ULTRAVIRES.CA
September 28, 2023
VOL. 25 ISS. 1
Ultra Vires
THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO FACULTY OF LAW
“A True Giant”: Remembering Stephen Waddams Scholar, teacher, and friend EMILY TIVOLI (3L)
CREDIT: SUZANNE WADDAMS AND SCOTT MACKENZIE
Professor Stephen Waddams passed away on May 27, 2023. Prof. Waddams was born in Woking, England in 1942. He moved to Canada in 1959, where he would go on to have a major impact in the field of Canadian contract law. He earned his BA and LLB at the University of Toronto before going to Cambridge for an MA and PhD, followed by the University of Michigan for his LLM and SJD. After completing his education, Prof. Waddams joined the Faculty at U of T Law, where he had a long, impactful career in legal scholarship and teaching. He was a fellow of Trinity College, an institution to which he belonged as an undergraduate, and a Senior Fellow of
Massey College. In 1988, he was made a member of the Royal Society of Canada, and in 2005, he was appointed University Professor, an especially prestigious rank granted only to a fraction of the University of Toronto’s tenured faculty. The impact of both his scholarship and teaching is hard to overstate. He authored nine books, with a tenth on the way which he was, sadly, unable to finish. Prof. Waddams also wrote leading casebooks and textbooks on contract law. His success was partly due to his intricate knowledge of case law, a topic on which his knowledge remains nearly unrivalled. Prof. Waddams’s approach to the law was deeply rooted in history. Underlying this was a deep
conviction that the law needed to change and adapt to the society it purports to govern. As he saw it, the flexibility of the common law was one of its greatest strengths. Prof. Waddams taught several current faculty members, who continued to learn from him as colleagues. Prof. Peter Benson, a former student, became a contract law theorist himself. It is from Prof. Benson that I borrow the title of this article: his respect and admiration for his former teacher and colleague are a testament to the enduring impact an outstanding teacher can have on a student. Prof. Waddams was also particularly close with (former) Justice Robert Sharpe of the Court of Appeal for Ontario. The two often disagreed, sometimes fundamentally, about legal issues both small and large, but still maintained a strong personal and professional relationship. Colleen Flood, Dean at Queen’s University Faculty of Law, remembers him fondly. She commented, “Stephen had a superb mind but he also was a lovely and gentle person, with a wonderful, wry sense of humour…he was particularly keen on persuading all his colleagues that morning tea was the high point of civilization.” Recent students experienced the same combination of intellect and humour. Alessia Woolfe (2L) described her first year contracts class with Prof. Waddams: I distinctly remember excitedly telling my parents after class how my contracts professor wrote the book on the subject, and how he lectured to the class without glancing at his notes. Though his lectures sometimes went over my head as a 1L student, he was often unexpectedly hilarious, cracking jokes about ridiculous contract cases that I still didn't understand the significance of at the time. Another student, Kristina Wolf f (2L JD/ MBA), has described taking Prof. Waddams’s class as “like what movies say law school is like”: challenging, engaging, and with just enough comic relief. A recent 1L small group recalled his reaction to a malfunctioning clock. The clock would periodically move abnormally quickly, and Prof. Waddams never failed to comment “how quickly time f lies” whenever he happened to notice it. At the end of the year, the class gifted him a (functional) clock as a token of their appreciation. I knew Prof. Waddams only briefly, working for him before he passed, but he left a strong impression on me. He worked mostly alone, diligently and studiously refining his argument before turning to others for comment. Aside from being extremely well-dressed, he was polite and had a distinctly kind manner. Prof. Waddams was in many ways a model of what it means to be a scholar, and that is an inspiration I, and many others I know, will carry on. He will be sorely missed.
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE
Faculty Responds to Backlash Surrounding Undisclosed Amazon Donation What you need to know about the U of T Law Amazon donation controversy OLIVIA SCHENK (2L) In August 2023, the University of Toronto Faculty of Law publicly addressed the controversial USD$450,000 (about CAD$600,000) Amazon donation received by the Faculty in December 2021. While the initial statement from the Faculty appeared to stand behind the decision to retain the gift, the Faculty swiftly adjusted its position in a second statement released less than two weeks later. In this second statement, the Faculty stated it had decided to return the gift to Amazon and amended its policies concerning corporate gifts. The Logic Coverage The undisclosed Amazon donation was f irst reported in an article from The Logic by Martin Patriquin on August 15, 2023. According to Patriquin, The Logic obtained several documents through an access-to-information request that revealed events and details concerning Amazon’s gift to the Faculty. The documents revealed that a few days after a speech by the Commissioner of the Canadian Competition Bureau in October 2021, Faculty members exchanged emails with an Amazon employee. These emails detailed Amazon’s interest in being “more proactive on thought-leadership, including supporting research on emerging [sic] issues in competition/antitrust.” In addition, Amazon conf irmed their comfort in providing “annual support in the mid-6 f igures with room to expand moving forward” in the hopes of developing a “long-term relationship” with the Faculty. The Faculty received Amazon’s donation in December Continued on page 4
MEET NEW STAFF AT U OF T LAW
RIGHTS REVIEW
COGNOMOS DESERVES AN F
PAGE 6
PAGE 14
PAGE 18