David B. Goodman Lecture Archives

January 11, 2024
Lawyers, Empires, and Social Change:
Reexamining theory and theory-informed description in today’s fraught environment

Bryant Garth, Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and co-director, Center for Empirical Research on the Legal Profession, University of California-Irvine Law School
Bryant Garth
Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus
Co-director, Center for Empirical Research on the Legal Profession
University of California-Irvine Law School
Abstract
Drawing in part on my most recent book with Yves Dezalay, Law as Reproduction and Revolution: An Interconnected History (University of California Press, 2021), and bearing in mind what has happened in the past few years, I want to challenge the pervasive and, in the U.S., mainstream legal scholarship, dominant since the 1970s and influential elsewhere, that sees lawyers charged to be agents for the rule of law and progressive social change. Scholars today vehemently criticize lawyers for falling short or facilitating democracy backsliding, and the stakes are indeed high. Much of the literature today laments the role, for example, of conservative lawyers, especially associated with the Federalist Society in the United States, in undermining progressive legal values and the rule of law; and for lawyers in many countries, including China, for similarly falling in line with authoritarian rule by law. Leading U.S. scholars, most recently in elegant articles by Scott Cummings of UCLA, are writing about how to best restore that progressive model through legal profession and legal education reforms. I would like to put this scholarship in context and offer a competing perspective, which would frustrate many of my friends among progressive lawyers, and perhaps bore some others. The basic theoretical hypothesis is that the legal profession follows power – a simple statement but with many contextual nuances. Theory-informed description would then look beyond the idealized paradigm that reigns in U.S. law schools. Contesting another blind spot in most legal professional scholarship, I also want to show why the issue of competing empires matters. My goal is to promote a more realistic understanding of the role of lawyers in progressive and authoritarian social change. My examples will in part be from the U.S. but also from other countries.
Biography
Bryant Garth is Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus at University of California-Irvine Law School, where he codirects the Center for Empirical Research on the Legal Profession. He was Interim Executive Director of the American Bar Foundation for 2022-23, following a year as Interim Dean at UCI Law for the 2021-22 academic year. Previously, he served as Dean of Southwestern Law School from 2005 until 2012, Executive Director of the American Bar Foundation from 1990 to 2004, and Dean of the Indiana University-Bloomington School of Law from 1986 to 1990.
Garth’s scholarship focuses on the legal profession, the sociology of law, and globalization. Two of his books coauthored with Yves Dezalay, Dealing in Virtue (University of Chicago Press, 1996) and Asian Legal Revivals (University of Chicago Press, 2010), were awarded the Herbert Jacob Book Prize from the Law and Society Association for the best books in the field of Law and Society published that year, He also won the LSA’s Harry Kalven Prize in 2019 for “empirical scholarship that has contributed most effectively to the advancement of research in law and society.” His most recent books are B. Garth and G. Shaffer, eds., The Globalization of Legal Education: A Critical Perspective (2022, Oxford University Press) and Y. Dezalay and B. Garth, Law as Reproduction and Revolution: An Interconnected History (2021, University of California Press).
"Judicial Independence and Some of its Enemies"
The Rt Hon Lady Hale of Richmond DBE
Former President
Supreme Court of the United Kingdom
Wednesday, September 21, 2022
Lady Hale retired as President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, the most senior Judge in the United Kingdom, in January 2020. Before becoming a Judge, she had a varied career, as an academic lawyer at the University of Manchester (also qualifying and practising for a while as a barrister in Manchester), as the first woman member of the Law Commission, a statutory body which promotes the reform of the law, where she led successful projects in Family Law and Mental Capacity Law, and also sat as a part time Judge. She was appointed a High Court Judge in 1994, was promoted to the Court of Appeal in 1999, and in 2004 became the first and only woman ‘Law Lord’ in the House of Lords, then the apex court in the United Kingdom. In 2009, the Law Lords were translated into the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. She became its Deputy President in 2013 and its first woman President in 2017. She is also President of the United Kingdom Association of Women Judges and a past President of the International Association of Women Judges. In retirement she has spent her time writing – her memoir, Spiderwoman, A Life, was published last year – and speaking. She holds a number of visiting and honorary academic appointments and is Trustee or Patron of several charities.
"A PHOENIX MOMENT? International Law after Ukraine"
Thursday, March 17, 2022
4:30 p.m.
Justice Eboe-Osuji was born in Anara, Isiala Mbano, Imo State, Nigeria. He obtained his law degree from the University of Calabar, Nigeria an LLM from McGill University, and completed his PhD at the University of Amsterdam. He has worked at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the Special Court for Sierra Leone, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
In 2012 he joined the International Criminal Court, and in 2018 he began a three-year term as the Court’s President.
He is the author of International Law and Sexual Violence in Armed Conflicts.
Gillian Lester
Dean and the Lucy G. Moses Professor of Law at Columbia Law School
The Evolving Role of the University in Civil Society
Thursday, January 9, 2020
4:10 pm
Rosalie Silberman Abella Moot Court Room (J250)
Jackman Law Building, 78 Queen's Park
Gillian Lester is Dean and the Lucy G. Moses Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. She joined the Law School in 2015 as its 15th dean.
As a nationally recognized authority on employment law and policy, Lester’s research focuses on exploring workplace intellectual property law, public finance policy, and the design of social insurance laws and regulations.
Lester began her teaching career in 1994 at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law, where she later became a full professor in 1999. In 2006, Lester joined the Berkeley Law faculty, where—in addition to serving as acting dean from 2012 to 2014—she was the Alexander F. and May T. Morrison Professor of Law and the Werner and Mimi Wolfen Research Professor. Lester also co-directed the Berkeley Center for Health, Economic and Family Security and was the Associate Dean for the J.D. Program and Curricular Planning.
She is the author of numerous academic books and articles and is a co-author of Employment Law: Cases and Materials, Sixth Edition, one of the leading casebooks in the field. Lester is also a member of the Executive Committee of the American Association of Law Schools, a member of the American Law Institute, and she served as an adviser to the ALI Restatement of Employment Law.
An alumna of the University of Toronto Faculty of Law (LLB 1990), Gillian Lester was featured in the 2019 issue of Nexus magazine.
Dr. Menaka Guruswamy
BR Ambedkar Research Scholar and Lecturer at Columbia Law School
“Irrational, indefensible, and manifestly arbitrary”
Tuesday, October 23
4:10 pm
Rosalie Silberman Abella Moot Court Room (J250)
Jackman Law Building, 78 Queen's Park
Professor Guruswamy recently represented gay petitioners in India’s Supreme Court, successfully arguing that India’s ban against consensual gay sex should be struck down. In its unanimous decision the justices ruled gay Indians are to be accorded all the protections of the Constitution. She will discuss the case during this year’s Goodman Lecture. Find out more about the case in this New York Times article, "India Gay Sex Ban Is Struck Down. ‘Indefensible,’ Court Says."
Dr. Menaka Guruswamy is BR Ambedkar Research Scholar and Lecturer at Columbia Law School. She also practices law before the Supreme Court of India.
Dr. Guruswamy has practiced law in New York, as an associate at Davis Polk & Wardwell. She has advised the United Nations Development Fund, New York and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), New York and UNICEF South Sudan on various aspects of International Human Rights Law and has also supported the constitution-making process in Nepal.
In her litigation practice in India, she focusses on large constitutional rights claims, and has successfully brought reform of the bureaucracy in the country, defended federal legislation that mandates that all private schools admit disadvantaged children, and challenged colonial-era laws that criminalise consensual same-sex relations. She is amicus curiae appointed by the Supreme Court in a case concerning 1528 alleged extra-judicial killings by the military and security personnel.
Justice Daphne Barak-Erez
Supreme Court of Israel
Multiculturalism as a Family Name
Tuesday, January 16, 2018
(Please note change of date)
4:00 pm to 6:00 pm
Room P115, Jackman Law Building, 78 Queen's Park
This year’s Goodman Lecture will discuss the tendency to use the title “multiculturalism” both as a descriptive tool and as a normative and moral idea with regard to situations that are very different from one another. Accordingly, it will offer relevant distinctions to the practice of multiculturalism, evaluating examples drawing on comparative law, from Israel, Canada and other jurisdictions.
Biography
Justice Daphne Barak-Erez recently left the Faculty of Law at Tel Aviv University after being appointed to the Supreme Court of Israel. She was the Stewart and Judy Colton professor of law and held the chair of law and security. She is a member of the American Law Institute and a member of the International Academy of Comparative Law. Her main research and teaching areas were administrative and constitutional law. In addition, she taught courses in the areas of feminist jurisprudence, contracts and payment systems. She is a three time graduate of Tel-Aviv University: LL.B. (summa cum laude) 1988; LL.M. (summa cum laude) 1991, and J.S.D, 1993 (recipient of the Colton Fellowship). She was a visiting researcher at Harvard Law School, a visiting fellow at the Max-Planck Institute of Public Law, Heidelberg, an Honorary Research Fellow at University College London, a Visiting Researcher at the Swiss Institute of Comparative Law in Lausanne, a Visiting Researcher at the Jawarlal Nehru University in Delhi and a Visiting Fellow at the Schell Center at Yale Law School. She has also taught as Visiting Professor at various universities, including the University of Toronto, Columbia Law School and Stanford Law School. In the past, she acted as the Director of the Minerva Center for Human Rights (2000-2001), the chairperson of the Israeli Association of Public Law, the Vice Dean of the faculty (2000-2002), the Director of the Cegla Center for Interdisciplinary Research of the Law (2009-2011), a member of the Council of Higher Education in Israel (2007-2011), the President of the Israeli Law and Society Association (2010-2011) and the Dean of the faculty (2011-2012). She was awarded several prizes, including the Rector’s Prize for Excellence in Teaching (three times), the Zeltner Prize, the Heshin Prize, the Woman of the City Award (by the City of Tel-Aviv) and the Women in Law Award (by the Israeli Bar). She is the author and editor of several books and of many articles in Israel, England, Canada and the United States.
Brian Bowman
Mayor of Winnipeg
Appropriate Responses to the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
Thursday, November 24, 2016
4:10pm to 6:00pm
Rosalie Silberman Abella Moot Court Room, Jackman Law Building, 78 Queen's Park
Read about the lecture and watch the video online
Brian Bowman was elected in a landslide victory on October 22nd, 2014 to become the 43rd Mayor of the City of Winnipeg.

Since becoming Mayor, Bowman has passionately worked towards fixing Winnipeg’s racism problem – changing the city’s label by Maclean’s magazine as “most racist city in Canada” to “a leader in fixing Canada’s racism problem” in the span of one year. Mayor Bowman himself is Métis, and is the nation’s first Aboriginal mayor.

Prior to becoming Mayor, Brian was a partner at one of Winnipeg’s top law firms, and a national leader in the emerging fields of social media, access to information, and privacy law. He used his role as partner to protect victims of cyber-bullying and for the protection of individuals’ personal rights.

Brian holds a Bachelor of Arts (Adv) in history and political studies from the University of Manitoba, and a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Toronto.
Phil Fontaine
Former three-term National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations
Moving Forward: Towards Reconciliation
Tuesday, February 9, 2016
4:10pm to 6:00pm
Emmanuel College, 73 Queen's Park Crescent, Room 001
Former three-term National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations Phil Fontaine is an articulate advocate for indigenous peoples. He has a proven track record of opening the lines of communication and bringing people together in a common cause for a better future and to resolve issues of the past.
Fontaine, the youngest son in an Ojibway family of 12 children, has been instrumental in facilitating change and advancement for First Nations people from the time he was first elected to public office as chief, when he was 28 years old.
An advocate for human rights and a survivor of residential school abuse, Fontaine’s crowning achievement is the residential schools settlement. At $5.6billion in individual compensation, Fontaine negotiated the largest settlement in Canadian history – for the largest human rights violation in Canadian history – arising out of the 150-year Indian residential school tragedy.
Gillian Hadfield
Kirtland Professor of Law and Professor of Economics and Director,
Center for Law and Social Science at USC Gould School of Law (California)
“Reimagining Law”
Thursday, October 10, 2013
12.30-2pm
Victoria College, 73 Queen’s Park Cres. (room EM 119)
Watch the webcast of the Goodman Lecture
The lecture will consider Prof. Hadfield’s work on what is law and issues relating to the profession, law and development.
Video Tribute Celebrating the Honourable R. Roy McMurtry
"A Conversation with Roy McMurtry on Professionalism"
with an introduction by
Janet E. Minor
General Counsel, Ministry of the Attorney General, Constitutional Law Branch
November 2, 2010
3:00 pm
University of Toronto Conference Centre
89 Chestnut St., Toronto
Watch the video
"An interview with Roy McMurtry"
(Flash format, 300 MB)
This lecture is the closing address of the
Chief Justice of Ontario's Advisory Committee on Professionalism's
Colloquium on the Legal Profession
His Worship David Miller
Mayor of the City of Toronto
"Toronto & Canada's Big Cities: The Key to National Prosperity"
January 22, 2008
5:00 pm
University of Toronto Faculty of Law
As we enter the 21st century, there is an urgent need for need for Canada to catch up with other countries around the globe where the concept that urbanization transforms cities into the engines that drive economic growth has been embraced. Today, it is cities that determine the success or failure of nations. This in no less true in Canada than anywhere else in the world. Mayor Miller will address this issue when he delivers the 2008 lecture.
Judge Richard J. Goldstone
Henry Shattuck Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School
"The South African Constitutional Court: Its First Ten Years"
January 17, 2006
5:00 pm
University of Toronto Faculty of Law
Abstract
The early history of the Court, its composition and procedures will be discussed. Its role in the certification process for the Constitution will be considered. Its most important decisions during its first ten years will be briefly described, and also the relevance of Canadian law with regard to some of those decisions.
Justice Morris Fish
Supreme Court of Canada
"The Right to Counsel Over the Arc of Time"
January 29, 2004
In January 2004, the Faculty welcomed the Hon. Justice Morris Fish as this year's David B. Goodman Lecturer. The former justice of the Quebec Court of Appeal, and newest member of the Supreme Court of Canada, discussed "The Right to Counsel over the Arc of Time," and included remarks about his personal experiences as a criminal lawyer, journalist, professor, and judge. Justice Fish reminded his audience that although the right to counsel has been recognized in theory for years, it was almost entirely ignored throughout the 20th century. Only recently did it become common practice with the advent of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Fish argued that the right to counsel following arrest is the linchpin of the criminal justice system - and the ultimate determinate of whether the criminal law process is fair to the accused.
Minister of Foreign Affairs Bill Graham

The Honourable William C. Graham '64, Minister of Foreign Affairs, delivered the 2003 David B. Goodman Lecture on Monday, January 13, 2003.
Minister Graham's topic was "Challenges for International Law in the 21st Century: A Canadian Political Perspective."
The Honourable William C. Graham '64

First elected as Member of Parliament for Toronto Centre-Rosedale in 1993, Bill Graham was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs in January 2002.
From 1995 to 2002, Mr. Graham served as Chairman of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade. Under his chairmanship, the committee produced important reports on issues including Canada's interests in the World Trade Organization, Canada's role in Kosovo, the implementation of legislation for the International Criminal Court, and the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City.
Bill Graham was elected founding President of the Inter-Parliamentary Forum of the Americas. He has served as Vice-President and Treasurer of the Parliamentary Association of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and as Treasurer of Liberal International.
Born in Montreal and raised in Vancouver, Mr. Graham studied at Upper Canada College, Trinity College, the University of Toronto Faculty of Law (LL.B. 1964) and the University of Paris (LL.D.).
He practised law at Fasken & Calvin, specializing in international business transactions, and subsequently taught International Trade Law, Public International Law, and the Law of the European Community at the Faculty. He also served as Director of the Centre of International Studies at the University of Toronto.
Mr. Graham has been a visiting lecturer in law at McGill University and the University of Montreal, and is an honorary life member of the Canadian Council of International Law. In recognition of his commitment to public life and cooperation among peoples and nations, the William C. Graham Chair in International Law and Development has been established at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law.
Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin

Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, the first woman appointed to head the Supreme Court of Canada, spoke to a packed Bennett Lecture Hall about Canada's experience with racism and the law, the topic of this year's David B. Goodman Memorial Lecture.
In Racism and the Law: the Canadian Experience, Chief Justice McLachlin stressed that the future of Canada hinged upon how it well the country deals with its diverse cultural makeup.
We must have government and legal structures that recognize our diversity and allow us to live together in harmony and in a way that promotes the fullest possible contribution from all of our citizens, regardless of our race or background, she said.
Chief Justice McLachlin also spoke about different eras in Canadian legal history, describing how Canadian law had regarded racial and cultural differences among its citizens, and how the law had evolved in that respect over the last 150 years.
She spoke of instances in which the law was used against racial minority groups, citing specific examples such as the confinement of Aboriginals to reserves, and the notorious head tax placed on immigrants.
Over the past century and a half, Canadian attitudes on how the law should deal with racial and cultural differences have undergone an important evolution, she said. We have moved from the initial stance of allowing the law to actively or passively perpetuate inequality, through a transition period of equal opportunity and access, to a third period in which see the law as a tool to actively combat inequality and enhance substantive equality.
She went on to say the country now recognizes that inequality marginalizes and distempers large sectors of the community, reinforces existing disadvantages, and fractures society into those who are accorded full human dignity and those who are denied it.

The Goodman Lectures were delivered in previous years by the following eminent Canadians: Madam Justice Bertha Wilson of the Supreme Court of Canada (1985), Mr. Alan Borovoy of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (1987), the Honourable Ian Scott, Attorney General of Ontario (1988), Roberta Jamieson, The Ombudsman of Ontario (1991), the Hon. Gerald V. La Forest of the Supreme Court of Canada (1992), the Honourable Bob Rae, Premier of Ontario (1994), Mr. Justice Sydney Robins of the Ontario Court of Appeal (1995), Associate Chief Judge Murray Sinclair, Provincial Court of Manitoba (1995), the Hon. Madam Justice Louise Arbour, Prosecutor, International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia, The United Nations (1997), The Honourable Justice Arthur Chaskalson President, Constitutional Court, South Africa (1997), The Honourable Justice J. E. Michel Bastarache, The Supreme Court of Canada (1999), and Mr. Martin Lee, Chairman, Democratic Party of Hong Kong (2000).

David B. Goodman Lecture Archives

2023-24 Goodman Lecture Bryant Garth, Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, University of California-Irvine Law School, "Lawyers, Empires, and Social Change: Reexamining theory and theory-informed description in today’s fraught environment" (January 2024)

2021-22 Goodman Lecture The Rt Hon Lady Hale of Richmond DBE, Former President, Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, "Judicial Independence and Some of its Enemies" (21 September 2022)

2020-21 Goodman Lecture Justice Chile Eboe-Osuji "A PHOENIX MOMENT? International Law after Ukraine"

2019-20 Goodman Lecture Gillian Lester, Dean and the Lucy G. Moses Professor of Law at Columbia Law School "The Evolving Role of the University in Civil Society"

2018-19 Goodman Lecture Dr. Menaka Guruswamy, BR Ambedkar Research Scholar and Lecturer at Columbia Law School, “Irrational, indefensible, and manifestly arbitrary”

2017-18 Goodman Lecture Justice Daphne Barak-Erez, Supreme Court of Israel, "Multiculturalism as a Family Name"

2016-17 Goodman Lecture Brian Bowman, Mayor of Winnipeg, "Appropriate Responses to the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission"

2015-16 Goodman Lecture Phil Fontaine, Former three-term National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, "Moving Forward: Towards Reconciliation"

2014-15 Goodman Lecture Catherine O’Regan, Chairperson, United Nations Internal Justice Council, Former judge to the South African Constitutional Court: "South Africa’s Constitution at Twenty: An Assessment"

2013-14 Goodman Lecture Gillian Hadfield, Kirtland Professor of Law and Professor of Economics and Director, Center for Law and Social Science at USC Gould School of Law (California), "Reimagining Law"

2010-11 Goodman Lecture A Conversation with the Honourable R. Roy McMurtry on Professionalism (video tribute)

2008-09 Goodman Lecture The Hon. Stephen Goudge, Justice, Ontario Court of Appeal: "Looking Back and Looking Forward on Learning in Professionalism"

2007-08 Goodman Lecture His Worship David Miller, Mayor of the City of Toronto: "Toronto & Canada's Big Cities: The Key to National Prosperity"

2006-07 Goodman Lecture The Honourable Mr. Justice Marshall Rothstein, Supreme Court of Canada: "The Supreme Court Appointment Process"

2006 Goodman Lecture Judge Richard J. Goldstone, Henry Shattuck Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School: "The South African Constitutional Court: Its First Ten Years"

2005 Goodman Lecture Daniel Kaufmann, World Bank Institute Director, Global Governance: "Debunking Myths on Worldwide Governance and Corruption: The Challenge of Empirical Evidence, and Implications for New Strategies and Policies"

2004 Goodman Lecture Justice Morris Fish, Supreme Court of Canada: "The Right to Counsel Over the Arc of Time"

2003 Goodman Lecture Minister of Foreign Affairs Bill Graham, "Challenges for International Law in the 21st Century: A Canadian Political Perspective."

2002 Goodman Lecture Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin, "Racism and the Law: The Canadian Experience".