Western Law welcomes new faculty
Western Law is pleased to announce the appointments of five new faculty members. Roxana Banu and Alfonso Nocilla began their appointments as Assistant Professors in January 2018, and Joanna Langille, Ryan Liss, and David Sandomierski will begin on on July 1, 2018.
“I’m thrilled these outstanding new scholars will be joining Western Law,” said Dean Erika Chamberlain. “This is an important period of faculty renewal of us, and these new appointees will have both an immediate and a long-term impact on our scholarly reputation.”
Roxana Banu completed her doctorate in law (SJD) at the University of Toronto and completed an LL.M. degree in international business and trade law, magna cum laude, at Fordham Law School.
She was a visiting research fellow at Fordham Law School and a visiting doctoral researcher at NYU Law School. She taught Conflict of Laws as an Adjunct Faculty at Osgoode Hall Law School and Fordham Law School.
Her research interests are in the areas of private international law, private law theory and public international law.
In 2016, Banu, who is a member of the New York Bar, was awarded the American Society of International Law Private International Law Prize for her paper, “A Relational Feminist Approach to Conflict of Laws.” Her book, Nineteenth Century Relational Internationalist Perspectives in Private International Law, is forthcoming in 2018 from Oxford University Press.
Alfonso Nocilla is returning to Western Law, having previously taught Bankruptcy & Insolvency Law in the Fall Term. He was also a Visiting Professor and Catalyst Capital Fellow in Insolvency Law during the 2017 January Term, teaching comparative and international corporate insolvency. Prior to that, he practiced commercial law at Hoffer Adler LLP in Toronto.
Nocilla received his JD from Queen's University in 2010 and his LLM from Western Law in 2011. He’s currently completing his PhD at University College London in the UK.
He’s published several academic articles and was the 2015 recipient of the Ian Strang Founders' Award from the International Association of Restructuring, Insolvency & Bankruptcy Professionals.
His research, which is supported by a Doctoral Fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, compares the quantitative outcomes of formal corporate insolvency processes in the UK, US and Canada.
Joanna Langille is currently a Fellow at the Institute for International Law and Justice at NYU School of Law and is completing her doctorate at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law, where she studies as a Trudeau Scholar and a SSHRC Bombardier Scholar. During her doctorate, she taught at NYU Law as a Furman Fellow, and held visiting researcher positions at Yale Law School, the University of Groningen’s Philosophy Department, and the University of Toronto’s Munk School for Global Affairs.
Before starting her doctorate, Langille received her JD at NYU Law (as a Furman Scholar and an Institute for International Law and Justice Scholar); her Masters in International Relations from Balliol College, Oxford (as a Commonwealth Scholar); and her undergraduate degree in philosophy from the University of Toronto.
Langille’s research explores international trade law and private international law from a legal theory perspective. She has held positions at the World Trade Organization, the International Centre for Trade and Development, and Oxford’s Global Economic Governance Programme; and clerked at the Ontario Court of Appeal. Her work has been published in the Yale Journal of International Law and the NYU Law Review.
Ryan Liss is a doctoral candidate at Yale Law School, where he studies as a Trudeau Scholar and SSHRC Doctoral Fellow. He holds a J.D. and Hons. B.A. from the University of Toronto, and an LL.M. from Yale Law School. He has held positions as an Associate in Law at Columbia Law School, and as a visiting fellow at Yale Law School, the University of Toronto, and NYU School of Law.
Liss works in public international law and criminal law, examining the ways in which human rights both construct and constrain state power. His research has appeared in the NYU Journal of International Law & Politics, the Canadian Yearbook of International Law, and the Cornell International Law Journal.
He served as law clerk to the Chief Justice of the Court of Appeal for Ontario, and has held positions with the International Criminal Court, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the Coalition for the International Criminal Court (with whom he attended the Kampala Review Conference), and the Canadian Centre for International Justice.
David Sandomierski received his SJD at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law in 2017, where his research focused on maximizing the potential of legal education to contribute to society.
He holds an MA in Political Science from the University of Toronto and Bachelors of Civil and Common Law from McGill University, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the McGill Law Journal. He served as law clerk to the Chief Justice of Canada, The Rt. Hon. Beverley McLachlin (2008-09).
Sandomierski, a Visiting Scholar at Osgoode Law School, designed and co-taught the Legal Inquiry course at McMaster University’s Arts & Science Program, his published account of which received the 2017 Canadian Association of Law Teachers Award for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.
He’s been published in the Osgoode Hall Law Journal, The Alberta Law Review, and the Canadian Journal of Law and Society, and is the co-editor of a forthcoming collection, Beyond Harvard: Transplanting Legal Education. His book manuscript, Teaching Contracts for the Lawyer As Citizen, is soon to be under review at a major Canadian university press.
