A key opportunity for student and faculty participation in good governance
Recorded Lectures. Hard drive access during open-book exams. Improved mental health supports and considerations. Implementing a mandatory course in response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. These are just a few of the myriad issues students have spent incalculable time and effort tackling at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law this year alone.
We want to put another advocacy issue on the radar: the state of Faculty Council governance. Although Faculty Council’s governance is not the first issue that comes to most students’ minds, it has increasingly been a cause for concern for student leaders. The role, conduct, and processes of Faculty Council directly impacts students’ abilities to have a voice and a vote at our law school.
Where one would expect to find a clean, effective constitution for the governing body of the premier law school in the country, readers are instead confronted by a series of mimeographed, typewritten, and sometimes conflicting documents dating back as far as 1941 (the “Governing Documents”). Unsurprisingly, 80 years of patch-work reforms have left us with inconsistencies and contradictions in the Faculty’s most important documents.
Observers of Faculty Council will have seen both junior and senior members regularly ask questions about what Faculty Council can actually do. These questions arise from a lack of clarity about Faculty Council’s operations, processes, and decision-making. This confusion reduces the opportunity for productive discussion and collegial governance, and removes an important accountability check on our Faculty’s administration. The Governing Documents have raised eyebrows before, including by students at Faculty Council and in Ultra Vires in 2017.
As student members of Faculty Council, we have attempted to revise and clarify Faculty Council’s governance and Governing Documents over the past two years. Working with Associate Dean Christopher Essert and others, we struck a committee in 2020–21 that successfully created a clear constitutional amending process (the latest addition to the patchwork Governing Documents). This year, we proposed undertaking a comprehensive revision of the Governing Documents to create a clear and accessible set of governing documents that facilitate participation from both junior and senior, faculty and student Faculty Council members. This is not a wholesale reform—Faculty Council’s role is largely set by Governing Council—but rather a thorough revision of the Governing Documents into a cohesive, purposive set.
After negotiations with Faculty administration, Faculty Council approved a two-year revision process in October 2021. The first year (2021–22) has focused on gathering information and understanding the nature of Faculty Council’s authority and role in the broader University governance ecosystem. The second year (2022–23) is scheduled to see new governing documents drafted for Faculty Council’s consideration.
While the Governing Documents Revision Committee has made important progress, students and faculty must hold the Committee to draft clear and accessible revisions on a proactive and consultative timeline in 2022–23. In researching and synthesizing the various constraints on Faculty Council, we have identified key areas of Faculty Council governance that desperately need clarification and revision. These areas are discussed in much more detail in the committee’s annual final report to Faculty Council on March 30.
One area requiring clarification is what the powers and responsibilities of Faculty Council actually are. Substantial disagreements have arisen among committee members over how best to answer that question. Ensuring sufficient time is allocated to negotiating these and future disagreements will be key to the committee’s success next year. Our research has found that although Governing Council has assigned the Dean responsibility for matters such as the budget, appointments, and promotions, Governing Council retains a policy-making role for divisional councils, such as Faculty Council, in creating academic policy relating to admissions, exams and grading, awards, and regulation. We hope that revised Governing Documents can facilitate a common understanding of Faculty Council’s role and usher in a more productive era for Faculty Council.
While the Students’ Law Society (SLS) and Dean Jutta Brunnée have co-operatively advanced important policy and advocacy initiatives since she took office last year, ensuring that Faculty Council remains a democratically-controlled policy and decision-making body is in the interests of students and faculty members alike for the short-, medium-, and long-term stewardship of the Faculty. Faculty councils have real and important roles in decision-making both within U of T and at universities across the country to provide counter-balances to faculty administrations.
The Faculty Council and the Governing Documents Revision Committee will be at a crossroads next year regarding Faculty Council governance. One path leads to revised governing documents that facilitate collegial decision-making among faculty and students through common understandings of what Faculty Council is and can do. The other leads to more years of limited participation and confusion at Faculty Council.
It is neither radical nor revolutionary for students and faculty to want to be able to make use of their voice in the governing of their Faculty. Students contribute a small fortune to the Faculty, binding our names and reputations to the calibre of this law school’s education. Faculty build their careers, homes, reputations, and academic corpora in service of assisting the Canadian legal system. Both constituencies, and indeed the entire law school, are better served when Faculty Council operates openly and transparently, and each and every member understands the scope of their power, responsibilities, and duties. While it is regrettable that the Governing Documents are in this current state of confusion, there is real momentum from both students and faculty towards making Faculty Council more transparent and accessible.
We have been honoured to undertake this project on behalf of students, but our three-year JD programs must come to an end. Having attended our final Faculty Council meeting, we ask you, students and faculty members, to take the torch and carry this project forward. The SLS is well-positioned to be one torch-bearer among many, but they will need your support in ensuring the Governing Documents are not the subject of another feature in a 2027 issue of Ultra Vires.
Editor’s Note: Branden Cave is a 3L Student Life and Academic Representative and Willem Crispin-Frei is President of the Students’ Law Society. Both have served on Faculty Council since 2019.
