Zoë Sinel
Academic Degrees:
SJD (University of Toronto), MPhil (Oxford), BCL (Oxford), JD (Toronto), BA (University of British Columbia)
| Email: | zsinel@uwo.ca |
| Phone: | 519 661 2111 x83832 |
| Office: | Rm 15 |
Zoë Sinel is an Associate Professor at Western Law. She researches and teaches in private law and legal theory, with a particular focus on the law of torts and its remedies.
She has published doctrinal and theoretical work in leading domestic and international law journals, including the University of Toronto Law Journal, the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, the Torts Law Journal, and the Restitution Law Review. Her current research project is a SSHRC-funded monograph on tort law’s treatment of emotions, entitled Just Feelings: A Tort Law Theory of Emotion. She was a founding member of another SSHRC-funded project, the Tort Law and Social Equality Project, a website devoted to the creation of a network of tort law scholars to engage with the social contexts in which tort law develops and the marginalized groups it affects.
She was awarded Western University’s Faculty Scholar designation from 2020-2022 and is currently Western Law’s Associate Dean (Research & Graduate Studies). She is editor, alongside Margaret Martin, of the Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence. She is also an affiliate faculty member of the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies.
Prior to her appointment in 2013, Professor Sinel was a Visiting Researcher at Harvard Law School. She completed her doctorate in law (SJD) at the University of Toronto under the supervision of Ernest Weinrib.
Seeking graduate students in the following areas: tort law, private law theory, private law remedies.
Research Highlights
“Whiten v Pilot Insurance, [2002] 1 SCR 595: How Can Something So Wrong Feel So Right?,” in James Goudkamp and Eleni Katsampouka, eds, Landmark Cases in the Law of Punitive Damages (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2023), 227-245,
“The Place of Regret in the Law of Torts,” in Sandy Steel and Haris Psarras, eds, Private Law and Practical Reason: Essays on John Gardner’s Private Law Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023), 203-222.
Fridman’s The Law of Torts in Canada, 4th ed (Toronto: Thomson Reuters, 2020) (with A Botterell, E Chamberlain, M McInnes, JW Neyers, & SGA Pitel).
Introduction to the Canadian Law of Torts, 4th ed (Toronto: LexisNexis, 2020) (with A Botterell, E Chamberlain, M McInnes, JW Neyers, & SGA Pitel).
“The Substance of Remedies: Review of Stephen A. Smith, Rights, Wrongs, and Injustices: The Structure of Remedial Law” (2022) 72:1 University of Toronto Law Journal 125-147.
“Consortium as a ‘Right’ in the Law of Torts” (2019) 93 Supreme Court Law Review (2d) 229-246.
“What’s Your Damage? The Elimination of the Expert-Recognized Psychiatric Illness Requirement in the Canadian Law of Negligence: Saadati v Moorhead, [2017] 1 SCR 543 (2017)” 24 Torts Law Journal 205-217.
“Allan Beever’s One-Dimensional Tort Universe: A Review Article of Allan Beever, A Theory of Tort Liability” (2017) 27:3 New Zealand Universities Law Review 807-834.
“De-Ciphering Self-Help” (2017) 67:1 University of Toronto Law Journal 31-67.
“Matter over Mind: Tort Law’s Treatment of Emotional Injury,” in Kit Barker, Karen Fairweather, and Ross Grantham, eds, Private Law in the 21st Century (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2017) (co-author: Anne Schuurman) 439-461.
“The Methods and Madness of Unjust Enrichment,” in Andrew Robertson and Michael Tilbury, eds, Divergences in Private Law (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2016) 179-200.
“Is Personal Injury Law Personal?” (2013) 6(1-2) Journal of Tort Law 145–172; (Online) 1932-9148, ISSN (Print) 2194-6515, DOI: 10.1515/jtl-2015-0001, January 2015. Published Online: 2015-01-31.
“Concerns about Corrective Justice” (2013) 26:1 Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 137-156.
“Through Thick and Thin: The Place of Corrective Justice in Unjust Enrichment” (2011) 31:3 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 551-564.
“Initial Private Law Liability and Potential Defences: An Unnecessary Confusion (Perpetual Trustees v. Heperu)” [2010] Lloyd’s Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly 13-19.
“Causes of Action and Self-Help Remedies (BMP Global Distribution v. Bank of Nova Scotia)” [2009] 17 Restitution Law Review 122-132.
