Any non-woke law schools in Canada?

[Brown Town]

Hello people, I am going to be applying to law schools soon. I want to go to a law school with unbiased professors who will teach me the law (and not social activism). I want a neutral group of professors and college administration who don't push any ideology upon students (and let them make up their own minds). I have decided to pursue a J.D. program from a Canadian law school but I want to be sure that my time and money aren't wasted with instructors who are more interested in influencing students with a brand of politics than teach them to think critically. This is a serious request. Opinions from people who are already in law schools and getting taught by instructors are especially appreciated.

For context: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/christie-blatchford-the-wrong-kind-of-justice-warriors-at-canadas-law-schools

[Ryn]

You will generally get a quality legal education at any Canadian law school. I would argue that law school is not any more left leaning than university generally and, in many ways, is actually a bit more conservative. Yes, many profs have progressive views. Many others do not. They will both opine occasionally in class. That's post-secondary education in general - I'm sure, being a near-graduate of such an institution you are well aware of what it's like. Though, perhaps if you're in the sciences you'll get less of it.

Opinion pieces like the one you linked are best left out of the critical analysis of whether to attend law school.

[Phaedrus]

Didn't we go through this already?

 

[lawstudent69]

Based on me and my three close friends’ experiences:

Osgoode: I took a wide range of courses in different practice areas, and the profs are all very left leaning. People are also very SJW (not that it’s a bad thing in my opinion)

UofT: politically neutral/leaning conservative for some the business courses. My friend has many practitioner taught courses where the profs are actually right leaning (tax, bus org)

UBC: major indigenous focus (which is great!) and politically neutral. My friend says most profs dont share their own views and try to teach courses in an objective way.

McGill: politically left leaning and highly theoretical courses. Might be biased because my friend wants to go into corporate law and is frustrated by the lack of options.

IMO different courses will encourage profs to speak in a political tone/give their own opinions rather than law… so choose your courses wisely. 

[Kismet]

What do you mean by “no ideology”? Do you just want your classes to be memorization of every statute and the rules of civil procedure?

[StephenToast]

8 hours ago, Brown Town said:

Hello people, I am going to be applying to law schools soon. I want to go to a law school with unbiased professors who will teach me the law (and not social activism). I want a neutral group of professors and college administration who don't push any ideology upon students (and let them make up their own minds). I have decided to pursue a J.D. program from a Canadian law school but I want to be sure that my time and money aren't wasted with instructors who are more interested in influencing students with a brand of politics than teach them to think critically. This is a serious request. Opinions from people who are already in law schools and getting taught by instructors are especially appreciated.

For context: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/christie-blatchford-the-wrong-kind-of-justice-warriors-at-canadas-law-schools

I would be really surprised if you can find a Canadian law school that does not fall under your definition of "woke." Your question seems to premise on there being a strict divide between "the law" and "social activism." I don't think that's true. The common law and statutes are neither static nor used independent of its social context. The Charter is an obvious example of the law used for social change. The invention of tort law is another, so are anti-SLAPP motions in civil procedure. Your clients don't live in a vacuum and when you advance a legal position in Court, you are necessarily advancing someone's cause. Your court cases, assuming you do barrister work, will contribute to the development of jurisprudence, and thus necessarily be "activist" in a sense. Someone else will cite your case to advance their cause. Cases build upon cases and viola! You started a chain of events that lead to a change on a social, rather than individual level.

(Whether the law school teaches you to be an activist without pushing you to be an activist for a particular cause is another question.)

A similar issue goes with your "ideology" and "politics" question. The law is imbued with ideology and politics, and there's no running away from it. The rule of law itself is an ideology. Canadian law itself is also an ideology. This will be really obvious if you study comparative law. If you examine a law critically, you will see the ideology and politics that drove the Court or Parliament to make those decisions. I don't see a tension between a professor equipping their students with the critical thinking skills to parse out those underlying ideologies and politics, and advocating for a particular position on them. Forming and advocating for an opinion is result of critical thinking, and I don't see the point in having professors teach you the process but hide the results.

To take a (hopefully uncontroversial) example, the prof can point to the s. 141 of the Indian Act, which prohibited Indigenous people hiring lawyers. You can think critically beyond the words of the statute to identify the purpose of the law, to prevent Indigenous people from asserting their legal rights, and the ideology of colonialism. What's wrong with going a step further in saying "and that's bad"? You can use your critical thinking skills to disagree with the prof if you wish. The prof having their brand of politics and promoting them do not mean they will be intolerant of other opinion, or punish you come exam time because of it. Canadian law is by-and-large run on an adversarial system, we are taught to disagree civilly in the courtroom without taking it personally.

The bottom line is that if you expect the law school to simply recite what's on the book and summarize recent caselaw for you, you will be sorely disappointed by any Canadian law school. A school that teaches you "the law" without getting into its politics and ideologies is not doing it's job. However, if you concern is that whether the school will have the professor soapbox for three years to the detriment of teaching you substantive law, or to penalize you for not sharing the same political ideology of your professors, I can say from personal experience that you will be fine at Osgoode, and I imagine you'll be just fine anywhere else.

P.S. You might want to check out the Federation of Law Societies of Canada's requirement for JD programs. https://flsc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/National-Requirement-Jan-2018-FIN.pdf

[tortstortoise]

Considering your username is "Brown Town," a racist name I've heard used for cities with a large Indian population, I have an inclination that you're not simply asking because you're concerned about politics impacting the quality of your legal education.

Nevertheless, I will say that each school in Canada will provide you with a quality education and the politics of the professor will not affect how you are assessed. However, if you go in spouting racist, sexist, or otherwise offensive and discriminatory rhetoric you will be alienated rather quickly and that reputation will stick. Law students are generally tolerant of different political ideologies, but they will not tolerate hate or ignorance. 

[Turtles]

There's a lot going on in this thread, but I will add that the ideology of a professor can certainly affect what content is covered in a course and to what degree, which can in turn affect assessment (e.g., focus on policy questions that require citing readings from class that may be "woke" as used in the OP or exam Qs tailored to what the prof focused most on because it was of interest to them). That's not to say one who is not "woke" would necessarily be at a disadvantage, and it's hard to demarcate entire schools with any meaningful accuracy, but I think it's fair to say that the views of certain profs you take may have a material impact on your education. Of course education is about learning new perspectives and not simply entrenching your existing perspective, so profs with different views are not necessarily something to be avoiding if you want a good education.

Edited November 9, 2022 by Turtles

[CleanHands]

Yeah...@lawstudent69, as @StephenToastpoints out, there is literally no such thing as "politically neutral" teaching/discussion of law (and frankly for anyone to think that there is, I really question their understanding of the subject matter and the embedded underlying assumptions/principles/values in our body of law).

Also agreed with @Turtlesthat the ideological beliefs of professors absolutely does have a material impact on one's experience in some ways. You aren't going to subjected to the Ludovico Technique with forced exposure to critical race theory and fourth-wave feminism content, but undoubtedly there are some professors who will spout off about their pet interests and be less than fair and objective in how they grade policy questions.

I'm always a bit reticent to wade into these discussions because @Brown Townand people like him are almost always the kind of idiots who claim to be "centrists" or "moderates" while listening to Dave Rubin and Tim Pool on the daily, but they aren't wrong about law schools across the country (both in terms of student bodies as well as faculty, class discussions, etc) generally being very "woke" relative to the overwhelming majority of other social environments throughout our society. While not being wrong about that they do, however, tend to be hysterical and hyperbolic about the extent and implications of this.

Really law school is full of woke virtue-signaling from 22 year old students who go on to get jobs at Blakes and never interact with or think about anyone who makes less than six figures ever again, and silly professors who could have done anything in the field they wanted and chose to write woke academic articles that 5 of their peers will read and circle-jerk each other over. Once you graduate you move on from that noise really fast, so it's mildly irritating but not that big a deal.

[Patient0L]

On 11/9/2022 at 4:20 AM, Phaedrus said:

Didn't we go through this already?

 

Lest we forget this classic post from Summer 2022.

 

[Mbu1]

On 11/9/2022 at 11:01 AM, StephenToast said:

I would be really surprised if you can find a Canadian law school that does not fall under your definition of "woke." Your question seems to premise on there being a strict divide between "the law" and "social activism." I don't think that's true. The common law and statutes are neither static nor used independent of its social context. The Charter is an obvious example of the law used for social change. The invention of tort law is another, so are anti-SLAPP motions in civil procedure. Your clients don't live in a vacuum and when you advance a legal position in Court, you are necessarily advancing someone's cause. Your court cases, assuming you do barrister work, will contribute to the development of jurisprudence, and thus necessarily be "activist" in a sense. Someone else will cite your case to advance their cause. Cases build upon cases and viola! You started a chain of events that lead to a change on a social, rather than individual level.

(Whether the law school teaches you to be an activist without pushing you to be an activist for a particular cause is another question.)

A similar issue goes with your "ideology" and "politics" question. The law is imbued with ideology and politics, and there's no running away from it. The rule of law itself is an ideology. Canadian law itself is also an ideology. This will be really obvious if you study comparative law. If you examine a law critically, you will see the ideology and politics that drove the Court or Parliament to make those decisions. I don't see a tension between a professor equipping their students with the critical thinking skills to parse out those underlying ideologies and politics, and advocating for a particular position on them. Forming and advocating for an opinion is result of critical thinking, and I don't see the point in having professors teach you the process but hide the results.

To take a (hopefully uncontroversial) example, the prof can point to the s. 141 of the Indian Act, which prohibited Indigenous people hiring lawyers. You can think critically beyond the words of the statute to identify the purpose of the law, to prevent Indigenous people from asserting their legal rights, and the ideology of colonialism. What's wrong with going a step further in saying "and that's bad"? You can use your critical thinking skills to disagree with the prof if you wish. The prof having their brand of politics and promoting them do not mean they will be intolerant of other opinion, or punish you come exam time because of it. Canadian law is by-and-large run on an adversarial system, we are taught to disagree civilly in the courtroom without taking it personally.

The bottom line is that if you expect the law school to simply recite what's on the book and summarize recent caselaw for you, you will be sorely disappointed by any Canadian law school. A school that teaches you "the law" without getting into its politics and ideologies is not doing it's job. However, if you concern is that whether the school will have the professor soapbox for three years to the detriment of teaching you substantive law, or to penalize you for not sharing the same political ideology of your professors, I can say from personal experience that you will be fine at Osgoode, and I imagine you'll be just fine anywhere else.

P.S. You might want to check out the Federation of Law Societies of Canada's requirement for JD programs. https://flsc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/National-Requirement-Jan-2018-FIN.pdf

I agree with you that it is near impossible to teach the law "critically" in a "neutral" way. The difference though is that Law professors for the most part refuse to categorize their thoughts transparently for everyone to understand where they stand on most issues as well as how and why they analyze the law in a given way. In other words what are the forces driving the underlying analysis? I agree for instance with the conclusion that s. 141 of the Indian Act is bad and I am sure the vast majority of people in Canada do too but you may be made to feel in law school that that is the "objective" conclusion when in actual fact it is not. A very right leaning professor (which I am sure there aren't many here - more in Europe) might disagree with that conclusion. In the final analysis, the interpretation of the law is a popularity contest between ideologies of the day and ways of justifying the winning one(s). In that sense I prefer not wholly but in part the American judicial system where judge's political ideologies are known (though I disagree with judicial elections). 

Edited November 12, 2022 by Mbu1