1L curriculum adds courses on Indigenous peoples and the law and removes Legal Process
The Faculty of Law is no stranger to shifting academic requirements for the 1L class year after year, and the 2022–23 academic year is no different. Beginning this year, two new separate but connected courses on Indigenous peoples and the law have replaced Legal Process as mandatory courses in the 1L curriculum.
The first of the new courses is already underway, as all 1L students participate in the one-credit course “Introduction to Indigenous Peoples & the Law” this term. This is an ungraded online class intended to provide students with basic competencies on the history and present situation of Indigenous peoples in Canada. This will be followed by a three-credit graded course in the winter semester, “Indigenous Peoples & the Law,” which will be subject to a final examination.
The curriculum change is the product of long-running discussions within the Faculty of Law, which culminated in the Curriculum Committee’s recommendation to add both courses to the 1L curriculum in March of last year. In 2021, the Dean’s Mandate tasked the Curriculum Committee with developing recommendations for a mandatory course on Indigenous peoples and the law, as well as potential resulting changes to the 1L curriculum.
The Dean’s Mandate reflected the fact that the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) Call to Action #28 tasked law schools with creating a course on Aboriginal peoples and the law. The Curriculum Committee met throughout the year and consulted with a range of stakeholders, including the Indigenous Law Students’ Association and the TRC. The Committee also took into account the fact that other law schools across the country like McGill University and Dalhousie University already implemented the TRC’s Call to Action.
The courses present an opportunity to provide a more wide-ranging and comprehensive learning experience about Indigenous peoples than what had existed previously. Coursework on Indigenous peoples and the law was primarily taught through constitutional and property law in past years.
The intent of the ungraded course in the fall semester is to ensure that all students are “on the same page” with regard to non-legal understandings about Indigenous peoples. With the winter semester’s graded course, the Committee set out a broad range of subject matters that could be covered. Aboriginal law under s. 35 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Indian Act, Indigenous legal orders, and questions of international law including the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples are among the areas that may be covered. The Committee recognized that in the interest of academic freedom, the content of the course should be left up to the instructor. This year, Professor John Borrows, the inaugural Loveland Chair in Indigenous Law and leading expert on Canadian Indigenous law, is currently set to teach all three sections of “Indigenous Peoples and the Law.” As such, more clarity about the specific content to be covered will likely become available as the winter term nears.
As to the status of Legal Process, further news is likely to come in the coming months. The Curriculum Committee’s Final Report in March of this year recommended that a decision on Legal Process should be made part of the Faculty Council mandate for the 2022–23 academic year. While the Committee suggested that a day of the 1L Legal Methods class could be dedicated to issues in legal process, that did not appear to have been the case this year. Faculty Council has yet to meet this year to begin considering any future place for Legal Process.
