Legal Education and Law Reform: Reimagining the Relationship at the Law Commission of Canada

In 2023, the Law Commission of Canada re-emerged after a 17-year hibernation. The experience of discontinuity encourages broad and deep reflection on what a Law Commission can or should do, and how it justifies its existence. In particular, the relationship between legal education and law reform might be reimagined. Each can support and enrich the other in what might be surprising or unexpected ways that confront easy or usual assumptions. The vocation of a Law Commission can and should include supporting and enriching legal education; that of a Faculty of Law can and should include supporting and enriching law reform. I suggest that law students and legal scholars can be thought of as creators of law and active participants in its evolution, while jurists engaged in law reform can be understood to do so in classrooms, community organizations, and courts, as well as in law commission offices. All are at the same time plumbers, problem solvers, and poets. By challenging what we mean by “law reform” and “learning and researching law” along these lines, we may begin to see more clearly how both domains incorporate and indeed demand creativity, evolution, dreams and hope.

Speaker: Professor Shauna Van Praagh, President, Law Commission of Canada and Professor of Law, McGill University, Quebec

Chair: Professor Carl Stychin, IALS Director

All welcome - this event if free to attend but booking is required. It will be held online with details about how to join the virtual event being circulated via email to registered attendees in advance.