Blair Cowper-Smith

Osgoode Hall Law School is located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is the oldest law school in Ontario, and is one of the professional faculties at York University. Osgoode Hall Law School is consistently ranked as one of the top law schools in Canada by Maclean's Magazine, ranking second among common-law schools in 2011 and 2012. Named after the first Chief Justice of Ontario, William Osgoode, the law school was established by The Law Society of Upper Canada in 1889. The school was at the centre of the debates over the principles of modern legal education in the 1950s. Osgoode Hall Law School provided many of the founding members of the bar in the prairie provinces. Today, the law school offers a professional degree in law that is accepted for bar admission in every province in Canada with the exception of Quebec, as well as the American States of Massachusetts and New York. Osgoode has three joint degree programs, as well as Canada's largest graduate program in law. Osgoode Hall Law School has adopted the Juris Doctor degree designation which has replaced their previous Bachelor of Laws designation. The law school is home to the Law Reform Commission of Ontario, the Osgoode Hall Law Journal, the German Law Journal, and the largest law library in the Commonwealth. Osgoode Hall Law School students may participate in a number of clinical and intensive programs, including the Community and Legal Aid Services Program (CLASP), the Poverty Law Intensive at Parkdale Community Legal Services, the Criminal Law Intensive, the Innocence Project, and the Osgoode Business Clinic.[5] According to the Official Guide to Canadian Law Schools, Osgoode Hall Law School has the most extensive range of clinical programs in Canada. The primary student government at Osgoode is the Legal and Literary Society. Osgoode Hall Law School is particularly known for its leading role in the areas of constitutional law, the Charter and human rights, and international law. (Peter Hogg, Brian Slattery, Patrick J. Monahan, Jean-Gabriel Castel) Some of the world's most important legal scholars teach at Osgoode, including Leslie Green who holds the University of Oxford's statutory Chair in Philosophy of Law. Former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and former judge at the Supreme Court of Canada, Louise Arbour taught at, and later became the associate dean of, Osgoode Hall Law School.