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Shauna Van Praagh

Full Professor - On leave

Chancellor Day Hall
Room 38
Montreal, Quebec
Canada H3A 1W9

514-398-6626 [Office]
shauna.vanpraagh [at] mcgill.ca (Email)

Professor Shauna Van Praagh

Curriculum Vitae - February 2023
Focus online, January 2021: Shauna Van Praagh and the Chamber of Wizards
CTV News Interview: The Wizarding World of Law, 27 January 2021
Palsgraf v Long Island Railroad: A Case of Transsystemic Tort Law (1:49:51)
Talking Teaching Profiles: Asking good questions
Read her articles on SSRN

Professor Van Praagh is also behind the Legal Education Seminar Working Papers, written by students taking her Legal Education Seminar (LAWG 525) course.

Biography

Shauna Van Praagh is Full Professor in the Faculty of Law, McGill, where she has taught and researched since 1993. She served as Associate Dean (Graduate Studies) from 2007-2010. She chaired the 1995-96 Committee on Curricular Reform, which produced the blueprint for the revised program of legal education introduced in 1999. She has also taught at Columbia Law School (1990-1992) and King’s College London (1992-1993), and was a visiting scholar at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires (2010-2011), Universitat de Barcelona and Hebrew University Jerusalem (2018).

Prior to joining University of McGill, Professor Van Praagh clerked for The Right Honourable Brian Dickson, Chief Justice of Canada, from 1989 to 1990.

Shauna Van Praagh has been intensively involved in the development of teaching and learning in law. She served as President of the Canadian Association of Law Teachers (2013-2014). She was appointed in 2015 as one of two academic members of the National Requirement Review Committee under the auspices of the Federation of Law Societies of Canada.

Professor Van Praagh was awarded the John W. Durnford Teaching Excellence Award in 1995.

Research interests and teaching experience

Professor Van Praagh’s substantive areas of research and expertise are primarily children and law, religion and law, legal education and the private law of civil wrongs. Within each area, she adopts a methodological approach grounded in legal pluralism, a sensibility to identity-based narrative and critique, and a particular emphasis on literary sources and style. She co-edited, with McGill colleague Helge Dedek, a book collection (Stateless Law: Evolving Boundaries of a Discipline, 2015) in which her own chapter focuses on teaching, learning, and responding to the legacy of Residential Schools for Canada’s Indigenous children. As one of the researchers in a multi-partner Quebec research project, Accès au Droit et à la Justice, she co-directs the Section dedicated to access to justice for youth.

Professor Van Praagh teaches Extra-contractual obligations/Torts to first year law students, Advanced Common Law Obligations to upper year students, and a seminar in Legal Education to graduate and upper year students. In addition, she has taught Social Diversity and Law, Children and Law, Foundations of Canadian Law, Feminist Legal Theory, and specialized courses related to governance of diversity, law of armed conflict, and socio-economic justice within the Hebrew University – McGill human rights summer program.

Education

J.S.D. degree (Columbia) 2000. Doctoral dissertation: “Follow the Children: Identity, Integrity, Learning and Law”
LL.M. (Columbia) 1992
LL.B. with Honours (Toronto) 1989
B.Sc. with High Distinction (Toronto) 1986

Employment

Full Professor, McGill Faculty of Law, 2015-
Associate Dean, Graduate studies, McGill Faculty of Law, 2007-2010
Acting Dean, McGill Faculty of Law, June 2009
Associate Professor, McGill Faculty of Law, 2000-2015
Assistant Professor, McGill Faculty of Law, 1995-2000
Visiting Assistant Professor, McGill Faculty of Law, 1994-1995
Boulton Fellow, McGill Faculty of Law, 1993-1994
Visiting Scholar, King's College London, 1992-1993
Teaching Associate, Columbia, 1990-1992
Law Clerk to the Rt. Hon. Chief Justice Dickson, Supreme Court of Canada, 1989-1990

Areas of Interest

Teaching: Extracontractual Obligations, Advanced Common Law Obligations, Social Diversity and Law, Children and Law

Research: Children’s Stories and the Law of Civil Wrongs; Religion and Law (Chasidic Law and Life); Legal Education; Governing Diversity through Law

Related Content

Recent publications récentes

book cover

Shauna Van Praagh, Building Justice: Frank Iacobucci and the Life Cycles of Law (2022)

"In Building Justice, Shauna Van Praagh weaves together the voices of individuals whose paths and projects have intersected with those of Frank Iacobucci. The book provides a compelling consideration of the study and practice of law as it follows the stages of Iacobucci’s life and career: from his childhood in Vancouver, his practice as a young lawyer, his time at the University of Toronto and with the Federal Department of Justice, his work as a judge at the highest level of court, and his significant engagement with Canada’s ongoing response to the legacy of residential schools.

Building Justice is a beautifully written biography in which the stories of one jurist serve to explore and illustrate engaged citizenship through law."

Collage sur le droit et le savoir en temps de pandémie / Law and Learning in the Time of Pandemic - A Collage

Shauna Van Praagh, David Sandomierski, Eds. (2020) Lex-Electronica, Volume 25, No 4.

"In April 2020, law teachers across Canada received a call to contribute their reflections on law and learning in the time of pandemic. [...] Colleagues were invited to share their voice and presence by submitting short pieces along a full spectrum of tone and content, and to do so according to a tight timeline. The resulting collage [...] illustrates the remarkable range of ways in which the experience of the pandemic has been woven into research directions, pedagogical initiatives, structures of governance, and relationships with the individuals and institutions in our lives."

“Quelques leçons des enfants hassidiques pour le droit”

In P. Anctil et I. Robinson, eds., Les juifs hassidiques de Montréal. Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2019

“La situation des enfants hassidiques apparaît comme une source d'apprentissage extrêmement riche pour le droit, particulièrement dans sa déclinaison pluraliste. En cherchant à comprendre comment se combinent les normes étatiques, religieuses, parentales et scolaires dans le quotidien de ces enfants, les juristes pourraient en apprendre sur le fonctionnement du droit lui-même..."

“Serious Play: Creativity and the Transsystemic Classroom”

in Y. Emerich & Marie-Andrée Plante, eds., Repenser les paradigmes: approches transsystémiques du droit. Éditions Yvon Blais, 2018.

“…the McGill programme of legal education invites imagination in an insistent and unique way. The explicit escape from restraints (perceived and real) of one legal tradition, embodied in the content and pedagogy of that programme, both allows for and demands innovative avenues of questioning, exploration and response...”

Helge Dedek, Shauna Van Praagh, Eds. "Stateless Law. Evolving Boundaries of a Discipline." Ashgate Publishing, 2015.

www.ashgate.com

"a critical analysis and illustration of the challenges and promises of ‘stateless’ law thought, pedagogy and approaches to governance - that is, understanding and conceptualizing law in a post-national condition. From common, civil and international law perspectives, the collection focuses on the definition and role of law as an academic discipline, and hybridity in the practice and production of law..."

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