Lucinda Vandervort

Biography

Lucinda Vandervort teaches law and writes at the intersection of law and philosophy and is currently working on a book on sexual consent and the rule of law. Her research focuses on “legitecture,” defined by her as a discipline---distinct from both jurisprudence and public administration---that examines and theorizes the design and operation of legal institutions. Recent projects have dealt with access to justice, social justice, gender violence, sexual assault and the rule of law, police and prosecutorial decision-making, and the design of mechanisms to regulate the exercise of discretion in the legal system. Her work has been funded by grants from the Foundation for Legal Research, Social Science and Humanities Research Council, the President’s SSHRC Research Fund, the Borden Ladner Gervais Research Fellowship program, and the College of Law Endowment Fund. Her PhD work at McGill University and in Bonn, FDR, on legal philosophy and theory of knowledge, was supervised by Raymond Klibansky and supported by a JW McConnell Fellowship. She later earned an LLM at Yale and then taught as an assistant professor in the Graduate School of Criminal Justice at the State University of New York (Albany)(1980-1982). As a law student and articling/bar admission student (1974-1979), she continued to teach and write, teaching philosophy courses at Carleton and Concordia on ethics, phenomenology, and existentialism, and at the University of Ottawa on law and philosophy. She also worked as a research consultant for Health and Welfare Canada and the Criminal Law and Administrative Law Projects of the Law Reform Commission of Canada. She articled in Ottawa in criminal law and with the Regulated Industries Board of the Consumer’s Association of Canada, and is a non-practicing, non-fee paying member of the Ontario Bar (admitted April 1979). In the 1980s she appeared as counsel, often pro bono, in a number of cases before the Federal Courts on behalf of federal prisoners in Saskatchewan. Tenured and promoted to Associate Professor in 1987, she went to Harvard as a Visiting Scholar, 1988 to 1991. As a member (1996-2002) of the National Legal Committee (NLC) of the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF), she participated in LEAF’s strategic litigation program under sections 15 and 28 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and collaborated on the intervener factums in a number of cases in the Supreme Court of Canada, including Whitley & Mowers (1994), R.D.S. (1997), Winnipeg Child and Family Services (1997), Ewanchuk (1999), J.G. (1999), Mills (1999), Darrach (2000), and Shearing (2001). Her legal and philosophical writings are cited by academics and law reformers in Canada and internationally. Her analyses of sexual assault law, consent, theory of criminal responsibility, and mistake of law are cited, quoted, and applied in a number of judgments by the Supreme Court of Canada and other levels of Court in various provinces. She was promoted to Professor in 2005.

Research Interest

Administrative law Administration of justice Bio-ethics Human rights Jurisprudence & legal theory Criminal law Sexual assault law and policy Evidence from a multi-disciplinary & comparative law perspective Comparative Law