Dal Events

�� Health Justice Institute Seminar Series: Making the State Do the Right Thing – A Decade of Jordan’s Principle Litigation

Fri, 07 Nov 2025 16:10:00 GMT

This session will be led by Schulich School of Law alumnus David Taylor (LLB '12), a partner with Conway Litigation in Ottawa, and co-hosted by fellow alumna Naiomi Metallic (LLB '05), Chancellor's Chair in Aboriginal Law and Policy from the Schulich School of Law.

Fall Term Study Break – No Classes

Mon, 10 Nov 2025 04:00:00 GMT

Enjoy the study break!

Remembrance Day – University Closed

Tue, 11 Nov 2025 04:00:00 GMT

Please note the university is closed today in accordance with Remembrance Day.

Canadian Technology Law Conference: Democracy and the Information Society

Fri, 14 Nov 2025 13:00:00 GMT

The Law & Technology Institute at the Schulich School of Law cordially invites you to attend the inaugural Canadian Technology Law Conference (CTLC): Democracy and the Information Society.

This event, focused on the impacts of technology on democracy, is dedicated to discussing the regulation of emerging technologies and the impact of law on society.

Panels and presentations will cover topics such as:

Freedom of expression
Platform power and misinformation
Extremism and online safety
Privacy and surveillance
Al accountability and regulation
Good governance and public administration

Highlights from the two-day conference include:

Keynote Speaker: The Honourable Sean Fraser (LLB '09), Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada and Minister responsible for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency

Fireside Chat: "Internet Access and Competition in the Telecoms Sector" with Bram Abramson, CRTC commissioner for Ontario

Panel: "AI & Accountability" moderated by Assistant Professor Katie Szilagyi, University of Manitoba and featuring panelists Professor Suresh Venkatasubramanian, Brown University, and Assistant Professor Jennifer Raso, McGill University

Panels with other leading experts from Canada and the United States

A detailed conference schedule is available online.

Classes Resume

Mon, 17 Nov 2025 12:00:00 GMT

Welcome back to Weldon!

Smith Shield Moot

Mon, 17 Nov 2025 23:30:00 GMT

The Smith Shield Moot is a not-for-credit exhibition that sees two teams of two student advocates argue a hypothetical appeal before a panel of lawyers, judges, and members of the Weldon community.

It is the premiere mooting event of the academic calendar with a tradition dating back to 1927 and being selected to participate is a significant accolade.

2025 Smith Shield Mooters:

Shawn Courtney
Sophia King Gillis
Maryjane Sexton
Julie-Ann Tremblay
Lauren Marval (Alternate)

Five Walls and a Door: The Secret Sauce of Canadian Immigration

Tue, 18 Nov 2025 21:00:00 GMT

Members of the Weldon community are invited to attend the second of three 2025 McGill Max Bell Lectures, featuring columnist Tony Keller.

The event will be emceed by Schulich School of Law Dean Sarah Harding.

Keller will discuss his book, Borderline Chaos: How Canada Got Immigration Right, and Then Wrong, exploring how modern Canada built an economically successful, politically popular immigration system.

A discussion will follow with Ninette Kelley, co-author of The Making of the Mosaic: A History of Canadian Immigration Policy and Reshaping the Mosaic: Canadian Immigration Policy in the Twenty-First Century.

About the Topic:

For more than a quarter century, Canada enjoyed a national consensus around immigration, even as immigration was inflaming politics on both the left and the right in Europe and the United States.

Why did Canada avoid these immigration conflicts? And what went wrong after 2015?

About the Speaker:

Tony Keller is a columnist with The Globe and Mail. Over a career of more than 30 years, he has been a member of the editorial board for The Globe, editor of The Financial Post Magazine, managing editor of Maclean’s, and a news anchor at BNN (now BNN-Bloomberg).

Born and raised in Montreal, he is a graduate of Duke University and Yale Law School. He won Canada’s National Newspaper Award for editorial writing in 2016.

Judges Panel with the �� Family Law Society

Tue, 18 Nov 2025 23:00:00 GMT

Join the �� Family Law Society for an engaging evening of discussion as members of the judiciary share insights from their careers, reflect on their paths through the legal profession, and offer advice to students interested in family law and beyond.

The event will feature a moderated Q&A with an opportunity for students to ask questions.

Panelists include:

The Honourable Justice Jillian Barrington (LLB '10)
The Honourable Justice Samuel Moreau
The Honourable Justice James (Jim) Williams (Retired)

Research Hour: "We Feel Like We're Sinking" – Results from a Province-Wide Tenants' Rights Study

Wed, 19 Nov 2025 16:30:00 GMT

This seminar will be led by Hannah Main from �� Legal Aid Service.

This session is for faculty and graduate students only.

Health Law Career Panel & Networking Event

Wed, 19 Nov 2025 22:15:00 GMT

The �� Health Law Students' Association and the Health Law Section of the Canadian Bar Association Nova Scotia invite members of the Weldon community to a career panel to hear from leading professionals in health law, including representatives from the IWK Health Centre, McInnis Cooper, and the Nova Scotia College of Pharmacists.

Following the panel, students can connect with classmates, faculty, and other health law professionals at a networking event.

Last Day to Drop Fall Classes With a "W" and Multi-Term Classes Without a "W"

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 13:00:00 GMT

Please visit ��'s academic calendar for more information.

Law Hour with the Honourable Sean Fraser, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 16:30:00 GMT

�� Law Hour is pleased to welcome the Honourable Sean Fraser (LLB '09), Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, back to his alma mater to deliver the final Law Hour lecture of the fall semester.

Follow �� Law Hour on Instagram to stay up to date on future Law Hour events.

�� Legacy Awards

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 17:00:00 GMT

�� invites faculty and staff to the 8th annual �� Legacy Awards to celebrate and recognize faculty and staff across the university who have gone above and beyond in their work and in the community.

Paper Presentation: Intent in Transactions Avoidance – a Need for Greater Certainty

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 22:00:00 GMT

Members of the Weldon community are invited to hear Dr. Matthew Chippin present his paper, "Intent in Transactions Avoidance – a Need for Greater Certainty," which will be followed by a brief Q&A session and an informal social gathering.

About the Paper

Using case law and statutory analysis from England, Canada, and the United States, Dr. Chippin's paper highlights how intent-based standards in solvency transactions avoidance provisions have often produced uncertainty, inefficiency, and inconsistent application. By comparison, both the Irish Companies Act 2014, section 608, and the Canadian anti-deprivation rule offer a uniquely broad effects-based model that avoids many of these difficulties while still maintaining sensible limits.

About the Speaker

Matthew Chippin holds a PhD in Insolvency Law from the University of Leeds. He is currently a visiting scholar with the Marine & Environmental Law Institute and will be a visiting lecturer at the University of New Brunswick's Faculty of Law in January. Dr. Chippin has previously held visiting appointments at Sydney Law School, University of Sydney, and the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law, Arizona State University.

Research Hour: Diverse Legalities – Towards a Legal Theory for a Postcapitalist Political Economy

Fri, 21 Nov 2025 16:00:00 GMT

This seminar will be led by Amy Cohen, Robert J. Reinstein Chair in Law, Beasley School of Law, Temple University.

About the Lecture

What questions arise for legal scholars if we begin with the presumption – that postcapitalist worlds are already here but have been cast into shadow by a singular economic framing that presumes capitalist dominance. Building from actually existing experiments in cooperation and solidarity, we translate conceptual questions about legal indeterminacy into processual and sociolegal inquiries about how indeterminacy works in tandem with social practices of coordination and regularization. We endeavor to make these inquiries visible by examining how people negotiate their interdependence by making decisions about needs, surplus, production, consumption, and the creation of commons, and how these decisions may create new patterns and habits (and subjects) over time. Legalities emerge in these negotiations—sometimes as the community-generated rules people work out to cooperate; sometimes through how people play with background rules of state law through direct action; and sometimes through more familiar efforts to ask judges and legislators to reform state-enforceable legal rules. What we call “diverse legalities” combines legal pluralism, prefigurative legality, and more familiar accounts of legal instrumentalism. As an analytical intervention, diverse legalities suggests that post-capitalism, no less than capitalism, depends on legalities that find their sources of authority beyond the state. As a political intervention, diverse legalities suggests that one way to strengthen postcapitalist economies and legalities is to start by studying the moments in which people have already been successful in their local communities.

This session is for faculty and graduate students only.

Research Hour: Made by the Indian Act – Lavell and the Hidden Story of Equality Law and Judicial Review

Fri, 21 Nov 2025 17:30:00 GMT

Genevieve Renard Painter, associate professor at the Simone de Beauvoir Institute, Concordia University, will be workshopping her paper, Made by the Indian Act – Lavell and the Hidden Story of Equality Law and Judicial Review.

Comments will be provided by Annie Bunting, Law & Society professor, Department of Social Science, and York Research Chair in International Gender Justice & Peacebuilding, York University.

About the Lecture

This article explores the enmeshment of the Indian Act in Canada’s legal order. The article shows that sex discrimination in the Indian Act was productive for the Canadian state. It helped jurists define and understand equality and non-discrimination and nourished debate about parliamentary supremacy and judicial review, thus preparing the ground for an entrenched charter. It demonstrated that public opinion pressure could be a force in the court room, not just in parliament and at the ballot box. In part because the dispute about the Indian Act mobilized the Canadian women’s movement, the government was able to transform a challenge against a discriminatory federal law into a dispute between different Indigenous constituencies. This justified government inaction on the underlying discrimination and deflected blame from the government onto Indigenous leaders. Thus did sex discrimination in a Canadian law allow the government to undermine the movement for Indigenous sovereignty.

Indigenous peoples gained little from the debate, litigation, and activism about sex discrimination in the Indian Act in the early 1970s. Instead, their demands for redress created a space for settler society to thrash out legal and political questions about equality and the proper relation between courts, the legislature, and the public. The indisputable merits of Lavell’s claim for equality and non-discrimination have been celebrated by government and canonized in legal treatises, but Canadian law has never fully acknowledged that the road to Canada’s constitution has been paved by Indigenous people demanding, and being denied, justice.

This session is for faculty and graduate students only.

Research Hour: Sentencing Vulnerability – An Empirical Study into the Use of Personal Characteristics at Sentencing of Older Adults in Nova Scotia

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 16:30:00 GMT

This seminar will be led by Schulich Law Associate Professor Adelina Iftene.

This session is for faculty and graduate students only.

Law Hour

Thu, 27 Nov 2025 16:30:00 GMT

Please check back for details on the topic and speaker for today's Law Hour session.

Follow �� Law Hour on Instagram to stay up to date on future Law Hour events.

Last Day of Classes

Mon, 01 Dec 2025 12:00:00 GMT

Classes end for all years.

Last Day to Apply to Graduate in May Without a Fee

Mon, 01 Dec 2025 12:00:00 GMT

To be considered for Spring Convocation, Dal students must apply to graduate through Dal Online, by the December deadline.

Exams Begin

Thu, 04 Dec 2025 12:00:00 GMT

Good luck to everyone on their exams!

Please refer to the exam timetable for the most up-to-date information.

Dal Events

������� Health Justice Institute Seminar Series: Making the State Do the Right Thing – A Decade of Jordan’s Principle Litigation

Fall Term Study Break – No Classes

Remembrance Day – University Closed

Canadian Technology Law Conference: Democracy and the Information Society

Classes Resume

Smith Shield Moot

Five Walls and a Door: The Secret Sauce of Canadian Immigration

Judges Panel with the ������� Family Law Society

Research Hour: "We Feel Like We're Sinking" – Results from a Province-Wide Tenants' Rights Study

Health Law Career Panel & Networking Event

Last Day to Drop Fall Classes With a "W" and Multi-Term Classes Without a "W"

Law Hour with the Honourable Sean Fraser, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada

������� Legacy Awards

Paper Presentation: Intent in Transactions Avoidance – a Need for Greater Certainty

Research Hour: Diverse Legalities – Towards a Legal Theory for a Postcapitalist Political Economy

Research Hour: Made by the Indian Act – Lavell and the Hidden Story of Equality Law and Judicial Review

Research Hour: Sentencing Vulnerability – An Empirical Study into the Use of Personal Characteristics at Sentencing of Older Adults in Nova Scotia

Law Hour

Last Day of Classes

Last Day to Apply to Graduate in May Without a Fee

Exams Begin

�� Health Justice Institute Seminar Series: Making the State Do the Right Thing – A Decade of Jordan’s Principle Litigation

Judges Panel with the �� Family Law Society

�� Legacy Awards