recently come under fire for calling Prime Minister Justin Trudeau a white supremacist.

Many people, including law students, have expressed discomfort with BLM’s choice of language. They argue that the group should not alienate white people if the organization wants to effect change. They argue that Justin Trudeau is not in fact a white supremacist, and that this sort of hyperbole hurts the group’s credibility.

Yet, as BLM later clarified, this criticism misconstrues the definition of white supremacy. In a Facebook post dated 9 February 2017, the group proffered this conception: “White supremacy describes any process or

person that works to elevate white people in society above everyone else, therefore believing that non-white people deserve unequal access, differential laws, disenfranchisement, and violence…

White supremacy looks like promising heaven and earth to Indigenous people to get elected, refusing to adopt the policy changes you promised, and then offensively claiming that the most urgent need of Indigenous youth in this country is canoe storage.

White Supremacy looks like refusing to eradicate racist laws like Bill C-51 [and] inaction on a police forces that terrorize Black and Indigenous people...”

What this definition makes clear is that the entire legal system is implicated. There is a sense that it is the police and politicians, not lawyers and judges, who are to blame for racial injustice in that system.

After all, it is politicians that enact legislation like mandatory minimum sentences that disproportionately affect black communities and police officers that disproportionately card black people in Toronto. Yet, as Professor David Tanovich at Windsor Law has argued in his article “The Charter of Whiteness: 25 Years of Maintaining Racial Injustice in the Canadian Criminal Justice System,”2 narrow approaches to judicial review have greatly limited Charter litigation on racial discrimination. In several important cases regarding bail, jury selection, and racial profiling, courts refused to adopt racial discrimination arguments when they were advanced.

Professor Tanovich highlights the case of R v Laws, wherein the defendant argued that the citizenship requirement for jury duty in s. 2 of the Juries Act violated s. 15(1) of the Charter because it

disproportionately affected black Canadians. Citizenship requirements for jurors is especially strange given that there is no citizenship requirement for justices of the peace, lawyers, or judges.

Nevertheless, the Ontario Court of Appeal rejected this argument because “the inclusion of noncitizens would not materially increase the possibility that a black juror will in fact end up on the jury.”

Another example drawn upon by Professor Tanovich is R v Lines, wherein the trial judge dismissed a motion by the Crown that sought a declaration by the court that s. 15(1) prevented defence counsel from using its peremptory challenges to exclude black jurors. The case centered on a highly charged racial event where a white police officer shot a fleeing black man. The trial judge dismissed the motion because “[i]n a criminal trial the accused is pitted against the state. In my opinion it is fanciful to suggest that in the selection of a jury, he doffs his adversarial role and joins the Crown in some sort of joint and concerted effort to empanel an independent and impartial tribunal.” The defence then used four of its seven peremptory challenges to exclude racialized jurors so that ultimately the jury consisted of eleven white jurors and one Asian juror. The accused was acquitted.

These cases (and many others) demonstrate that the judiciary is often resistant to the idea of systemic racism. As law students, we are taught to learn legal reasoning from reading cases. Thus, we must ask ourselves whether the way we are learning to reason and interpret the law is an inherently narrow approach—one that excludes the possibility of racialized people seeking redress against institutional racism through the legal system.

Which brings us to the question that began this

article: what do we, law students who benefit from and maintain a legal system that disproportionately disadvantages black people, owe to Black Lives Matter?

One place we could begin is listening to the grievances of BLM protestors and taking the initiative to educate ourselves on institutional racism in the legal system. Doing so would help individuals that are not part of the movement to understand that when some people of colour reference the word “white,” they are speaking of power structures rather than individuals.

Instead of becoming defensive and feeling attacked, perhaps we should consider how we consume black art as part of our efforts to appear cultured and cool while having little empathy for a black protest movement working to help communities disadvantaged by the legal system we uphold. We fawn over I Am Not Your Negro while neglecting to take heed of civil rights commentator James Baldwin’s belief that “white is a metaphor for power” when BLM explains why they have called Justin Trudeau a white supremacist.

Once again, I have no easy answer. But perhaps it is time to acknowledge that black Canadians are angry for a reason and that, as law students, we have a professional and moral duty to ensure that no part of our legal system is implicated in racial discrimination.

Jim Rankin, “Carding drops but proportion of blacks stopped by Toronto police rises,” The Toronto Star, 26 July 2014.

1

2

David Tanovich, “The Charter of Whiteness: 25 Years of Maintaining Racial Injustice in the Canadian Criminal Justice System,” (2008) 40 Supreme Court Law Review 2d.

RECRUITMENT SPECIAL

ultravires.ca

March 30, 2017

Toronto 2L OCI Recruitment for Summer 2017

Having gone through the process, how do you feel?

Every year, Ultra Vires conducts a survey, gathering responses from U of T students that were eligible to participate in the OCI process.

This survey gives us valuable insight into both the recruiting process and the makeup of the 2L class. All information contained in this report is based on the results of this survey.

In November, we published some preliminary hiring data, including the number of students hired by many Toronto employers recruiting through OCIs. As some of the fi rms also hire through the 1L recruiting process, this data is not necessarily a comprehensive report on all Toronto summer student positions at any of these employers. It does, however, provide an accurate representation of 2L summer students hired at these fi rms.

Like last year, the relative performance of individual law schools remains mostly unchanged.

However, though other schools’ hiring remained stagnant (with increases and decreases of no more than 4%), U of T experienced the largest downtick in hiring for 2L summer students at fi rms participating in the OCI process (47% of the class were hired this year versus 53% last year).

This year’s survey differs from prior editions in a couple of ways. We asked students to share not only whether they were hired, but also their OCI and in-fi rm data. This allowed us to discern the importance of various factors at each stage of the recruiting process. We also added questions focusing on the social elements of the law school experience at the Faculty of Law,

ranging from questions about students’ Facebook profi les to the frequency of their alcohol consumption.

Because not all students choose to participate in the recruitment survey, the data presented should be interpreted with caution. Nonetheless, response rates were high and were nearly identical to last year: 165 students out of a class of approximately 200 people.

We hope that both the quantitative data and the qualitative reflections of those surveyed will be valuable for our readership. Many students take the time to give thoughtful accounts of their experience in the process, for which we are tremendously grateful. We hope that this report proves helpful to future students.

66%

34

respondent success rate.

respondents chose not to participate in OCIs

Of the 130 survey respondents who participated in OCIs, 86 of them got jobs.

Finally, we would like to remind students that 2L OCIs are just one way to begin your legal career. There are many great employers who hire outside of this process and in the articling recruit.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to complete our survey!

This recruitment special was produced by Cory Bettel (2L), Kyle Jackson (1L JD/MBA), and Maud Rozee (2L). They would like to note that they do not necessarily endorse the views expressed by students in this feature.

Ultra Vires normally strives to have the results from our annual recruitment survey published earlier in the year, and we sincerely apologize for this year’s delay in publication.

Students who did not participate in OCIs frequently cited receiving jobs in New York, the 1L recruit, or other Canadian markets as their reason for not participating in OCIs

RECRUITMENT SPECIAL

14 | March 30, 2017

ultravires.ca

Class of 2018 Demographics Parents Combined Annual Income $0 $0 -- $25,000 $25,000 2% 3% $25,001 -$25,001+ $50,000 5% 5%

Age as of Jan 1, 2017

$1 million+ million + $1 4% 4% $500,001 - $1 million $500,001+ 10% 10% $300,001 - $500,000 $300,001+ 8%8%

$50,001 - $100,000 $50,001+ 21%21%

21 or Younger Item 5 1% 1%

31 or1Older Item 2% 2% Item 2 27-30 12% 12%

22-23 Item 4 35% 35%

$200,001 - $300,000 $200,001+ 17% 17% $100,001 - $100,001+ $150,000 13%13% $150,001 - $200,000 $150,001+ 20% 20%

Expected Debt At Graduation No Debt Item 6 19% 19%

24-26 Item 3 50% 50%

Prefer not to Answer Item 4 2%3%

$200,001 + Item 1 1% 1%

Bisexual Item 3 4% 4%

$100,001 - $200,000 Item 2 30% 30%

Sexual Orientation

Lesbian/Gay Item 2 6% 6%

$1 - $25,000 Item 5 7%7%

$25,001 - $50,000 Item 4 17% 16%

Straight Item 1 87% 87%

$50,001 - $100,000 Item 3 26% 26%

Factors Associated With 2L Recruitment Success CORY BETTEL (2L), KYLE JACKSON (1L JD/MBA), ANI SACHDEV (1L JD/MBA) Using data provided by 113 survey respondents, we ran regressions to determine factors that best predict success in the 2L recruit1. We broke our analysis down into (i) getting OCIs, (ii) getting in-fi rms, and (iii) getting job offers.

Factors positively correlated with success at each stage of the recruit are listed below, with statistical significance noted in parentheses. We also describe the magnitude of each variable’s expected impact. Importantly, these relationships are not necessarily causal. The correlations found may be driven by unobserved factors. Finally, keep in mind that these are aggregate fi ndings, which therefore do not reflect the recruitment trends at any specific employer.

GETTING OCIs Having high 1L grades, having an undergraduate degree in commerce, supporting the

Conservative party, and networking with employers were all positive predictors of receiving OCIs. Based on our data, every point increase in unweighted 1L GPA is expected to increase the number of OCIs received by 12. Applicants with a commerce degree are expected to receive 4 more OCIs than students with non-commerce undergraduate degrees. Supporting the Conservative party is linked with receiving 4 more OCIs than supporting another political party.

Students who networked (e.g. attended fi rm tours, spoke with lawyers or students) prior to submitting applications are expected to receive 3 more OCIs than those who did not. Note that we controlled for the number of applications sent by each student.

GETTING IN-FIRMS Having high 1L grades, networking with employers, having an undergraduate degree in

Factors Associated with Success in Getting OCIs

commerce, and self-reporting as an extrovert were all positive predictors of receiving in-fi rm interviews. Every point increase in unweighted 1L GPA is expected to increase the number of in-fi rms by 0.3. Networking is associated with receiving 2 additional in-fi rms. Commerce students are expected to receive 2 more in-fi rms than students with non-commerce undergraduate degrees. Self-reporting as an extrovert is associated with receiving 1.5 more in-fi rms than self-reporting as an introvert, or as a mix of introvert/extrovert.

GETTING JOB OFFERS Having high 1L grades, being a JD/MBA student, networking with employers, and mostly studying in groups in 1L were all positive predictors of receiving job offers. Every increase in unweighted GPA is expected to increase the number of job offers by 0.1. This means that stu-

Factors Associated with Success in Getting In-Firms

dents at the top of the class (GPA of 35) are expected to receive 1.5 more offers than students at the bottom (GPA of 20), holding all other variables constant. JD/MBA students are expected to receive 1.5 more offers than non-JD/ MBA students. Students who networked are expected to receive 0.5 more offers than those who did not. Those who studied mostly in groups in 1L are expected to receive 1 more offer than those who studied in groups less frequently. Factors that do not predict job offers include having a commerce undergraduate degree and having significant work experience prior to law school.

We encourage readers to keep the following methodological limitations in mind while considering our results: a sample size of 113 is small, our data capture only one year of recruitment, and those who chose to respond to our survey may not be a representative sample of all students.

Factors Associated with Success in Getting Job Offers

• High 1L grades (99.9999%)

• High 1L grades (99.9999%)

• High 1L grades (99.9850%)

• Commerce undergrad (99.9972%)

• Networking (99.7860%)

• JD/MBA (98.7960%)

• Supporting the Conservative party (99.1940%)

• Commerce undergrad (99.5320%)

• Networking (98.4290%)

• Networking (96.8060%)

• Self-reporting as an extrovert (98.9590%)

• Mostly studying in groups in 1L (97.6210%)

1

While 130 survey respondents participated in OCIs, only those who provided complete enough responses were included in the regression analysis. We performed stepwise backward regressions.

2

Unweighted GPA = 5(# of HH) + 4(# of H) + 3(# of P) + 1(# of LP).

RECRUITMENT SPECIAL

ultravires.ca

March 30, 2017

Job Distribution by Firm and School Total Students

Toronto

Osgoode

Western

Queen's

Ottawa

McGill

Windsor

Dalhousie

Other

8

1

1

1

0

3

0

2

0

0

Baker & McKenzie LLP

5

1

0

1

1

0

2

0

0

0

Bennett Jones LLP

16

3

3

0

3

1

0

3

2

1

Bereskin & Parr LLP

5

3

2

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Blakes, Cassels & Graydon LLP

21

11

5

2

0

0

2

1

0

0

Borden Ladner Gervais LLP

21

6

4

1

3

2

3

1

0

1

Brauti Thorning Zibarras LLP

2

1

0

0

0

1

0

0

0

0

Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP

13

4

4

0

3

0

0

1

1

0

Dale & Lessmann LLP

2

0

2

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP

11

4

3

2

1

0

1

0

0

0

Dentons LLP

10

2

2

1

2

2

0

1

0

0

DOJ Ontario Region & PPSC

9

0

0

2

0

1

0

3

1

2

DLA Piper (Canada) LLP

6

2

1

3

0

0

0

0

0

0

Epstein Cole LLP

2

0

1

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP

15

2

4

1

2

2

0

1

1

2

Filion Wakely Thorup Angeletti LLP

5

2

1

1

1

0

0

0

0

0

Firm Aird & Berlis LLP

Fogler, Rubinoff LLP

6

2

1

2

0

0

0

0

0

1

Gardiner Roberts LLP

4

0

0

2

0

0

0

2

0

0

Gilbert's LLP

2

1

0

0

0

1

0

0

0

0

Goodmans LLP

15

5

3

0

1

2

4

0

0

0

Gowling WLG

13

2

5

2

2

1

0

1

0

0

Hicks Adams LLP

4

1

1

1

1

0

0

0

0

0

Hicks Morley Hamilton Stewart Storie LLP

5

0

0

0

4

0

0

1

0

0

Koskie Minsky LLP

5

1

1

1

1

0

0

1

0

0

1

2

0

2

1

2

0

2

0

Legal Aid Ontario

10

Lenczner Slaght Royce Smith Griffin LLP

6

1

1

0

0

0

1

2

1

0

McCarthy Tetrault LLP

27

4

6

3

3

3

1

3

0

4

McMillan LLP

9

1

0

0

2

2

0

3

1

0

Miller Thomson LLP

9

5

1

1

0

0

0

1

1

0

MAG - Constitutional Law Branch

3

0

1

0

1

0

1

0

0

0

MAGl - Crown Law Office - Criminal

8

2

2

0

1

1

1

1

0

0

Norton Rose Fulbright Canada LLP

17

2

7

4

3

0

0

1

0

0

Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt lLP

24

6

5

5

1

1

1

2

1

2

Paliare Roland Rosenberg Rothstein LLP

3

2

1

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Polley Faith LLP

3

3

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP

2

2

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Shearman & Sterling LLP

1

0

1

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Stieber Berlach LLP

3

1

2

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Stikeman Elliott LLP

22

5

6

3

2

3

0

1

1

1

Torkin Manes, LLP

3

0

1

0

1

1

0

0

0

0

Torys LLP

14

3

2

3

3

1

1

0

1

0

WeirFoulds LLP

3

0

1

0

0

1

0

0

1

0

Wildeboer Dellelce LLP

3

1

0

0

0

0

0

1

0

1

375

93

83

42

44

30

20

33

14

16

Approx Class Size

/

200

313

175

200

305

185

245

170

/

% with Toronto Jobs

/

47%

27%

24%

22%

10%

11%

13%

8%

/

2015 Total

420

106

84

49

48

32

25

40

18

18

2014 Total

398

97

83

48

46

35

27

26

15

21

2013 Total

351

94

75

44

43

30

13

23

13

16

2012 Total

379

89

89

43

43

39

18

28

14

16

2011 Total

403

96

83

53

47

36

27

27

18

16

Total

*The following fi rms participated in recruitment but did not respond to our survey: Dickinson Wright LLP; Edward H. Royle and Associates; Mathews, Dinsdale & Clark LLP; MAG - Crown Law Office - Civil; MAG - Family Responsibility Office; MAG - Office of the Public Guardian and Trustee; Owens Wright LLP; Reisler Franklin LLP; Smart & Biggar LLP; Thorsteinssons LLP.

RECRUITMENT SPECIAL

16 | March 30, 2017

ultravires.ca

The Process 48%

24%

of students who accepted an offer networked with their employer

of students who accepted an offer attended a firm tour with their employer

69%

9%

of students were not surprised by the offers they received

of students lied about their level of commitment to a firm during the process

Did your first choice employer change during the recruitment process?

Did you tell more than one employer that they were your first choice?

Ye 4% s

Yes 4%

Yes 51% 49%

NoNo 49% 51%

N 96 o %

No 96%

Government Gov Office

7%

10%

Other Other 3% 2%

If you accepted a position, was it at‌?

Mid SizeMid Firm

7%

7%

Boutique Firm

Bout 18% 17%

Large Full Service Firm Large Full Sevic 65% 64%

RECRUITMENT SPECIAL

ultravires.ca

March 30, 2017

41%

88%

31%

of total U of T students hired are at Seven Sister firms

of total students applied to at least one Seven Sister firm

of total students say it was important to them to specifically work at a Seven Sister firm

68%

28%

of total students say it was important to them to work at an employer with name recognition

of total students at Seven Sister firms are from U of T

Which firms hired the most U of T students?

15

11 10

6

6

5

5

5

5

m so n rT ho M ille

El lio tt St ik

em an

s G oo dm an

r O sl e

BL G

Bl a

ke s

0

Snow White and the Seven Sisters JAMIE PARKER (2L) Before coming to law school, I had no idea what the “Seven Sisters” were. I doubt many 1Ls and 2Ls could even name them before the recruits.

Why isn’t Dentons, the largest law firm in the world, one of them? Why doesn’t one of those litigation boutiques that only hires Supreme Court clerks get to be one? When 2L recruitment starts, why does everyone want to work at one? I mean, OCIs are already a tiny piece of the legal jobs out there, and full-service OCI firms are an even smaller piece of that. Why narrow it down to just seven of the dozens of firms that are hiring?

My good friend Wikipedia says that the term “Seven Sisters” may have been coined in 2001 to denote the seven Toronto law firms that transacted the highest volume of merger and acquisition (M&A) deals. Do you want to do M&A in Toronto? Great, these seven firms do a lot of that. But,

then again, so do many other Toronto firms that you may really like working at. And what if you’re not interested in M&A? The legal landscape has changed dramatically since 2001. Why make a decision based on a nickname that originated at least six years before the iPhone did?

There are a lot of factors that go into deciding where you want to end up—fit, hireback rates, practice areas, early responsibility, mentoring, exit opportunities, and plain old personal preference, to name just a few—but whether a firm is a “Sister” should not be one of them. There are many amazing firms that hire during OCIs. The Seven Sisters are great firms and they do great work.

That doesn’t mean they will be the best firm for you or for the areas of law that you are interested in (yes, even if you’re interested in those corporate, M&A, business-type things).

I turned down a few Sisters to end up at Norton Rose Fulbright—a firm that wasn’t even around when “Seven Sisters” was supposedly coined. Every year, lots of other students do the same. Most of these firms do the same type of work for the same type of clients in the same office buildings with the same generic websites.

My advice is that you try to find what really sets the different firms apart. Talk to students and lawyers who work there: Did you like the people you met in Labour & Employment at firm X or firm Y? It doesn’t matter that firm Y is ranked higher if all they do is talk about how John Lennon was the best Beatle when you clearly know it’s Ringo. I chose my firm because I felt that I fit in better there. Conversations were easier and more fun, and I could see myself working there. I’d guess that the vast majority of students who were lucky

enough to choose between firms chose their firm for the exact same reason.

If you are interested in practice area rankings, look on Chambers or Lexpert, but don’t let those rankings be the biggest factor in your decision.

Practicing law is hard; burnout and mental health issues are very real. You want the place that’s going to be best for you. If that’s a Sister firm, great. If it’s another OCI firm, great. If it’s through the articling recruit or outside it, then even better.

It’s a crazy, exhausting process, and there are many things that should go into your decision. But that’s it: It’s your decision. Please, future OCI-ers, avoid basing it on prestige or some label invented back when the average Toronto house cost $250,000 and tuition at U of T Law cost less than $14,000. You’ll be happy you did.

RECRUITMENT SPECIAL

18 | March 30, 2017

ultravires.ca

Stuff About Grades

LP

CORY BETTEL (2L) & KYLE JACKSON (1L JD/MBA)

7 students reported receiving an LP. 2 out of the 7 received at least one offer.

If you read our findings on factors that best predict success in the recruit (or if you happen to attend this law school), you by now know that “grades matter.” But it’s often difficult to determine what this truly means. For many students, two questions commonly come to mind: (i) How do I stack up against my classmates? and (ii) How did students with similar grades to mine fare in previous recruits? Using data provided by the Class of 2018, we attempt to answer these questions.

How Do My Grades Compare to Those of My Classmates?

To better understand how grades are distributed among the class, we converted each student’s set of grades into an unweighted GPA, and then computed key metrics1. 148 survey respondents, from a class of approximately 200, shared their grades2. Here’s what we found: Mean

26.2

Median

26

Mode

25

Range

20 - 35

1st Quartile (25th percentile)

24*

3rd Quartile (75th percentile)

28*

Distinction**

P *The 25th and 75th percentile points for our sample are approx. halfway through the groups of students with GPAs of 24 and 28 respectively.

•

The most common number of Ps on a transcript is 3

•

54 students had 4 or more Ps, and 60% of these students received at least one offer

•

17 students had no Ps, and 73% of these students received at least one offer

**This represents the true cutoff point for Distinction.

30+***

***Due to credit weightings, not all students with an unweighted GPA of 30 received distinction.

The median GPA of 26 would correspond to a transcript of, for example, 5 H and 2 P. The most commonly occurring GPA of 25 would correspond to a transcript of, for example, 4 H and 3 P. Notably, 50% of students are clustered within the range of 24 to 28. To contextualize, this is the difference between a transcript of 3 H and 4 P, and a transcript of 7 H. Less than 10% of students have a GPA in the range of 31 to 35, which corresponds, for example, to a transcript of at least 3 HH and the rest H. A Closer Look at Grades & Success in the OCI Recruit To examine the relationship between grades and recruitment success, we divided students into three groups: top quarter, middle quarters3, and lower quarter of the sample.

For each, we computed (i) the percent of students with one or more offers, (ii) the average rate of OCIs received per applications sent, and (iii) the average number of job offers for students who received at least one offer. Here are the results: GPA Top Quarter (28+)

% With Offer(s)*

OCI-to-Application Rate

Average Number of Job Offers (for successful applicants only)

68%

82%

2.2

Middle Quarters(25-27)

77%

57%

1.9

Lower Quarter(20-24)

48%

25%

1.4

HH

*This table excludes respondents who did not provide complete information relating to both grades and applications/offers. Some students who reported receiving no job offers did not disclose their grades. Because of this, at least some of the “% With Offer(s)” figures are inflated.

As expected, students with higher grades secured more OCIs. Moreover, of those students who did receive a job offer, students with higher grades received more offers overall. But, notably, students closer to the average fared better when it came to securing employment. In fact, all 16 out of 16 respondents with the median GPA of 26 received at least one job offer.

How should students participating in future recruits interpret these data? It is not surprising that high grades are positively associated with greater success in securing OCIs and with receiving more job offers. In other words, you’re likely to have more options with grades near the top of the class. However, students may be surprised (and perhaps relieved) at how successful “average” students were in securing employment. We believe that this confirms what we all intuitively know: grades are just one factor in a student’s profile, and they are not necessarily determinative of employment outcomes. So while the law school motto that “grades matter” holds true, perhaps we should take seriously the common caveat that they are indeed “not everything.”

For computing unweighted GPA, we use the Faculty values of HH=5, H=4, P=3, LP=1. This unweighted GPA is unofficial. The Faculty computes a student’s official GPA using the credit weighting of each course. However, this official GPA is not listed on a student’s transcript. We therefore assume that employers “eyeball” transcripts without regard to credit weightings, such that this unweighted GPA roughly approximates how employers view a student’s grades. Of course, we could be incorrect in making this assumption.

1

Note that this includes all students who responded to our survey, whether they participated in OCIs or not.

2

•

63 students had no HHs, and 62% of these students received at least one offer

•

36 students had only 1 HH, and 18 students had 4 or more HHs

•

67% of students with 3+ HHs received at least one offer

As noted, the 25th and 75th percentiles are halfway through the groups of students with a GPA of 24 and 28 respectively. Because of this, we limited our “Middle Quarters” category to students with a GPA in the range of 25 to 27.

3

P is for Perfectly OK CORY BETTEL (2L) Five days after my final exam of 1L, I attended an event hosted by the CDO that was advertised as a Second Year Overview Symposium. I was tired, hungover, and had yet to finish my binge watch of The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story.

The bulk of the event was well run, with students and alumni speaking to the plethora of opportunities available for the summer and their advice heading into the recruiting process. But one particularly cringe-worthy moment remained with me for the next six months. And it spoke to the lack of transparency surrounding grades within our law school.

Chantelle Courtney, our Associate Dean of Advancement, was asked to make some introductory remarks to the group of newly-minted 2Ls. Ms. Courtney’s résumé makes her a worthy choice to open such a symposium and speak to the recruitment process. She spent a total of eight years acting as the Director of Student Programs at both Goodmans and Stikeman Elliott, as well as five years in Professional Development at Davies. As someone with an eye towards working on Bay Street, she’s the exact type of person who I wanted to hear from.

But very quickly, things went south. As Ms. Courtney began to discuss the factors that matter in the recruiting process, she noted that grades were of significance. This was not news to me or, I assume, to any of the other attending students. Grades are the one impartial marker that can differentiate us from one another. Their importance is obvious.

But… what kind of grades are sufficient? This unanswered question haunted me more than finding out how O.J. did it.

When one student bluntly asked Ms. Courtney to detail the grades we would need, her response surprised and terrified me. I’m paraphrasing, but she opined that a mix of grades was okay. Phew, instant relief! Like the general populace of students, I have a mix of grades.

But then she further elaborated: that mix of grades consisted of HHs and Hs. We were told that we should try not to have any Ps on our transcript (though maybe one was okay).

My anxiety-sense was tingling. I was convinced that I was screwed for the fall recruit. News of my failure would spread through the school like wildfire

through the Great Sept of Baelor.

To be fair, Ms. Courtney’s comments elicited laughter from the students and the CDO later confirmed that Ms. Courtney may have been off the mark. But the damage was done. My finger never left the panic button until I accepted a job offer in November.

So yes, there’s a happy ending here. My mixture of grades (which is not solely a mixture of HHs and Hs) was good enough to help me land a job during the fall recruit. It’s also the exact kind of Bay Street job that Ms. Courtney’s advice made me think was unattainable.

I have now looked at the data supplied by the 2Ls that participated in the fall recruit and I can assure you that Ms. Courtney was indeed incorrect. It is entirely reasonable to have a P on your transcript. In fact, it’s okay to have numerous Ps on your transcript.

Since the introduction of the grading scheme in 2012, there has continued to be a mystique surrounding the requisite grades necessary to achieve success in the recruiting process. And the fact that a

member of the administration like Ms. Courtney was so misguided seems to signify that students are not the only ones in the dark.

I would ask the administration to be more direct with students at every turn about how grades impact recruiting prospects. We’re adults: we can bear knowing the reality of our likelihood at job success, and it helps to know what we should be working towards rather than achieving a result we’re not sure is good or bad.

But, more importantly, I implore students not to feel as if getting a P or three is going to end their (maybe misguided) fantasy of working on Bay Street—because I and so many other students got jobs with the exact same kinds of grades.

We all have a little bit of imposter syndrome. It’s hard to look at the immensely qualified group of students that our law school attracts and not to feel a little bit overwhelmed sometimes. But, from my experience, employers are not just interested in students as a data point. If you take it seriously and cross your fingers, you can find success in the fall recruiting process—Ps and all.

RECRUITMENT SPECIAL

ultravires.ca

March 30, 2017

Mental Health Has the severity changed since law school started?

Do you have a mental health condition?

Yes 26%

No 37%

Yes 63% No 74%

Has the frequency changed during law school?

If severity/frequency increased, what factors contributed?

93% 100

75

57%

54%

No 45% 50

29%

Yes 55% 25

0

How often do you binge drink?

Weekly Item 4 17% 17%

Item 4

La w W Sch or klo ool ad

Item 3

Pe Re rson lat al ion Ci sh rcu ips ms , S ta oc nc ial es, ,e tc

MORE FACTS

Item 2

Cu ltu Law re/ Sc Pr ho es su ol re

Fin an cia Per l S son ita uti al/ on

Item 1

How often did you attend pub night in 1L? Weekly Item 4 7% 7%

Monthly Item 1 26% 24%

On Occasion Item 1 24% 24% Every Other Week Item 3 26% 27%

Item 3 26%

Never 24% Item On2Occasion 33% 33%

1-10

11-20

21-50

LIKES

LIKES

LIKES

Item 2 Once or Twice Per Semester 43% 42%

How many likes do you have on your current Facebook profile picture?

1-10

11-20

21-50

51-100

101-200

201-500

LIKES

LIKES

LIKES

LIKES

LIKES

LIKES

10%

6%

29%

35%

18%

2%

20 | March 30, 2017

RECRUITMENT SPECIAL

ultravires.ca

"I got through the recruit..."

With no HH’s on my transcript: During 1L and over the summer, I spent some time networking with various firms. That may be an understatement; in total, I attended nearly ten firm tours and had gone for coffee or arranged phone calls with lawyers from nearly half of the twenty-six firms I applied to.

During one such meeting with a recruiter from a large Bay Street firm, I was told that U of T’s grading system made it harder for firms to identify top candidates. The recruiter told me that since forty-five per cent of any given class gets an H or HH, only an HH could be viewed as a successful grade. I could feel my throat start to close up. Even though my grades are mostly Hs, I don’t have a single HH on my transcript.

What struck me the most about this exchange was that I had been quite proud of my grades up to that point. I felt like I was going to be on easy street walking into the Toronto recruit. But this conversation honestly made me question whether my grades were good enough… even though I had beaten the curve in almost every single one of my courses.

In the end, I did not receive an invitation to an OCI with that firm.

Maybe it was my personality, maybe my application materials were subpar, or maybe it was my grades. I’ll never really know. But those twenty-six applications resulted in twenty-three OCIs where not one firm ever posited a similar sentiment about grades. If anything, firms were complimentary of my grades—I kind of felt like a wunderkind.

I’m not trying to take anything away from how incredible it is to get an HH at our school, when even earning a P requires working your ass off. I would just suggest that students who achieve an H should also have their success acknowledged—by their peers, by themselves, and, yes, by employers.

Without getting a job despite good grades: The worst part about not getting a job in the 2L Bay recruit when you have good marks is that you have no excuse. When you wonder why you did not get a single offer, the inescapable conclusion you reach is that recruiters just don’t like you! “Your application looks great but… uh… we just don’t want to put you in front of clients. Or our associates, for that matter.” That is a scary feeling, especially considering that the profession of law is so grounded in our networking and social skills. For weeks I wondered what made me so unlikeable.

That was a bit of a bummer, but on the bright side, I was well placed to begin the diverse non-OCI job hunt. Marks do help; I was fortunate to have a lot of opportunities and interviews. (However, in one interview I was asked why I thought I did not get a job during OCIs … “I think people just hate me as soon as they meet me.”) I was also very fortunate to have friends who I really respected in a similar boat to commiserate with.

It is important to keep perspective. I will admit it, I definitely thought I would get a Bay Street job out of the 2L process. I thought all my peers would.

But by no means was I entitled to one. In this profession, everyone is just so smart and so personable. This is a big part of what makes it so enjoyable. No doubt grades are part of the process, but they are no guarantee of anything. I am not sure if I had the wrong personality for Bay or if I was just unlucky. I think it’s a great experience that will open a lot of doors for my peers who got those jobs. For me, there is still a lot of excitement ahead.

With no significant work experience:

With an LP on my transcript: I had an LP in 1L. Take my story with a grain of salt, as I am just a single data point. But, mental anguish aside, it really didn’t hurt me at all in the Toronto recruit.

Again, I am a single data point, and likely had a bit of a cushion as I didn’t have a single other P on my transcript, so my other grades were competitive. I also tend to think that people shouldn’t give advice about recruitment that they think is definitive because there is a lot of variance from year to year, firm to firm, and person to person. But I strongly believe you can do fine in recruitment even if you have an LP. I’m spitballing, but I think the biggest hurdle for students with LPs is at the application stage, so do your best crafting your applications to firms and pray for an OCI. I wouldn’t have been shocked if some big firms passed on me because of it. But most did not: I had a ton of OCIs. It’s impossible to say to what extent having an LP on your transcript presents you unfavorably when compared against other students. But I only faced two questions about my LP, both during OCIs. Both just seemed to be testing if I had prepared an answer or had gotten down on myself about it. I indeed had prepared an answer, explaining how I followed up with my professor, recognized what I did wrong, and so forth. I received in-firm offers from both of those firms and went on to receive three job offers.

During 1L, the CDO hosted an event where students got the chance to chat one-on-one with recruiters and lawyers from firms participating in the Toronto recruit. I chose to participate with one of my close friends because I did not have a lot of experience interviewing and felt more comfortable sharing the conversation.

To elaborate, I didn’t only lack interview experience. I lacked work experience. Coming to law school straight from undergrad, this might be considered understandable. I had spent my summers volunteering and travelling, which were incredibly fulfilling life experiences, but left me struggling to fill up the work experience box on my resume.

During that CDO event, my friend and I met with a recruiter from one of Bay Street’s largest firms.

As soon as she found out that my friend had worked at a corporate law firm, it was like I became invisible.

She never made eye contact with me again. I left that interview feeling hopeless.

This feeling of inadequacy only worsened as I started my 1L summer job hunt. In total, I sent out over thirty cover letters. In mid-May, I finally scored one interview.

I didn’t get the job.

After endlessly scouring UT Law Careers and crying over Ben & Jerry’s (Half-Baked, if you’re curious), my upper-year mentor helped me land a relevant legal job. I was absolutely thrilled to have a summer position, but I was also cognizant that without this personal connection, I would never have found it. So, first lesson: use any and all resources and people available to you to find a job for your 1L summer!

My 1L grades were a total mixed bag (two HHs, two Hs, and three Ps) and based on my failure to land any interviews in the 1L recruit, I wanted to cover my bases. So I submitted nearly thirty applications for OCIs. I ended up participating in twenty-seven. So, second lesson: struggling to get a 1L summer job does not equal failure in the 2L recruit. And, third lesson: having multiple Ps on your transcript won’t necessarily hold you back.

During OCIs, I came face to face with the same recruiter that I had met during the CDO event. She had no recollection that we had met only a few months prior. But now her tone was completely different: within the first few minutes of our interview, I could tell that she was clearly pursuing me as a candidate.

We bonded over pop culture and the best yoga studios in the city. My 1L summer job never even came up. Ultimately, she made me an in-firm offer. Fourth lesson: don’t let any single interaction with a recruiter or lawyer change how you feel about yourself or your ability to succeed in the recruiting process.

Ultimately, I got the job I wanted.

I remember upper years always telling me that everything would be okay. I thought they had lost their perspective on how horrible 1L can feel. How could they possibly know that I would be okay?! Fifth and final lesson: 1L is horrible—but whether or not it will be okay is up to you. It may not be easy, but you can overcome your perceived deficiencies.

And for the hopeless days, there’s always Ben & Jerry’s.

March 30, 2017

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Rights Review

The student-led publication of the International Human Rights Program Co-Editors-in-Chief: Yolanda Song and Rona Ghanbari Editors: Karlson Leung, Sarah Firestone

WHEN PROTECTORS OF PEACE BECOME PERPETRATORS OF SEXUAL EXPLOITATION AND ABUSE: IHRP AND CODE BLUE VISIT HAITI

By Bethanie Pascutto (2L)

THE CODE BLUE CAMPAIGN WITH ADVOCATES FROM THE FEDERATION DES FEMMES DU BAS ARTIBONITE. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE CODE BLUE CAMPAIGN.

Over the past several decades, the blue helmets of the UN’s Peacekeeping force have become a symbol of peace, international support, and hope. Or at least that was the objective. “United Nations Peacekeeping helps countries torn by conflict create the conditions for lasting peace,” the UN website reads.

Despite these high ideals, a closer look suggests a disturbingly different reality. In 2015, the international advocacy organization AIDS-Free World obtained internal UN documents that detailed sexual abuse perpetrated by peacekeepers in the Central African Republic. The documents exposed the UN’s extensive efforts to conceal the issue and its failure to hold any of the perpetrators to account.

Over the last two years, it has become increasingly clear that this is a problem in other peacekeeping missions as well. While the UN has issued directives on sexual exploitation and abuse, and implemented a “zero tolerance policy,” it is extremely rare for peacekeepers to face justice for sexual exploitation and abuse.

In May 2015, AIDS-Free World set out to end the impunity of UN peacekeepers, with the launch of the Code Blue Campaign. As a clinic student of the International Human Rights Program, I had the opportunity to work with the Campaign, and in February, we travelled to Haiti to conduct a fact-finding mission. Our aim was to discover how the UN headquarters’ directives on sexual exploitation and abuse translated into action in the field.

The UN defines “sexual exploitation and abuse” as acts ranging from assault to transactional sex. The latter is considered sexual exploitation due to the substantial power imbalance between the parties, and the particular vulnerabilities of the victims.

These transactions are not just monetary, but could include food, material goods, and the promise of citizenship in the peacekeeper’s home country.

ihrprightsreview

While sexual exploitation and abuse is significantly underreported, the number of allegations brought forward against UN peacekeepers is staggering.

According to the UN’s Conduct and Discipline Unit, between January 1, 2003 and January 31, 2017, there have been 1,759 reported allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse in UN peacekeeping missions.. Approximately one-third of the allegations since 2008 have involved at least one child.

The allegations disproportionately originate from the UN peacekeeping missions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Haiti. Between 2007 and 2017, 109 allegations have been made against peacekeepers with the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH).

Since 2003, the UN has issued numerous reports and adopted several Security Council and General Assembly resolutions related to sexual exploitation and abuse. These reports and resolutions include prescriptions for eliminating future crimes, and for assisting and supporting victims. While the UN now tracks allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse, it has not disclosed how these recommendations are implemented at the field level. Code Blue explored this question by speaking with members of the UN mission and local grassroots organizations in Haiti.

The UN has been in Haiti since 1990, when it first entered the country to observe the presidential elections. MINUSTAH was initiated after northern Haiti was captured by rebels in 2004, and the UN mission is still active today. MINUSTAH’s priorities have changed over the years as the situation in the country has evolved. The mission has supported multiple rounds of presidential elections, and provided humanitarian assistance after the earthquake in 2010 and the hurricane in 2016. MINUSTAH is currently in the process of reducing its presence in Haiti, and the UN expects to close the mission in the near future. The UN’s presence in Haiti has not been without controversy. Aside from allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse

CATHERINE DUNMORE, LLM CANDIDATE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO’S FACULTY OF LAW, TAKES A PHOTO WITH SENATOR MARILOU MCPHEDRAN (CENTRE) AND CODE BLUE COORDINATOR KAILA MINTZ (RIGHT) FOR CODE BLUE’S SCARF INITIATIVE. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE CODE BLUE CAMPAIGN.

against hundreds of peacekeepers in the mission, the UN Secretary-General admitted that the UN was responsible for a massive cholera outbreak that killed almost 10,000 people and infected over 700,000.

The Code Blue delegation met with multiple departments of MINUSTAH. During the meetings, the UN representatives were willing to discuss the reporting and investigation process but did not expand on the information provided by UN headquarters. While we did not receive detailed information on individual cases, it was clear that the division responsible for coordinating the response to allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse were at least aware of the procedures set by the Security Council and by the Secretary-General of the UN. Our meetings with the grassroots organizations were eye-opening and rewarding. The advocates that we met work on issues of gender-based violence under very challenging circumstances. Yet, they were happy to help and generously shared information, including on instances of sexual exploitation and abuse and the consequences that victims face for reporting those violations to the UN. The advocates also offered to collect evidence to support Code Blue’s advocacy efforts, without any expectation of reward or reimbursement. We met with advocates from several areas in the country, including Port-au-Prince, the northern city of Gonaives, and the Artibonite region of Haiti.

Among the advocates we met was the lawyer from the Federation des Femmes du Bas Artibonite, who works tirelessly to represent victims of sexual assault, including instances perpetrated by UN peacekeepers. We also met with the staff and volunteers of the Commission of Women Victims for Victims, who have personally experienced genderbased violence and offer services for victims of the same violence.

The grassroots organizations we had the privilege

ihrp.law.utoronto.ca/page/rights-review-magazine

to meet were only a few out of many groups fighting for women’s rights in Haiti. While funding and staffing shortages plague most nongovernmental organizations in the world, the scarcity of resources available to organizations providing services to victims of sexual violence in Haiti is extreme. And yet, these advocates dedicate their lives to supporting and representing victims, regardless of the costs to their personal and professional lives. I was overwhelmed by the determination and resourcefulness of the women we met during our time in Haiti. The experience strengthened my resolve to continue to support the Code Blue Campaign in its efforts to bring accountability to the UN and justice to the victims of sexual exploitation and abuse.

Speak Out Against Impunity: IHRP and Code Blue at the UN Commission on the Status of Women Catherine Dunmore, LLM student, has worked in partnership with the Code Blue Campaign as an IHRP clinic student over the last year. In March, she attended the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women in New York with a delegation from Code Blue to assist with campaign outreach.

Their new photo initiative seeks to capture photos of 1,325 feminist leaders (in keeping with UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security) wearing a blue scarf and speaking out against impunity for sexual abuse by UN peacekeeping personnel. The photos will be a strong symbol of support for the Campaign's efforts. Catherine also attended events at the UN and a reception for Canadian NGOs, meeting the Honourable Maryam Monsef (Minister of Status of Women), the Honourable Marie-Claude Bibeau (Minister of International Development and La Francophonie) and the Honourable Marilou McPhedran (Senator), where she had the opportunity to speak with them about Code Blue's work along with the Campaign's Coordinator, Kaila Mintz.

rightsreview

22 | March 30, 2017

ultravires.ca

Rights Review

The student-led publication of the International Human Rights Program

THE COMMODIFICATION OF DIGNITY: HOW THE GLOBAL FINANCIALIZATION OF HOUSING MARKETS HAS TRANSFORMED A FUNDAMENTAL HUMAN RIGHT INTO A COMMODITY

By Karlson Leung (2L) and Faye Williams (JD/MGA 2L)

THE AUTHORS, FAYE AND KARLSON, STRIKING A POSE AT THE UN OFFICE IN GENEVA. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF KARLSON LEUNG.

Walking along the pavement in an urban downtown core, the glittering facades of glass high rises and expensive condos around you obscure the daily struggles of those left without proper housing. “Spare some change? God bless. Spare some change?

God bless,” falls into beat with your morning commute. You take a moment to wonder about this person. Did they lose their job?

Were they evicted from their home? Are they suffering from mental illness or addiction?

Perhaps. In addition to these personal circumstances, however, there are larger, systemic forces resulting in over 100 million homeless and another 1.5 billion people living in inadequate housing around the world.

On March 1, 2017, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, Leilani Farha, presented her thematic report on one of these larger, systemic forces - the financialization of housing - during the 34th session of the Human Rights Council at the United Nations Office in Geneva. We worked on this report with Ms. Farha over the course of the year as clinic students of the International Human Rights Program and accompanied her to Geneva to attend the Human Rights Council session.

The right to adequate housing Article 11 of the United Nations Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights provides for a right to adequate housing. Housing is considered inadequate when: (1) its cost threatens occupants’ enjoyment of other human rights; (2) it does not provide sufficient protection from weather elements and other threats to health; (3) it does not account for the specific needs of disadvantaged and marginalized groups (such as the poor, people facing discrimination, and persons with disabilities); (4) there is a risk of forced eviction, harassment or other threats; (5) its occupants do not have safe drinking water, adequate sanitation, energy for cooking, heating and lighting, sanitation and washing facilities, means of food storage and refuse disposal; (6) it is located far from employment options, health care services, schools, child care centres and other social facilities, or is located in close proximity to polluted sites or pollution sources.

The UN Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing is tasked with monitoring, advising, and reporting on this right, and whether it is upheld by UN member states.

The Special Rapporteur also responds to individual complaints related to the right to adequate housing, conducts country studies, provides recommendations on technical cooperation at the country level, and engages in general promotional activities related to the human rights issue.

The Special Rapporteur’s message for the assembly of the Human Rights Council earlier this month was that the right to adequate housing is being threatened by the financialization of housing, and governments have an obligation to intervene to protect their citizens.

What is financialization of housing?

Since the Industrial Revolution, the notion of the home as a place to live in dignity has slowly given way to invisible market forces that consider housing a vehicle for the accumulation of wealth. The term “financialization of housing” refers to structural changes in global investment and housing and financial markets, whereby housing is treated as a commodity rather than as a human right.

The numbers behind these structural chang-

es are staggering. The value of residential real estate worldwide is now valued at US $163 trillion, nearly 45 per cent of the value of all global assets. The transnational financial elite use housing as a place to park capital, particularly in “hedge cities” like Hong Kong, London, Munich, Stockholm, Sydney and Vancouver. These massive influxes of capital do not lead to corresponding benefits for the local population because a significant portion of investor-owned homes are simply left empty. In Melbourne, Australia, for example, 82,000 or one-fifth of investor-owned units lie empty. In the affluent London boroughs of Chelsea and Kensington, prime locations for wealthy foreign investors, the number of vacant units increased 40 per cent between 2013 and 2014.

Those making decisions about housing - its use, its cost, where it will be built or whether it will be demolished - do so from remote boardrooms with no engagement with or accountability to the communities in which their “assets” are located. More than 36,000 properties in London are held by shell companies registered in offshore havens such as Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Isle of Man and Jersey. Here in Toronto, an estimat-

March 30, 2017

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ed 99,000 condo units and homes are left empty, while rents and housing prices are rising out of reach for many. These decisions drive up housing prices and fundamentally alter the character of neighbourhoods.

Increased housing prices drive greater wealth inequality. Those who own property in prime urban locations – whether they live there or not – become richer, while lower-income households confronting the escalating costs of housing become poorer. Private investment of this nature also perpetuates spatial segregation and inequality by relegating poorer visible minority populations to periurban areas where employment opportunities are scarce. In South Africa, for example, the impact of private investment in the urban centres has sustained the discriminatory patterns of the apartheid area, with wealthier, predominantly white households occupying areas close to the centre and poorer black South Africans living on the periphery.

In many countries in the Global South, where the majority of households are unlikely to have access to formal credit, the impact of financialization is experienced differently than the Global North, but with a common theme — the subversion of housing and land as social goods in favour of their value as commodities for the accumulation of wealth.

Informal settlements in Southern cities are regularly demolished for luxury housing and commercial development such as shopping malls and other high-end services intended for those with expendable incomes. In Lagos, Nigeria, for example, 30,000 residents of the Otodo Gbame community were forcibly displaced after their waterfront homes were destroyed to make way for luxury developments.

The World Bank and other international and regional financial institutions continue to actively promote the financialization of housing as the dominant strategy for addressing the crucial need for housing in developing economies, despite evidence that such strategies fail to provide housing options to those that are most in need.

Without intervention, these trends are set to continue. The financialization of housing will gut neighbourhoods and communities of their culture, diversity, and social function, making cities unlivable for many. If even a portion of capital accrued through the processes of financialization were directed toward affordable housing and access to credit for people most in need of it, access to adequate, safe and affordable housing for all would be well within reach.

high-level opening session of member states wrapped up. Ms. Farha reported on the human rights impact of excessive global investment in housing in the global North and South alike. She gave examples of state complicity in the commodification of housing, expressing concern that government accountability to international human rights obligations has been replaced with accountability to markets and investors. Ms. Farha ultimately called for a fundamental paradigm shift, whereby the notion of housing as a commodity is replaced with the value of housing as a fundamental human right.

Concretely, what would this look like? Ms. Farha made several recommendations to states, including: recognizing the paramountcy of human rights in trade and investment treaties, which at the moment guarantee protections for investors from damages to communities caused by poorly regulated investments; developing new business and human rights guidelines specifically for financial actors operating in the housing sector; and reviewing laws and policies related to foreclosure, indebtedness and housing to ensure consistency with the right to adequate housing, including the obligation to prevent evictions to homelessness.

LEILANI FARHA, THE UN SPECIAL RAPPORTEUR ON THE RIGHT TO ADEQUATE HOUSING, WITH HER TEAM IN FRONT OF THE UN OFFICE IN GENEVA. FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: BRUCE PORTER, SENIOR ADVISOR TO THE SPECIAL RAPPORTEUR; YASHWINIE SHIVANAND, MGA CANDIDATE AT THE MUNK SCHOOL OF GLOBAL AFFAIRS; KARLSON LEUNG, JD CANDIDATE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO’S FACULTY OF LAW; AND FAYE WILLIAMS, JD/MGA CANDIDATE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO’S FACULTY OF LAW AND THE MUNK SCHOOL OF GLOBAL AFFAIRS. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF KARLSON LEUNG.

On the floor of the resonant Human Rights Council assembly, we listened through our earpieces to the crackling voices of UN interpreters as member states reaffirmed their commitments to human rights obligations to uphold the right to adequate housing. Ms. Farha’s report was well-received, and many delegates took the opportunity to speak about their domestic housing policies and programs they have implemented to protect and ensure fulfillment to the right to adequate housing.

There is a long way to go, however, before the idea of a home, the most basic of building blocks to other fundamental human rights, returns within the grasp of those who have had their dignity stripped by the forces of financialization.

INSIDE THE 34TH SESSION OF THE HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL. PHOTOGRAPHY BY KARLSON LEUNG.

The Special Rapporteur’s message to the Human Rights Council Earlier this month, we arrived on a sunny morning in Geneva as the high-level session of member states was already underway at the United Nations Human Rights council.

The scene at the Palais des Nations was bustling with representatives from all member states and many civil society organizations.

We were fortunate that someone on Ms. Farha’s team secured us seats on the assembly floor so we could take in the magnificent multi-coloured ceiling above.

Ms. Farha was one of the first of the Special Rapporteurs to take the podium after the

LEILANI FARHA SPEAKING DURING A PRESS CONFERENCE AT THE UN OFFICE IN GENEVA. PHOTOGRAPHY BY KARLSON LEUNG.

24 | March 30, 2017

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Rights Review

The Thestudent-led student-ledpublication publicationof ofthe theInternational InternationalHuman HumanRights RightsProgram Program

OUR NATION’S HIDDEN CRISIS: SOLITARY CONFINEMENT

By Katrina Kairys (1L) and Jeremy Greenberg (1L) Imagine sitting alone in a small room. There are no windows. It’s cold. The glaring fluorescent lights shine down on you 24 hours a day. You wish you could switch off the lights, but you can’t. You wish you could speak to someone, but you can’t.

For 1,560 days, this was the life of Adam Capay, a young Indigenous man imprisoned in Ontario.

News of Capay’s solitary confinement surfaced in October 2016. When Renu Mandhane, Ontario’s Chief Human Rights Commissioner (and former IHRP Director), discovered Capay, he told her he was having trouble speaking because of a prolonged lack of human interaction.

On January 10, 2017, the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law hosted a panel discussion on solitary confinement in Canada. Professor Kelly Hannah-Moffat of the U of T Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies addressed the challenges of studying the federal penitentiary system and the inhumane conditions of segregation. Insiya Essajee, Counsel at the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC), highlighted the issues specific to segregation in the province. Speaking about segregation in the context of immigration detention, Andrew Brouwer, Senior Legal Counsel at the Refugee Law Office of Legal Aid Ontario, discussed the deplorable conditions that detainees experienced in both provincial jails and immigration holding centres.

What is solitary confinement?

The United Nations Mandela Rules define solitary confinement as “the confinement of prisoners for 22 hours or more a day without meaningful human contact.” Solitary confinement in excess of 15 days is prohibited under the UN Rules, and, according to the UN Special Rapporteur on torture, can amount to “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.” The Special Rapporteur has recommended that solitary confinement be implemented for as short a period as possible, and banned for juveniles and people with mental disabilities.

In 1987, Canada ratified the United Nations Convention Against Torture, committing to take effective measures to prevent torture and cruel treatment. Despite this, the OHRC reported that from October 2015 to December 2015, nearly 1,400 instances of segregation in Ontario were sufficiently long to potentially constitute “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” based on UN standards.

The Federal Correctional Regime In Canada, solitary confinement is commonly referred to as segregation. Correctional Service Canada (CSC) identifies two categories of segregation in federal institutions. “Disciplinary segregation” is a punitive sanction imposed upon inmates guilty of a serious disciplinary offence, with a maximum duration of 30 days. “Administrative segregation,” on the other hand, is imposed to “protect the safety and security of individuals and the institution,” and may continue until the underlying concerns are resolved.

The regulations governing segregation in federal penitentiaries require correctional institutions to carry out regular review hearings of administrative segregation. If inmates are not satisfied with the warden’s decision to continue segregation or with the conditions of confinement, they may submit a grievance pursuant to the Corrections and Condi-

tional Release Act. “Unfortunately, most prisoners have completely lost faith in the grievance system,” explained Professor Hannah-Moffat. HannahMoffat said that prisoners do not see increasing external oversight measures such as secondary review for grievances as helpful. According to a 2008 review by Howard Sapers, the Correctional Investigator of Canada at the time, CSC failed to adequately address the numerous complaints from Ashley Smith, who tragically died in her segregation cell. Sapers criticized CSC for its unnecessarily adversarial and punitive responses to Smith’s complaints, as well as its lack of vigilance.

of a criminal offence.

Hannah-Moffat explained that segregation is not only a place for dangerous inmates, but also for those who are at risk of injury or suffer from mental illness. Others may request to be in segregation because, for them, it is a safe space. But it makes one think. “How horrid are the living conditions in custody that somebody wants to be in a segregation cell?” asked Hannah-Moffat

Discrimination in Ontario Segregation Practices

The Conditions in Federal Segregation Professor Hannah-Moffat has spent years studying the conditions of solitary confinement and its negative effects on inmates. Typically, inmates are segregated for up to 23 hours at a time. HannahMoffat explained that segregation conditions vary greatly, but the typical unit is about the size of a parking space and has a solid cell door with a meal slot. Cells with windows are few and far between.

Aside from a bed and toilet, the inside is empty, a security measure meant to prevent inmates from self-injury. However, Hannah-Moffat explained that some cells still contain porcelain toilets and other objects with sharp edges that could be used for self-harm.

According to Hannah-Moffat, access to programs, services, and visitors varies depending on the institution and who is working there at the time.

While a prisoner may be scheduled to have a shower or recreation time, there may not be enough staff on hand to get him or her there. “Recreation is not like going over to U of T’s Goldring Centre,” said Hannah-Moffat. “The recreation room for prisoners in solitary is a concrete box with a little bit of light coming in from the top. Prisoners get to walk around in a circle. Alone.” HannahMoffat explained that meal slots are the main means of communication. Meetings with psychologists often happen through that slot.

Unsurprisingly, there is consensus among researchers that solitary confinement is damaging.

Hannah-Moffat explained that the inmates are completely alone and nobody is engaging with them while in segregation. “It’s a vicious cycle,” she said. “We’re expecting the person to learn and behave differently when they come out, but there is absolutely nothing about being in segregation that aids this process.”

The Segregation System in Ontario Unlike the federal penitentiary system, the provincial system is designed for short stays and has a transient population. Nevertheless, Insiya Esajee, counsel at the OHRC, explained that people are staying in the system for much longer than originally anticipated. Moreover, many inmates are often placed in segregation after being remanded into custody prior to trial, meaning that they spend time in segregation without having been convicted

Regulations under the Ontario Ministry of Correctional Services Act provide for frequent reviews of segregation. Unfortunately, these regulations are not strictly followed, and reviews are often incomplete, or cursory at best. The Ontario Ombudsman reported that segregation reviews are only conducted, on average, every 20 days—a period four times longer than required by the regulation. Furthermore, placement confirmations are not adequately justified, with most reviews citing “security” as the sole reason for continued confinement.

The OHRC approaches problems in the correctional system through a discrimination lens. The Ontario Human Rights Code, which the OHRC is charged with administering, prohibits discrimination through services, including the Ontario prison system. Insiya Essajee explained that the Commission seeks to address both systemic discrimination and indirect discrimination with respect to segregation. In terms of systemic problems, the OHRC considers whether segregation is used in a disproportionate way for certain marginalized groups. The Commission also examines whether segregation disproportionately harms certain groups. A neutral policy that does not specifically target those with mental illness may nevertheless have a greater impact on those individuals than on others.

Provincial Segregation Data One of the major challenges facing Ontario is the lack of information pertaining to segregation practices. While data are available in other provinces, information from Ontario is incomplete and often merely anecdotal. The OHRC has asked the province to provide data on segregated individuals, disaggregated based on human rights grounds, but the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services responded that it does not collect such information. “We want to know how many people are placed in segregation, and how that breaks down based on gender, race, and disability, and how those statistics match up to the general prison population,” said Esajee.

Statistics from the MCSCS’ Provincial Segregation Review provided the OHCR with “a snapshot of three months,” said Esajee, “and what it highlighted for us was the concern that Adam Capay’s situation is not an isolated incident.” In that threemonth period, approximately 20,000 people flowed through the prison system, and over 4,000 were held in segregation at some point.

Despite MCSCS policy that inmates with mental illness should only be placed in segregation after alternatives have been considered, over 40 per cent of those people had mental health alerts on their file. Additionally, the OHRC believes that these “alerts underestimate the number of prisoners with mental health disabilities. Essajee explained that the alerts only deal with people who “have a mental health issue that poses a management concern.” She explained that someone could have a mental health illness or developmental disability, but if it does not cause a disruption to the management, then there would not be an alert on that person’s file. It is, at best, an incomplete classification system, and many people are slipping

through the cracks. Consequently, there is a failure to adequately consider inmates’ mental health issues when they are placed in segregation.

The future of segregation in Ontario Essajee pointed to Ontario Ombudsman Paul Dubé’s recent report on the state of segregation in Ontario as a hopeful sign that the government is thinking critically about these issues. Dubé’s report sets out 28 recommendations now under consideration by MCSCS. Key recommendations include that the province limit segregation periods to a maximum of 15 consecutive days, and that no inmate should serve more than 60 days of segregation per year. The report also recommends more rigorous psychiatric assessment, stronger efforts to reintegrate inmates into the general prison population after segregation, and independent oversight of segregation placements.

Meanwhile, the OHRC continues to push for better data collection and transparency. The Commission has released statistics on segregation use provided by MCSCS, and has spoken out publicly about Capay’s case. Howard Sapers, who previously served as Correctional Investigator for the federal system, has been appointed as Independent Advisor on Corrections Reform to the Ontario government. He is tasked with reviewing segregation in the provincial system.

In the wake of the attention surrounding Capay’s case, the Minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services for Ontario resigned in December 2016. Esajee believes that new leadership could have a powerful effect on the systemic problems. “Going forward, we can expect increased litigation and inquests relating to the problematic circumstances that keep arising around segregation,” said Esajee.

Next Steps What can law students, and Canadian citizens more generally, do to voice their concerns with the system? Engage in advocacy, according to Esajee.

Grassroots advocacy, in particular, is critically important. “It’s such an invisible population and not a terribly sympathetic one, but right now we have this window of opportunity where people know a bit more about these issues,” said Esajee. Law students and citizens alike should write to the Minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services and the Attorney General to voice their concerns and communicate what changes they would like to see.

“We must keep the fire stoked,” said Hannah-Moffat. Sensational cases like Adam Capay’s draw significant scrutiny, but the attention soon fades.

“After there have been recommendations and inquests, we think the problem is solved, but that’s not the case.”

Since Adam’s case came to light, there have been increased calls for change in both federal and provincial correctional facilities. Thorough external oversight and comprehensive independent reviews may be the catalyst for improvement. However, both the federal and provincial systems have a long way to go. Investigators’ recommendations must be put into action. Only then will cases like that of Adam Capay become a thing of the past.

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26 | March 30, 2017

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Mistakes Were Made: Corrections KEVIN SCHOENFELDT (2L)

In the article “Dean Claims Ghosts Are Stealing His Bagels,” which appeared in the January 2017 edition of Ultra Vires, we incorrectly stated that Dean Iacobucci claimed ghosts were stealing the bagels he has shipped from Montreal each morning. It was actually goats, not ghosts, that he claimed were stealing the bagels. We regret the error.

•

It is not true, as the article claims, that if you type “Your Name + Your Professor’s Name = Love” into ExamSoft your professor will give you an automatic HH. It will more likely result in a failing grade. Please forgive this inaccuracy.

•

Mr. Brickley quoted Prof. Alarie as saying, “Blue J marks every exam for every class and thinks you’re all stupid.” Prof.

Alarie never said this. Although, to be fair, he didn’t say that Blue J doesn’t mark every exam for every class. Nevertheless, our apologies.

•

The article also mistakenly asserts that exam proctors are actually prisoners from the future sentenced to hard time observing law students quietly freak out for all eternity.

There is no evidence that this is true. This was an unfortunate oversight.

--------Last month, due to a typographical error, we printed the article “A Heartbreaking, Serious Story About Law School” in wingdings. For those of you who cannot read wingdings, the article will be made available online. We apologize for the confusion.

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It has been brought to our attention that there were a number of inaccuracies in the piece “The Cold Hard Facts About Exams,” written by Squid Brickley in December 2016:

In the March 2017 issue, we printed a corrections column correcting errors from a number of Ultra Vires articles. Further investigation has revealed that these articles do not exist. This was a mistake. Again, we offer our sincerest apologies.

The Ultra Vires Guide to Networking NORM YALLEN (1L)

As our 1L year draws to a close, it seems like networking events are becoming more and more important. If the idea of networking does not excite you like it does me, here are some tips to improve your networking ability.

Make your way to the bar Get a drink and splash some in your face. Then audibly gasp and loudly exclaim, “Ah, refreshing!” In today’s competitive business climate, employers want to see that you are easily refreshed.

Use an alias John Smith is a pretty forgettable name and employers will have a hard time remembering it for you to make the impact you need. A name like Bartholomew Dinglehorn is a name that no employer will soon forget. Just make sure you don’t forget it, and that you are ready to seamlessly forge a new identity. Also, don’t use Bartholomew Dinglehorn, that’s mine.

Show your stamina Around half an hour after the event starts, begin sprinting across the room. I don’t mean jogging, I mean a full sprint like Usain Bolt, but more desperate. Employers want to see that you are a go getter and willing to hustle. Run until you collapse, because that will show employers that you are willing to give it 110% and do whatever it takes.

Make eye contact Of course it is important to make eye contact with the people you’re conversing with, but you can do better than that. Stare at people from across the room to show how focused you are on the task at hand. If they stare back at you, you have won and should immediately leave the event.

You’ve done what you had to do.

Wear an elaborate costume .

These people with their business suits and their ties and their socks are just sheep in a herd. You, on the other hand, stand apart from the pack, like a gazelle out in the open field. That is because you will wear a purple jogging suit, with a purple cane and cape. Employers will squeal, “This man or woman is a free thinker! He or she plays by no one’s rules but his or her own!”

Shout out clichés .

“It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.” “Shoot for the moon, even if you miss you’ll land among the stars.”

“There is no I in team.” Periodically shouting these slogans will allow employers to see how selfmotivated you are, and that you are a person who understands what the game is all about.

Just be yourself It is important to relax and let your true personality shine through. Unless you think they won’t like you. In that case, you should do the opposite.

DIVERSIONS

ultravires.ca

March 30, 2017

Your Legal Career Horoscope KEVIN SCHOENFELDT (2L) We here at the Ultra Vires Hi-Tech Extremely Scientif ic Astrolog y Centre ( U VHTESAC) have been running star charts for the past six months, taking into account all relevant factors in the totality of the circumstances. We are now prepared to present to you your legal career horoscope. Be warned, Mercury is stuck permanently in retrograde and all horoscopes ref lect that grave fact.

AQUARIUS

CAPRICORN

The day you achieve your dream of being sworn in as a Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada is the day your whole life will fall apart. You will accidentally bang your head against an open cupboard door in your kitchen and experience a new kind of amnesia wherein you forget all of your legal knowledge, but nothing else. You will successfully hide this until your first day in Court, when you try to subtly ask counsel for the appellant to explain what appellant means, “just to make sure that they really know.”

You will successfully take credit for a Virgo’s solution to the access to justice crisis. Nobody will ever f ind out what you did and you will be celebrated throughout the world. The guilt will eat at you and eat at you, but you will be too much of a coward to confess. One day, years later, you will bump into the Virgo and, in a moment of clarity and courage, you will throw yourself at the Virgo’s feet and beg for forgiveness. The Virgo will forgive you and the two of you will develop a deep and loving friendship. You will f inally believe that you, even you, deserve love.

Permanent Chief Justice Abella, as she will then be, will gently but firmly let you know that you will be removed from the Court. All of your friends will drift away now that you can’t obsessively talk to them about legal minutiae. Months later you will find yourself alone and miserable, eating uncooked Kraft Dinner noodles and pouring cheese powder down your throat in the dark when, miraculously, the same thing will happen to former Permanent Chief Justice Abella who will retire and seek you out for guidance and comfort. You will become best friends with Rosalie Abella.

SAGITTARIUS You will become the f irst lawyer to successfully argue that your client, a cat named Clams Casino, should be given standing to sue its owner for false imprisonment. You will then win that case, leading to a worldwide cat takeover. Clams Casino will begin locking up all so-called “dog people” and you will be powerless to stop it. You will regret being such a good lawyer, but you will appreciate that Clams Casino bought you a nice bed and gives you treats all the time.

SCORPIO You will become Prime Minister of Canada.

LIBRA

Nothing interesting will ever happen in your career. You will be a tax lawyer for a large accounting f irm. But in your spare time you’ll build some really beautiful furniture, which you will f ind spiritually rewarding.

The day you f inish paying of f all your law school debt will be the day that U of T and Scotiabank announce they will hereby forgive all outstanding law school debt.

You will write a song about it called “Ironic.” Not only will A lanis Morissette sue you for copyright infringement, but every single person in the world will send you angry messages telling you that you don’t understand what ironic means. Sometime later, you will win a Nobel Prize—in the newly minted category, “Word Science”— for proving that nobody in the world actually understands what ironic means.

ARIES

VIRGO

Oh, I don’t even know if we should tell you. It’s pretty bad. Here are some keywords: Disbarment, Criminal Charges, Dirty Mop Water, Broken Taillbone, A Dozen Assorted Donuts, Comfortable Couch, Diamond & Diamond. We would recommend just not worrying too much about the future. We can tell you that you’ll have a very cute dog named Buford who will love you unconditionally.

You will successfully solve the access to justice crisis. However, all credit for your work will be taken by a Capricorn. No one aside from a small group of people with no inf luence at all will ever know who you are and what you did. Your legal career will not be remembered. But you weren’t in this for recognition. Everyone in your life loves you with all their heart and celebrates your generous spirit. On your 110th birthday, you will die happy, surrounded by friends and family.

PISCES

TAURUS

GEMINI

CANCER

LEO

You will never achieve your dream of becoming Prime Minister. On the bright side, you will never achieve your dream of becoming Prime Minister.

A lthough you have told everyone you’ve ever met that the only thing you’re sure of is that you don’t want to work on Bay Street, you will article on Bay Street. You will go to sleep one night and wake up forty years later as a partner at a large f irm and remember the dreams you once had of helping people. You’re okay though, you’re pretty happy, and maybe you have a family if that’s something you wanted.

You will be offered a full-time faculty position at U of T Law. But it will be to teach LPPE. You will accept anyway and Professors Yoon and Stern will reveal to you that the position is cursed. Whoever takes the position has to make the class as boring as possible. The curse can only be broken if every student attends every single class. You will learn, though, that you truly enjoy coming up with ways to make the class even worse than before, until one year the class will become so legendarily, hypnotically boring that students will find they can’t turn away. Every student will show up to every class. The curse will be broken. You will not make it interesting anyway. You will love it.

Three years into your meteoric rise as Toronto’s top litigator, you will quit your job to become a comedian. You will write what is objectively The Greatest Legal Joke of A ll Time and make millions of dollars playing to capacity stadium crowds.

You will wake up and realize it was all a dream. Even the meteoric rise of your litigation career. But you will remember The Joke. It still might happen!

28 | March 30, 2017

DIVERSIONS

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Screendropping III: The Mystery Will Be Emailed KEVIN SCHOENFELDT (2L)

Egregious Student Code of Conduct Violations Sarah DeLey (sarah.deley@mail.utoronto.ca) Student Conduct Officer (The_Punisher@hotmail.com)

Dear Mr. Clorkman, I am writing to you today to express my utter shock and shame at my own actions during the last three months. I see now that my behaviour, both online and in real life, was hurtful, misguided, and may have contravened the Criminal Code.

I see now that I was wrong to invite Laurel Schrempf to my apartment for a Call to the Bar pre only to accuse her of murder in front of the approximately twenty people there. I further acknowledge that when she tried to leave without answering my accusations, I should not have pushed her into my bathroom and locked the two of us in. It was especially not cool of me when I then tried to dunk her head in the toilet while repeatedly saying, “Tell me where the body is.” In my defence, I didn’t successfully get her head in the toilet, but even so, this was not the proper way to go about things. On the other hand, I did eventually get the answers I wanted shortly after this when Ms. Schrempf agreed to talk.

I now realize that I was entirely mistaken about Ms. Schrempf’s involvement in any wrongdoing. I may find it difficult to accept, but I take Ms. Schrempf at her word that she and her roommate were only ever talking about composting. Her roommate, Stella (“Paisley”), had spilled their worm composter, which they were trying to keep secret from a third roommate who was afraid of worms. Realizing they could never hide a worm composter long-term, they decided to bury the compost in the backyard, which explains the shovels on their porch. While this explanation may be mundane, I am forced to admit that it is the truth.

I do not want to make excuses, but I have been under a great deal of stress, because... WAIT A MINUTE. In her original message that I screendropped on, Laurel said they were talking about HOUSEHOLD RECYCLING, not composting! You and I both know there are no worms involved in recycling.

I just heard a sound, Mr. Clorkman. Someone is in the house. IT’S HER. She’s a murderer, Mr. Clorkman. Vindication! I’m sending this now so that the world will know what happened to me.

SHE IS COMING

Previous Email Sarah DeLey (sarah.deley@mail.utoronto.ca) Student Conduct Officer (The_Punisher@hotmail.com)

Hi there, This is Sara again. Please disregard the end of that last email. I have been drinking and doing drugs. Just disregard the whole thing actually. I am not sorry and you should expel me. Laurel Schrempf is a sweet, gentle woman. I will assume I am expelled. You will not see or hear from me again.

Warmest regards, Sara Delay

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DIVERSIONS

March 30, 2017

Eight Things Only SuperOld Law School Kids Will Remember KEVIN SCHOENFELDT (2L)

All you young punks can keep your Spongebobs and your text messages. If you recognize these eight things, then you know you’re a super-old law school kid:

2. Every time someone says, “What’s that cheese?” you can’t help but shout back, “Mozzarella!”

1. You grew up dreaming of having one of those fancy 3. You remember when flushing toilets.

The kids’ game show Cheese Time With Dan and Dave changed your life and you’ll always have the catchphrase of the show ingrained in your memory.

Kids these days don’t remember that only thirty years ago most people had to throw out their toilet every time they used it. Your mom always tried to make you use it for a whole day to save money on toilets, but you couldn’t do it. Yuck! Instead you begged her for one of those new flushing toilets you saw in the Sears Wishbook.

avocados were invented.

One day there was no such thing as an avocado and the next day they were everywhere. For months, the grocery stores didn’t stock anything other than avocados. Your whole family went wild for Avocadomania even though at first you thought they were only safe to eat after you boiled them for twelve hours. Then you realized that they’re much better uncooked and suspended in Jello.

4. You created the TV show Everybody Loves Raymond.

You were tired of all those edgy TV programs the networks kept producing, so you created a TV show that someone like you would enjoy.

5. You were hiding under your bed during the Jurassic Park worldwide panic.

When Jurassic Park came out, most of the world was tricked into believing it was a documentary and that there were dinosaurs on the loose. You spent a year hiding under your bed with your family, rationing your last barrel of avocados.

6. You made friends the old fashioned way.

Nobody set you up on play dates or downloaded Tinder for Toddlers or Friendfinder onto your phone. You made friends the way you’re meant to, by dressing up a pile of rocks in your clothes and talking to it until it got struck by lightning and came to life.

7. You remember the original Buffy TV Show.

Not the Sarah Michelle Gellar-starring classic. We’re talking the original, singleseason cult hit Buffy The Vampire’s Lawyer. You still think it’s the best version.

8. You tried to stop the round-Earth conspiracy, but you were silenced by the Illuminati.

The Earth is flat and you know it.

30 | March 30, 2017

DIVERSIONS

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Letters to the Editor KEVIN SCHOENFELDT (2L)

A Message To all my colleagues, I have wanted to tell you this every day for the last two years, but I didn’t have the courage until now: I think you are all the absolute worst.

I truly do not think any of you are smart, or interesting, or nice, or good at anything.

Under the def inition of the word nauseating in the dictionary, there is a picture of all of you. I am transferring to Osgoode. I hate you.

Not a Fan

UV fucken sucks.

Greg Lochte (1L)

A Plea for Reason Please, please, could you just leave us snails alone?

We have enough problems with toads, squirrels, and red-winged blackbirds. Not to mention the constant risk of being stepped on if we step foot on a sidewalk.

Who do you think consumes the dried and rotten plant material in your garden after a long winter, allowing it to be recycled back into the soil? Sure, maybe worms do that, but so do we! Please, next time you are about to pour salt on one of us, take a step back and really think about why you’re doing it.

Also Not a Fan

Snailene Snailson, President of Save the Snails (A Snail)

Being a terrible paper is intra vires Ultra Vires.

Trig Harvey (2L)

Sorry Trig Osgoode didn’t accept my transfer application. Can you please not print that letter I asked you to print?

Trig Harvey (Asshole)

P.S. That’s the kind of wordplay that should have gotten all the articles I have submitted this year into the paper. I guess I’m just too edg y for such a middle-of-the-road publication.

David Schneiderman (Faculty)

She Speaks for All of Us

Cats Do you think we should include at least one cat of the month every issue? I’m fairly conf ident that it’s what the student body wants.

Kevin Schoenfeldt (2L) [Editor’s Note: We asked you to stop pitching this in October, Kevin.]

Every Monday and Wednesday while I sit in Labour and Employment, I see Vincent Chiao walk by the window in his bike outf it and I completely stop paying attention to the lecture. I bet he bikes a hundred miles to and from campus every day. I bet he is in a bike racing league he founded called “The Constitutional Law of Bicycle Procedure.” I imagine that on days when the weather is too bad to bike, he feels like a bird in a cage. It breaks my heart to think of him feeling so sad. It’s okay, Professor, the sun will come out; you’ll once again have those feet on the pedals and feel the racing wind against your face.

That bike outf it will sit in your closet unused no longer.

Am I in love with Vincent Chiao?

Lindsey C. Procedimiento (3L)

DIVERSIONS

ultravires.ca

March 30, 2017

It Almost Feels Like I Was There: A Law Ball Review by Someone Who Did Not Attend Law Ball KEVIN SCHOENFELDT (2L) On Saturday, March 11, hundreds of U of T Law students gathered together at a venue somewhere for this year’s Law Ball, an extravagant night of dinner, drinking, and dancing. The theme was Law Law Land, so obviously there were posters of Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone liberally but tastefully hung throughout the venue.

A lso, during the cocktail hour that opened the event, the bar required patrons to sing all drink requests. Some people found this distressing, but I for one think I would have had a great time sing-ordering La La Land themed cocktails like the “Another Day of Rum” or, my personal favourite, the “City of Sours.” Thankfully, however,

Moonlight/La La Land jokes were strictly prohibited.

The cocktail hour was also a great time to check out this year’s fashion. Everyone looked great in their fancy dresses and suits. Except that one guy. You know the one.

What can I say about the food? There were a number of options, some of which were liked better than others. Some people def initely thought they made the right choice and said, “Mmm, this is really good!” while others probably said, “Mine is just alright. I mean, it’s f ine and every-

thing.” In the end though, it’s safe to say that everyone who attended the dinner had dinner.

But we all know that the point of Law Ball isn’t the dinner, it’s the dancing.

And boy did people dance! I’ll admit that I thought it was strange when the DJ started of f by playing forty-f ive straight minutes of death-grind metal, but everyone seemed to love it, so I guess I’m the one that’s out of touch.

The highlight of the night, without a doubt, was when everyone performed a choreographed dance to “I Knew You

Ask Ab Initio RABIYA MANSOOR (2L)

Dear AI, I’ve just gotten into a relationship with a wonderful girl. The thing is, she’s a 2L and I’m only a 1L! Do you think this relationship can work out?

Sincerely,

Dear AI, I’m already in 2L, the semester is almost over, and I feel like I have no friends! Everyone else seems to have friends except for me. What should I do? Is there something wrong with me?

Sadly, 2 Lonely 4 Me

1Love Dear 2 Lonely 4 Me, Dear 1Love, Ah, law school love. It is an elusive creature to be sure. Some would even go so far as to say it is just not possible. Let’s look at this logically. She’s in 2L. That means she has got her shit f igured out. You? You’re in 1L—basically a baby law student. You don’t even know what standard of review means yet. I don’t want to break your heart but, honey, she’s just using you to feel better about whatever in-f irms she didn’t get. She probably started dating you in October.

You’re a rebound and it just isn’t meant to last. Try dating a sociology major instead.

Love, AI

Ah, law school friendship. An elusive creature, to be sure. Honestly? Screw ‘em! If they don’t want to be friends with a cool-ass baller like you, they clearly aren’t good enough. Besides, friendship is for the weak. Remember, these aren’t your classmates, your friends, or even your colleagues—these people are your competition. For every grade, every job, and every opportunity, they are competing with you. There is no solidarity to be had in the struggle.

I’d recommend forgetting people at law school.

Become so amazing that people will naturally just flock to you and you can have your pick of friends—law students or other, cooler people.

Never forget: it is lonely at the top.

Were Trouble” by Taylor Swift. Nobody really knows why that song was chosen, because nobody would ever question it. While a few people appeared not to have quite got their steps down, overall it was an amazing display of what law students can do when they put their mind to something.

Overall, it was a really lovely night. Everyone looked great, mostly everyone had fun, approximately one billion self ies were taken, and the next day everyone woke up feeling great and got lots of work done on their f inal papers. Law Law Land was a hit.

Dear AI, I’m a 4L and, no, I’m not in any combined program. I took a year off between 2L and 3L and I think it might be hurting my chances of securing an articling position. I needed some time off from the stress and craze of law school. What should I tell employers?

-Struggling 4 Articling

Dear Struggling 4 Articling, I have so much respect for you—you did what was best for you and that took the form of taking a year’s break. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that!

When it comes to having to talk to employers about this, what I recommend is to not address it explicitly.

They’ll see it on your transcript and you can include any work experience and volunteering experience you accumulated during that year off on your resume.

They might ask about it, so be honest but vague: “I took that time off for personal reasons so I could refocus on experiencing and learning at law school to the fullest extent. I used that time to improve my Japanese language skills and actually passed the JPLT N1, which is the highest level.”

Everyone feels stressed and overwhelmed at law school at one point or another. Trust me, you are in good company! It is highly likely that those on the other side of the table will understand that you took the time off for personal reasons. If they don’t, you wouldn’t want to work for them anyway.

Keep doing you,

Keep kicking ass,

AI

AI

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