David Sandomierski
Academic Degrees:
B.A.Sc. (Hon.) (McMaster), M.A. (Toronto), B.C.L. (McGill), LL.B. (McGill), S.J.D. (Toronto)
| Email: | david.sandomierski@uwo.ca |
| Phone: | 519-661-2111, ext. 81445 |
| Office: | LB 115 |
David Sandomierski joined Western Law in 2018. He strives to enhance the capacity of legal education to cultivate versatile professionals and critical, engaged citizens. In pursuit of this mission, David integrates diverse scholarly interests in Contracts, comparative legal thought, legal history, and the empirical study of legal education and the legal profession.
David earned his SJD from the University of Toronto, where his doctoral dissertation received the Governor General’s Academic Gold Medal. David has received the Peter Oliver Prize from the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History and has twice been awarded the Canadian Association of Law Teachers’ Prize for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.
David studied common and civil law at McGill University, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the McGill Law Journal. In 2008-09, David served as law clerk to Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin at the Supreme Court of Canada. He was called to the Bar of Ontario in 2009. David is a former Vanier Scholar, Loran Scholar, and Parliamentary Intern.
Effective July 1, 2022, David is a Teaching Fellow with Western’s Centre for Teaching and Learning. Within the Faculty of Law, he directs the Legal Education Seminar Series.
Seeking graduate students in the following areas: Scholarship of Legal Education and the Legal Profession; Legal History; Legal Thought.
Research Highlights
Books
American Legal Education Abroad: Critical Histories (NYU Press, 2021) (edited collection with Susan Bartie)
Aspiration and Reality in Legal Education (University of Toronto Press, 2020)
Special Issue
Law and Learning in a Time of Pandemic – A Collage // Collage sur le droit et le savoir au temps de la pandémie (2020) 25 Lex Electronica (edited collection with Shauna Van Praagh)
Articles
The Courage to Advocate: How Two Professions Approach Public Advocacy Work (2024) 58:11 Medical Education 1361 (with Christopher Watling, Sophie Poinar, Jennifer Shaw & Kori LaDonna)
“Pass for Some, Fail for Others: Law School Grading Changes in the Early Covid-19 Pandemic” (2023) 56:2 UBC Law Review 605 (with John Bliss & Tayzia Collesso) [2022 Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Award, Canadian Association of Law Teachers]
“Learning Without Grade Anxiety: Lessons from the Pass/Fail Grading Experiment in North American JD Programs” (2022) 48 Ohio Northern University Law Review 555 (with John Bliss)
“Modular Legal Learning: Revitalizing the Law Classroom” (2022) 45:2 Dalhousie Law Journal (with Stephanie Ben-Ishai)
“Tension and Reconciliation in Canadian Contract Law Casebooks” (2017) 54:4 Osgoode Hall Law Journal 1181 [2018 Peter Oliver Prize, Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History]
“Legal Inquiry: A Liberal Arts Experiment in Demystifying Law” (2014) 29:3 Canadian Journal of Law and Society 311 [2017 Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Award, Canadian Association of Law Teachers]
“Against Nomopolies” (2006) 57:4 Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly 610 (with Roderick A Macdonald)
Chapters in Edited Collections
“Selective Deference and the Judicial Role: Chief Justice McLachlin’s Legacy for Law and Legal Education” in Vanessa MacDonnell, Graham Mayeda & Owen Rees, eds, Controversies in the Common Law: Tracing the Contributions of Chief Justice McLachlin (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2022) 123
“The Limits of Adjudication in the First-Year Curriculum: The Recurring History of Legal Process at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law” in Ian Pilarczyk, Angela Fernandez and Brian Young, eds, Law, Life, and the Teaching of Legal History: Essays in Honour of G. Blaine Baker (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s Press, 2022) 415
“Theory and Practice, Together At Last: A Heretical, Empirical Account of Canadian Legal Education” in Meera Deo, Mindie Lazarus-Black & Elizabeth Mertz, eds, Power, Legal Education, and Law School Cultures (London: Routledge) 1 [Honourable Mention, 2017 Roderick A Macdonald Graduate Student Essay Prize, Canadian Law and Society Association]
“Pursuing Virtue: Human Potential, Citizenship, and a Research Agenda for Legal Education” in Richard Janda, Rosalie Jukier & Daniel Jutras, eds, The Unbounded Level of the Mind: Rod Macdonald’s Legal Imagination (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s Press, 2015) 206
Teaching Materials
“Contingent Agreements” in Stephanie Ben-Ishai & David R Percy, Contracts: Cases and Commentaries, 11th ed (Thomson Reuters, 2022) 355
Other
“From Law Grad to Better Citizen” Policy Options (2015) Jan-Feb: 51-2
“Beside the Supreme Court Bench” The Advocates’ Journal (2010) Summer: 19-20, reprinted in Stephen Grant, ed, Advocates and Advocacy: The Best of the Advocates’ Journal, 2005-2018 (Toronto: Irwin Law, 2018)
