Western Law professors garner SSHRC grant success
July 04, 2018
Three significant Social Sciences and Humanities Research (SSHRC) grants awarded to five Faculty members will help expand scholarship in the areas of private law, torts, and indigenous law.
Professor Jason Neyers and co-applicant law professor Andrew Botterell (Chair of Philosophy) were awarded $87,846 for their SSHRC Insight Grant project titled "Deceit and Per Quod: A Rights-Based Perspective".
They will examine the tort of deceit and the action per quod to see what principles, if any, justify the continued existence of these ancient doctrines in modern Canadian tort law. Their study will examine foundational issues about the nature of tort law and will combine conceptual analysis with practical advice for Canadian appellate courts.
Another SSHRC Insight grant of $79,029 was awarded to Dean Erika Chamberlain and co-applicant Professor Rande Kostal to study “Canada’s Private Law Revolution” between the 1970s and 1990s. This legal history project will discern patterns in Canada’s main post-war social movements and document their impact on private law doctrine in areas including constructive trusts, duties of affirmative action, damages, and employment law.
Professor Michael Coyle was co-applicant on a successful $266,890 SSHRC Insight grant titled “L'adaptation du droit de la gouvernance aux changements climatiques”. The Principal Investigator is Catherine Choquette from the Université de Sherbrooke.
This collaborative project will examine the appropriateness of existing legal norms and processes to meet the challenges posed by climate change. Coyle will investigate the relevance of Indigenous norms to the development of appropriate regulatory processes to address climate change, and the adequacy of existing laws to take into account the rights and interests of Indigenous peoples.
Dean Erika Chamberlain was thrilled with Western Law’s success in this round of Insight Grants, and particularly with the collaborations among faculty and the interdisciplinary nature of the various projects.
“Western Law is getting recognized for the high quality of our faculty and our growing research intensity. The range of these projects demonstrates the breadth of our scholarship,” she said.
