Jennifer Raso

Twitter: https://twitter.com/jenraso

Publications on SSRN: ssrn.com/author=2160497 

Biography

Jennifer Raso is an Assistant Professor at McGill University’s Faculty of Law, where she teaches Administrative Process and Poverty and the Law. Her research investigates the relationship between discretion, data-driven technologies, and administrative law. She is particularly intrigued by how humans/non-humans collaborate and diverge as they produce institutional decisions, and the consequences for procedural fairness and substantive justice. Professor Raso is presently exploring these issues as the PI on a SSHRC Insight Development Grant project, "Shifting Front Lines in the Digital Welfare State: Coding Canadian Social Assistance Laws."  

Before joining McGill, Professor Raso was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of New South Wales Faculty of Law, a visiting fellow at the Yale Law School Information Society Project, a visiting researcher at the University of California Berkeley Center for the Study of Law and Society, and a lawyer for the City of Toronto. She obtained an S.J.D. from the University of Toronto, where she was a junior fellow at the Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies.  

An award-winning socio-legal scholar, Professor Raso has received the Canadian Law and Society Association’s Best English-Language Article prize (2018), and the inaugural Richard Hart Prize at the University of Cambridge’s Public Law Conference (2016). Her work has been funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canada) and the Endeavour Fellowships Program (Australia). 

Employment

• Assistant Professor, McGill University Faculty of Law 2022 - Present
• Assistant Professor, University of Alberta Faculty of Law 2018 - 2022 
• Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, UNSW Law 2017 - 2018 
• Lawyer, City of Toronto Legal Services Division 2008 - 2012 

Education

• SJD, University of Toronto Faculty of Law, 2018 
• LLB, University of Victoria Faculty of Law, 2007 

Areas of Interest

Administrative Law, Social Welfare Law, Algorithmic Decision-Making, Artificial Intelligence (AI) Governance, Socio-Legal Studies.

Recent Publications

“Implementing Digitalisation in an Administrative Justice Context,” in Marc Hertogh, Richard Kirkham, Robert Thomas, Joe Tomlinson, eds, The Oxford Handbook of Administrative Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022) 

“AI and Administrative Law,” in Florian Martin-Bariteau & Teresa Scassa, eds, Artificial Intelligence and the Law in Canada (Toronto: LexisNexis Canada, 2021) 

“Administrative Law in the Digital World,” with Paul Daly & Joe Tomlinson, in Carol Harlow, ed, Research Handbook on Administrative Law (Edward Elgar, Aldershot, 2021) 

“Unity in the Eye of the Beholder? Reasons for Decision in Theory and Practice in the Ontario Works Program,” (2020) 70:1 University of Toronto Law Journal 1-39 

“The In-Between Space of Administrative Justice: Reconciling Norms at the Front-Lines of Social Assistance Agencies,” in Jason Varuhas & Shona Wilson Stark, eds, The Frontiers of Public Law (Oxford: Hart, 2020), 471-498 

“Governing Infrastructure in the Age of the ‘Art of the Deal’: Logics of Governance and Scales of Visibility,” with Mariana Valverde & Fleur Johns, (2018) 41:S1 PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 118-132 

“Displacement as Regulation: New Regulatory Technologies and Front-Line Decision-Making in Ontario Works,” (2017) 32:1 Canadian Journal of Law & Society 75-95 

“Tranchemontagne and the Administration of Rights: Lessons from the Game of Jurisdiction,” (2017) 13 Journal of Law & Equality 31-59