Research Chairs
Canada Research Chair in Transnational Labour Law and Development
Professor Adelle Blackett.
Canada Research Chair in Transsystemic Property and Sustainable Communities
Professor Yaëll Emerich.
Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Constitutionalism and Philosophy
Professor Aaron Mills.
Canada Research Chair in Cosmopolitan Law and Justice
Professor Evan Fox-Decent.
Canada Research Chair in Human Rights, Health and the Environment
Professor Sébastien Jodoin.
Canada Research Chair in Liability Health Governance, and Social Change
Professor Lara Khoury
Canada Research Chair in Health, Inclusion and Policy
Professor Jonas-Sébastien Beaudry
Sir William C. Macdonald Chairs
The previous incumbents were Professor Lionel Smith and Professor Fabien Gélinas.
Established in 1895, the Macdonald Chair is one of the oldest endowed positions at McGill. Chair holders teach and supervise undergraduate students and graduate students at the master and doctoral levels in the Faculty of Law, and take a leadership role in research in their field locally, nationally and globally.
James McGill Chairs
Professor Richard Gold and Professor René Provost
The James McGill Chair is awarded by McGill to advance and support the scholarship and research of exceptional academic staff in priority areas of intellectual interest.
William Dawson Scholars
Professor Frédéric Mégret and Professor Marie Manikis.
The William Dawson Chair is awarded by McGill to advance and support the scholarship and research of exceptional academic staff in priority areas of intellectual interest.
H. Heward Stikeman Chair in the Law of Taxation
Professor Allison Christians.
The Stikeman Chair provides intellectual leadership on issues related to fiscal and tax law locally, nationally and globally. The previous incumbent was Professor Kim Brooks (2007-2010).
Hans & Tamar Oppenheimer Chair in Public International Law
Professor Frédéric Mégret.
The previous incumbent was Professor François Crépeau.
The Oppenheimer Chair provides a Canadian locus for the study and research of international law, with particular attention to the relationship between international legal obligations and domestic law. The Chair studies theoretical and practical dimensions of the implementation of international treaty, customary and other obligations in domestic law with due regard to the constitutional setting in federal and unitary states.
Katharine A. Pearson Chair in Civil Society and Public Policy
Professor Daniel Weinstock.
Tenable jointly inside McGill's Faculties of Arts and of Law, the Katharine A. Pearson Chair in Civil Society and Public Policy was created in 2011 through a generous gift from the McConnell Foundation. The Pearson Chair assumes leadership within a new Civil Society Program at McGill, which rests on a broad meaning of civil society as an analytic term for the social sciences and humanities. The inaugural incumbent was Professor Ron Niezen (2013-2020) from the Faculty of Arts.
L. Yves Fortier Chair in International Arbitration and International Commercial Law
Professor Andrea Bjorklund.
Created in 2008 by Rio Tinto Alcan, the L. Yves Fortier Chair in International Arbitration and International Commercial Law leads advances in the field of international arbitration, and conducts research to help shape the future of both the practice and understanding of international law.
Peter MacKell Chair in Federalism
Professor Johanne Poirier.
The Peter MacKell Chair in Federalism, endowed in 2011, was made possible by a generous $3 million bequest from Peter R. D. MacKell, Q.C., BCL'51. Articulated around an interdisciplinary background in law, political theory and public policy, the Chair will make contributions to the theory and comparative practice of federalism, understood broadly as a mode of governance and a technique of social organization. The compass of the Chair embraces not only state-federalism, but inter-state federalism, federalism in non-state normative orders, and federalism within NGOs, QUANGOs, corporations and labour organizations. The chairholder will lead research programs relating to all aspects of the federal idea, and more generally to the place of federalism as a mode of social structuring for the global legal order.
Samuel Gale Chair
Professor Robert Leckey.
The previous incumbent was Professor Margaret Somerville.
Business Law Professorship
Professor Peer Zumbansen, who convenes the Business Law Meter.
Jean Monnet Chair in European Union Law
Professor Alicia Hinarejos
Peter M. Laing Chair
The previous incumbent was Professor Geneviève Saumier.
F.R. Scott Chair in Public and Constitutional Law
Professor Colleen Sheppard
The previous incumbents were Professor Mark Walters (2015-2019), and Professor Rod Macdonald (1995-2014).
Wainwright Chair in Civil Law
Professor Helge Dedek
The last incumbent was Professor Daniel Jutras (2011-2020).
The Wainwright Chair is supported by the Wainwright Fund, which was established by a bequest from Professor Emeritus Arnold Wainwright (1879-1967), BCL 1902, LLD 1963, who taught Civil law at McGill's Faculty of Law from 1909 to 1934.
Tomlinson Chair in Global Governance in Air & Space Law
The last incumbent was Professor Paul Dempsey.
Research institutes, centres, and affiliations
The Faculty of Law has an affiliated research institute:
- the McGill Institute of Air and Space Law (IASL)
The Faculty of Law also supports several semi-independent research centres
- the Centre for Human Rights & Legal Pluralism
- the Centre for Research in Air & Space Law
- the Paul-André Crépeau Research Centre for Private and Comparative Law; which also publishes the Dictionnaires de droit privé / Private Law Dictionaries
- the Centre for Intellectual Property Policy
- the Business Law Meter
Finally, the Faculty of Law is involved with the following:
- the McGill Institute for Health and Social Policy (IHSP)
Research groups and working groups
- Research Group on Health and Law (RGHL) - The group's research projects addresses such interdisciplinary issues as biotechnology and health, clinical research, ethics and law of healthcare, governance, medical liability and public health.
- Labour Law and Development Research Laboratory (LLDRL) - The group studies the links between labour law, development and the social contradictions of gender, race and ethnicity.
- Private Justice and the Rule of Law (PJRL) - The group seeks to understand the interplay between private and public justice, through its four research axes of Transnational law, state law and international law; Arbitrability, public policy and rule of law; Jurisdiction, the power of the arbitrators and consent; and Private justice, rights, and technology.
- Rule of Law and Economic Development (ROLED) - The central work of this working group has been an inquiry into rule of law and economic development in the transition economies.
