Academic Renewal: Meet four new faculty members

Nous vous présentons fièrement les quatre nouveaux membres de notre corps professoral.

PRIYA GUPTA joined the Faculty as an associate professor in August after completing a year-long term as a Senior Wainwright Fellow. She conducts research in financial capitalism and cities, property law, and race. Gupta joined McGill from Southwestern Law School. She holds a PhD in law from the London School of Economics.

What fascinates you about property, public international law, and critical race theory? Throughout my academic career, I have pursued research in property, race, urban governance, and international law & development with the idea that I could — as a legal scholar — contribute to literature that exposes how law and governance often perpetuate inequality despite frequent attempts to achieve the opposite. This motivation has informed my research in different ways: to study different jurisdictions, to integrate political-economic and historical contexts into legal analysis, and to pay attention to the role of courts and municipal governance bodies in justifying certain patterns of distribution. I have explored these themes in a number of jurisdictions, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and India, as well as transnationally. Quels sont vos objectifs dans votre nouveau rôle? Je suis très impatiente de faire la connaissance du corps étudiant et de travailler ensemble sur des projets de recherche et de plaidoirie. J’ai lancé un groupe de lecture sur le droit et la race cette année et je suis ravie de continuer avec ce groupe dans les années à venir. Je suis également très enthousiaste à l’idée de vivre à Montréal et d’explorer son architecture, sa musique, ses librairies et ses restaurants à mesure que la pandémie s’atténuera.

JOSHUA NICHOLS joined the Faculty as an assistant professor in August. An expert on the constitutional relationship between Canada and Indigenous peoples, he will contribute to the Faculty’s commitment to expand the place of Indigenous legal traditions in its curriculum. He holds a PhD in law from the University of Victoria and a PhD in philosophy from the University of Toronto.

What excites you most about joining McGill Law?

I am joining a truly innovative and interdisciplinary community of scholars who focus on developing a deeper appreciation of the critical implications of legal pluralism and transsystemic law. McGill Law has taken a leading role in Indigenous and Aboriginal legal scholarship. Many questions in this area of scholarship are leading to a re-examination of the histories of legal concepts that can be so familiar that they seem to exist outside of history. McGill’s pluralist and transsystemic approach truly nurtures cutting-edge scholarship on Indigenous political and legal issues.

Comment avez-vous développé votre champ d’intérêt académique?

Ma carrière universitaire et mes intérêts en recherche ont été, en grande partie, façonnés par mon expérience en tant qu’Anishinabé/Métis aux racines mixtes. J’ai grandi à Peace River, une petite communauté riche en ressources située au nord-est de la ColombieBritannique; c’est pourquoi les projets d’exploitations de ressources à grande échelle me préoccupent. Les gens qui vivent à proximité de ces projets sont confrontés à de sérieux défis sociaux et environnementaux; à mesure que ces industries continueront de croître et de s’étendre, le système juridique devra chercher à résoudre ces problèmes.

SARAH RILEY CASE, LLM’13, began a one-year term as Boulton Junior Fellow in August and will transition to assistant professor in August 2022. Riley Case is completing an SJD at the University of Toronto where she is a Trudeau Foundation doctoral student. She aims to develop research connected to history, repair, justice, race, legal theories, the natural world, law reform, art, and international and domestic law.

D’où émane votre intérêt pour la théorie critique de la race et le droit international?

Ma famille est originaire des Caraïbes, où les intimités de la racialisation, du droit international et de la lutte anticoloniale sont très claires. Le droit international était complice de la traite transatlantique des esclaves qui a façonné ma famille et le monde. Les activistes anticoloniaux ont également cherché et continuent de rechercher l’autodétermination par le droit. Mon intérêt pour la théorie critique de la race et le droit international découle de l’héritage de ce passé qui se poursuit, non seulement dans les Caraïbes mais au Canada, un État colonial de peuplement, où la dépossession des peuples autochtones, l’esclavage, le travail sous contrat et d’autres injustices sont devenus les fondements pour l’oppression raciale d’aujourd’hui.

L’enseignement de la théorie critique de la race et du droit international me permet d’explorer, avec les étudiant.e.s, les pratiques juridiques qui ont produit cette oppression, sous le voile de la neutralité de l’État. Cela nous permet aussi d’imaginer un tout autre état de choses.

Which legal questions are you currently interested in?

My research crosses domestic and international frames, the natural world and social theory, life and law. I am currently finishing a revisionist history of how international law on climate change came to be from a Third World perspective. I am also developing new projects that address Black histories and futures in Canada. I am particularly interested in understanding how Black communities from the 19th century onward have sought representation under Canadian law, while also refusing this law in a self-assured way. This, in turn, raises questions about ties to the land (places and resources in the natural world) and solidarity with Indigenous peoples.

DARREN ROSENBLUM joined the Faculty as a full professor in August. Their scholarship focuses on corporate governance on diversity initiatives and remedies for gender inequality. In 2018, they were a Senior Wainwright Fellow at the Faculty. They hold a JD from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and a Masters in International Affairs from Columbia University.

What led you to consider corporate governance through the lens of diversity initiatives and remedies for sex inequality? I started my research career writing the first legal analysis of queer theory and continued with work on LGBT rights questions. When I became a full-time professor, I began to focus on gender equality because, even in 2004, it seemed to me these issues would remain knotty beyond questions of lesbian and gay equality. In the past few decades, the corporate sector has amassed wealth unknown in the history of humanity. How we choose to regulate firms—including their treatment of underrepresented groups—figures among the most challenging policy debates of our time. Forthe past twelve years, I’ve been focusing on quotas in corporate governance. These quotas until recently focused on including women on corporate boards, but we are seeing the focus shift to underrepresented racialized groups and LGBT people. Y a-t-il des objectifs particuliers que vous cherchez à atteindre en vous joignant à McGill? Mon objectif est d’intégrer mes travaux et mes intérêts à ceux de la Faculté. Ma recherche a toujours eu une dimension transsystémique et comparative. J’escompte donc enrichir ma recherche et celle d’autres universitaires dans des domaines connexes, y compris en dehors de l’université au sens large. Récemment, j’ai publié mes travaux en français et j’ai hâte d’approfondir mes engagements d’expression orale et d’écriture francophone. Enfin, j’ai très hâte d’entrer en contact avec les diplômé.e.s et les étudiant.e.s de la Faculté de droit de McGill.