Law History Profiles

When asked to identify what he loves about his work, Professor Benjamin J. Goold identifies two things. Firstly, "thinking about theory." He enjoys that law forces him to "think about the underlying structures of how things work." Secondly, he embraces that law facilitates "talking to people" and being pushed to think about practical implications. 

Dr. Carol Liao is an Assistant Professor at the Allard School of Law and the UBC Sauder Distinguished Scholar of the Dhillon Centre for Business Ethics at the UBC Sauder School of Business. She is the Director of the Centre for Business Law, a leading national research centre that also oversees the Business Law Concentration and two experiential learning programs at Allard Law, the Business Law Clinic and Corporate Counsel Externship. Prior to joining UBC, Dr.

Assistant Professor Stewart joined the law school in August 2009, after spending two years as an Associate-in-Law at Columbia Law School in New York. Prior to his time at Columbia, Professor Stewart was an Appeals Counsel with the Prosecution of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. He has also worked for the Legal Division of the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Prosecution of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

Bethany Hastie is an Assistant Professor at the Peter A. Allard School of Law. Hastie first joined the Allard community as a law student, graduating alongside the class of 2009. Following her JD studies, Hastie received her LLM from McGill University at the Institute of Comparative Law. Hastie also completed her DCL at McGill University where she held both a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Doctoral Fellowship and an O’Brien Fellowship in Human Rights and Legal Pluralism. She joined the Law Faculty as a Lecturer in 2015. 

Associate Professor Darlene Johnston joined the Faculty at the Allard School of Law in 2009. She previously taught and advised students, as an Associate Professor and Aboriginal Student Advisor, at the University of Toronto. She holds a BA from Queen’s University and LLB and LLM degrees from the University of Toronto. Professor Johnston is a member of the Chippewa Nawash First Nation in Ontario. 

David Johnston, Governor General of Canada, has awarded UBC Law Associate Professor Benjamin Perrin the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal in recognition of his significant contributions to Canada. Professor Perrin was nominated by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute for Public Policy for his work at the forefront of the human trafficking issue as a driving force for important legislative changes and policy improvements.

“The work we do as lawyers is based on humility — excellence through humility is important,” says Bruce McIvor, founder and partner at First Peoples Law LLP. At First Peoples Law, Bruce is dedicated to defending and advancing the rights of Indigenous peoples. Bruce, who is Métis, grew up in Manitoba. His family was displaced from their lands, leaving his grandparents to farm in between rocks and swamp. “When I was a young boy on the farm, I picked a lot of rocks, but I decided that there had to be something better to do than picking rocks for the rest of my life,” he recalls.

Professor Shigenori Matsui joined the Faculty at the Allard School of Law in 2006. Professor Matsui is currently the Director of Japanese Legal Studies and is the Acting Director of Korean Legal Studies. He is also affiliated with the Centre for Business Law. Beyond the Allard School of Law, Professor Matsui is the Co-Director of the Centre for Japanese Research at UBC. 

Associate Professor Cristie Ford joined the Faculty at the Allard School of Law in 2005, where she is currently the Director of the Centre for Business Law. Professor Ford holds a BA from the University of Alberta, a JD from the University of Victoria, and LLM and JSD degrees from Columbia University. As the recipient of a Killam Faculty Research Fellowship in 2012/2013 and a George Curtis Memorial Award for Teaching Excellence in 2015/2016, Professor Ford is recognized as both an esteemed researcher and educator. 

Allard Law Professor Joel Bakan writes and researches in the areas of Constitutional Law, socio-legal studies, legal theory and economic law.  He studied at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar and served as Law Clerk in 1985 for Chief Justice Brian Dickson of the Supreme Court of Canada.  He joined the Law Faculty in 1990 as Associate Professor after a year's visit from Osgoode Hall Law School, where he had been Assistant Professor since 1987.  Professor Bakan teaches Constitutional Law, Contracts, socio-legal courses and the graduate seminar.  He has won th

Long before she was an academic, UBC Law Associate Professsor Natasha Affolder was actively advocating for the importance of environmental issues. Now, as a leading scholar in the field of the environment and the law, she talks about current trends in environmentalism and what concepts as diverse as transnationalism, human rights and behaviourial psychology have to do with environmental law. 

What are you working on at the moment?

Professor Gordon Christie joined the Faculty in 2004 and held the position of Academic Director of the Indigenous Legal Studies Program at the Allard School of Law from 2005 to 2016. During this time, the Allard School of Law generated a specialization in Aboriginal Law. 

Assistant Professor Efrat Arbel is a highly-accomplished alumna and one of the newer members of the Allard School of Law faculty.  

She earned her doctorate from Harvard Law School in 2012, where she worked under the supervision of Dean Martha Minow.  She holds a BA from McGill University, an LLB from UBC, and completed her LLM studies at Harvard Law School before proceeding with her doctorate.  

Allard School of Law Associate Professor Emma Cunliffe is a recent recipient of a Killam Research Fellowship, one of ten awards given to leading UBC scholars, for her research on how judges come to a decision about the facts in a criminal case. The study, which will make up a large part of a soon-to-be-published book called Judging Facts, focuses on areas where a criminal trial has been known to fail or raised concerns.  The book will emphasize judicial factual reasoning as opposed to the reasoning of juries.

Mary Anne Bobinski, BA, JD, LLM, served as dean of the Allard School of Law from 2003 until 2015. Under her leadership, the law school experienced more than a decade of sustained renewal and growth marked by new programs, enhanced teaching and research, and expanded international reach. 

Lee Schmidt is an Allard Alumnus from 2002. She worked as an Indigenous rights lawyer at a Vancouver firm before joining the Peter A. Allard School of Law in 2017 as the Associate Director Indigenous Legal Studies. She maintains a part-time law practice and is called to the Bar of British Columbia. Schmidt is a member of the Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation.

Allard School of Law Professor Janis Sarra has been awarded a YWCA Women of Distinction Award. Professor Sarra is an internationally recognized expert in corporate finance, banking and securities regulation, who has published ten books and more than one hundred refereed articles. She is known for her innovation and leadership.

When Ljiljana Biukovic was studying law in her native Yugoslavia in the mid-1980s, Europe was a far different place than it is now. The tensions of the Cold War weighed on everyone’s minds, the USSR exerted great influence behind the so-called Iron Curtain, and the contemporary notion of a European Union where goods and people travel freely across most of the continent’s borders was still years in the future ... 

In addition to being a criminal defence lawyer, Mark Gervin is a Lecturer at the Allard School of Law and Director of Legal Services for the Indigenous Community Legal Clinic (ICLC). For the past 25 years, the Indigenous Community Legal Clinic has played an important role in the Indigenous community throughout the province. The ICLC provides free legal services to those in need while also providing students with practical work experience. We recently chatted with Mark to learn more about him, his time at the Clinic and his passion for criminal defence.