Judicial Decision-Making

Prof. Albert Yoon has co-authored a comprehensive report with Tracey George of Vanderbilt University that examines whether US state judges reflect the demographics of their state in terms of gender and people of colour. "The Gavel Gap: Who Sits in Judgement on State Courts?" gives each US state a grade on this basis, with 26 states receiving an "F" grade because women and people of colour are severely under-represented among state court judges.

By Alvin Yau, 1L

First-year law students were treated to an exceptional guest lecture on Oct. 20^th on the art of effective legal writing, given by Ontario Court of Appeal Justice John Laskin, LLB 1969. In a lively event with heartfelt advice and humorous anecdotes shared with the students, Laskin said lawyers need to become better writers.

In a commentary in The Globe and Mail, SJD student and Trudeau Scholar Kyle Kirkup argues that a Canadian Judicial Council (CJC) investigation is targeting a victim of "revenge porn" and should be dropped ("The legal inquiry into Justice Lori Douglas must end," October 22, 2014).

Read the full article on The Globe and Mail website, or below.

It its decision on the case Cojocaru v. British Columbia Women’s Hospital and Health Centre, the Supreme Court of Canada cites work by Prof. Simon Stern about the degree to which a judge's copying from other sources in a trial decision, with or without attribution, should affect the validity of the decision. The decision quotes at length from Prof. Stern's forthcoming article "Copyright Originality and Judicial Originality," which will appear in the University of Toronto Law Journal. The SCC agrees with Prof.