University of Toronto Faculty of Law
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Established in 1887, the University of Toronto Faculty of Law is one of the oldest professional faculties at the University of Toronto.
The University of Toronto Law school is considered strong in the areas of corporate law, law and economics, and legal theory, and it provides many of the employees to Toronto's leading Bay Street law firms. The University of Toronto Law School also offers its students Canada's most extensive internship program in pro bono work and international human rights law, and supports a range of legal clinics staffed by students.
Tuition fees for entering Juris Doctor students were set at $16,000 in 2005-06, and will increase to $17,280 (excluding incidental/ancillary fees) in 2006-07. Although the law school has the highest tuition of any law school in Canada, the law school also has a generous [financial aid program] which allows approximately 40 students to attend tuition-free each year. More than 1/2 of the student body receives financial aid on the basis of assessed need, predominantly in the form of bursaries and interest-free loans. The law school is the only one in Canada with a back-end debt relief program for graduates who decide upon less lucrative careers. It was the first law school in Canada to offer the Juris Doctor instead of the Bachelor of Laws (LL.B). This degree, however, is viewed as identical to an LL.B. degree offered by the other Canadian law schools. The law school is not accredited by the American Bar Association.
Today, the law school has over 50 full-time faculty members, and 500 undergraduate and graduate students, giving it a student-faculty ratio of 10:1, one of the lowest in North America. Its "Distinguished Visitors" program brings 15-25 short-term visiting professors from the world's leading law schools to teach at the school each year.
Although the University of Toronto's Faculty of Law was established in 1887, it wasn’t until 1949 that the law school took its modern form. In the 1940s, the Faculty played the leading role in making legal education in Ontario into a modern academic degree course, rather than an apprenticeship.
In 1949, Cecil (“Caesar”) Wright assumed the deanship of U of T's law school. He first had to resign his post as Dean of Osgoode Hall Law School, the seat of the Law Society of Upper Canada, rejecting the Law Society's apprenticeship model of legal education in favour of the University of Toronto's vision of a full-time legal education, hinging on the professional bachelor of laws degree and centred in a university. Wright brought with him his colleagues John Willis and Bora Laskin (who later became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada).
Despite the law school's academic program, the Law Society of Upper Canada refused to recognize U of T as a degree-granting institution. In the early 1950s, law students and their supporters petitioned the Law Society, and in 1953, a group of 50 student protesters marched on Osgoode Hall demanding recognition for U of T Law School. Finally, in 1958, after years of negotiation and discord, the Law Society began to give credit to U of T law graduates seeking admission to the Ontario bar.
The school is located in the middle of the University of Toronto at the corner of Queen's Park Crescent and Hoskin St., just south of the Royal Ontario Museum.
Distinguished alumni of the law school include the former Prime Minister of Canada, Paul Martin ('64) and former Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham ('64); current federal Minister of Health Tony Clement ('86); Supreme Court of Canada Justices Mr. Justice Ian Binnie ('65) and Madam Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella ('70), and former Supreme Court Justice Mr. Justice John Major ('57); former Ontario premiers Bob Rae ('77) and David Peterson ('67); and the Mayor of Toronto, David Miller ('84).
The current Dean is Professor Mayo Moran, appointed in December 2005.
External links
- [University of Toronto Faculty of Law]
- [Ultra Vires - the independent student newspaper of the UT Faculty of Law]
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