ULTRAVIRES.CA
September 29, 2021
VOL. 23 ISS. 1
THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO FACULTY OF LAW
CAUT Censure on Pause while U of T Releases Revised Guidelines on Donor Interference Updates on the IHRP Scandal for the Month of September, 2021 THOMAS RUSSELL (2L)
prov ince of Falconer, located in the common law countr y of F lavelle, where the jurisprudence and Constitution is identical to Canada. The facts leading up to the appeal involve a police ev idence-gathering operation against Mr. Matthew Zhask i in an attempted murder. The police obtained this ev idence w ithout a warrant, yet w ith the consent of the Chair of the propert y management company of the condominium in which Mr. Zhask i lived. They did this by remotely accessing and controlling three cameras in a so-called common area. At the Supreme Court of F lavelle, Mr. Zhazk i arg ued that the manner in which the camera ev idence was obtained v iolated his section 8 Charter rights, and warranted exclusion pursuant to section 24(2) of the Charter. Representing the Crown, the appel-
Since the beg inning of the school year, there have been some major developments in the Canadian A ssociation of Universit y Teachers (CAU T ) censure of the Universit y of Toronto. The Censure has been ongoing since Apr il 22, 2021 as a result of the involvement of an outside donor in the hir ing process of Dr. Valentina A zarova for the Director position of the International Human R ights Program ( IHR P). A s of September 17, 2021, the CAU T Censure has been put on pause as a result of Dr. A zarova being re-of fered the position for Program Director of the IHR P, which she ultimately rejected. In a statement shared by Censure Uof T, Dr. A zarova supposedly declared that “ W hile the Universit y negotiated in good faith and extended academic freedom protections to the position, there were important uncertainties that could not be resolved in the course of our negotiations.” Despite this development meaning that the pr incipal demand of the CAU T has now been satisf ied, the Censure w ill not off icially end until a vote has taken place dur ing the CAU T’s Council meeting, current ly scheduled for November 25 and November 26. According to the CAU T announcement, the CAU T has expressed interest to Universit y of Toronto President Mer ic Gert ler about hav ing more discussions on how the Universit y can satisfy the conditions required for the censure to of f icially end in November. At the forefront of the CAU T’s conditions for ending the censure are that the Universit y must extend academic freedom protections to academic manager ial positions and develop policies to ensure that donors do not inter fere in internal academic af fairs. Perhaps towards that end, on September 8, the Universit y of Toronto released its rev ised Guidelines on donations which included the new A rticle 7: 7. The Universit y w ill not allow any external input, including from donors or alumni, to inf luence any Universit y hir ing decisions, unless this input is part of the established hir ing process. A ny staf f member or representative of the Universit y who receives an inquir y related to any active Universit y hir ing process from sources external to the Universit y’s estab-
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2021 GRAND MOOT TEAM. FROM LEFT TO RIGHT, EMA IBRAKOVIC (3L), MILITZA BOLJEVIC (3L), MADELEINE ANDREW-GEE (3L), AND MACKENZIE FAULKNER (2L). CREDIT: SAMANTHA KOKONIS
Supreme Court Justices Abella, Karakatsanis, and Jamal Judge 2021 Grand Moot Exceptional advocacy at U of T Law’s annual ceremonial moot NIK KHAKHAR (2L) Ever y fall, the Facult y of Law hosts its annual Grand Moot, sponsored by McCarthy Tétrault. This annual moot commemorates the school’s generations of commitment towards strong legal advocacy. The participants are amongst the Facult y’s top mooters, the legal issues ref lect emerg ing trends in our jurisprudence, and the presiding judges are—pun intended—supreme. This year’s appeal concerned the constitutionalit y of certain police sur veillance methods, exploring the extent to which condominium residents possess a reasonable expectation of privacy in socalled common areas. The crucial task of balancing indiv idual liberties w ith public safet y was undertaken by some of the brightest minds at the Facult y: appellants Mackenzie Faulkner (2L) and Madeleine
A ndrew- Gee (3L), and respondents Militza Boljev ic (3L) and Ema Ibrakov ic (3L). The 2021 Grand Moot was also exceptional in its panel of judges: recently retired Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella, Justice A ndromache Karakatsanis, and recently appointed Justice Mahmud Jamal. Not only was this the f irst time that these three justices collectively heard a case; it was the last time that Justice Karakatsanis and Justice Abella presided together after a decade-long collaboration on the Supreme Court, and the f irst case which Justice Jamal would adjudicate since his appointment. We are extremely honoured that they chose the 2021 Grand Moot as the place to commemorate these milestones. The appeal returns us to the f ictional
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE TORONTO SUMMER RECRUITMENT 2021 1L RESULTS PAGE 8
RIGHTS REVIEW PAGE 14
WHY STUDENTS SHOULD CARE ABOUT THE UMLAP PAGE 18