Osgoode Hall Law School
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- See also Osgoode Hall for the downtown Toronto building that originally housed the law school
|
Osgoode Hall Law School |
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| Motto | Per jus ad justitiam (Through law to justice) |
| Established | 1889 |
| Type | Public |
| Dean | Patrick J. Monahan |
| Faculty | 141 (51 F/T, 90 adjunct) |
| Undergraduates | 867 |
| Postgraduates | 107 |
| Location | Toronto, ON, Canada |
| Campus | Urban/Suburban |
| Sports teams | Owls |
| Website | osgoode.yorku.ca |
Osgoode Hall Law School of York University, is a leading Canadian law school, located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Established by The Law Society of Upper Canada in 1889, Osgoode is the largest faculty of common law in Canada and, until 1957, was the only accredited law school in Ontario. The school was at the centre of the debates over the principles of modern legal education in the 1950s. Its graduates have entered practice in each of Canada's common law provinces. Osgoode Hall Law School provided many of the founding members of the bar in the prairie provinces. Today, the law school offers an internationally recognized top tier law degree as well as the Osgoode-NYU LLB/JD degree among other flexible options.
Osgoode Hall Law School has produced a number of prominent Canadian lawyers, judges, politicians, and business leaders including the current Minister of Finance of Canada, the Attorney General of Ontario, the top reputed barrister in Canada (Edward Greenspan is a renowned Canadian lawyer whose clients include Conrad Black), the President and CEO of Rogers Communications, the Treasurer (or head) of the Law Society of Upper Canada, the Chief Justice of the Federal Court of Appeal of Canada, and many jurists such as Peter Cory (former puisne judge of the Supreme Court of Canada and now Chancellor of York University). Other prominent Osgoode Hall graduates have included Herb Gray (former Deputy Prime Minister of Canada, former Solicitor General of Canada) and Ward P.D. Elcock (former Director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service) among others. A large number of judges in Canada at all levels of court received their legal training at Osgoode Hall Law School.
Osgoode Hall Law School is highly reputed in the fields of corporate law, tax law, international law, constitutional law, and legal theory. Most graduates of the law school practice as human rights lawyers, diplomats, Crown attorneys, entertainment lawyers, and at Toronto's leading Bay Street law firms as well as at firms in New York, San Francisco, and London. Some graduates may be found listed here.
Many graduates of Osgoode have also gone on to do graduate work at internationally reputed law schools such as Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, Columbia Law School, New York University School of Law, University of Oxford, University of London, London School of Economics and Political Science and Cambridge University.
The law school is home to the Law Reform Commission of Ontario as well as the largest law library in the Commonwealth. The law school houses a student clinic (CLASP), the Innocence Project, and many important research centers.
Some of the world's most important legal scholars teach at Osgoode, including a faculty member who also sits at the University of Oxford as a permanent Chair in Jurisprudence and Professor of Philosophy of Law. The current 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.
The current dean of the law school is Patrick J. Monahan. He succeeds Peter Hogg who is Canada's leading constitutional expert and the most quoted legal scholar in matters involving Canadian constitutional law at the Supreme Court of Canada.
Contents |
[edit] History
For its first seven decades, Osgoode Hall Law School was located at Osgoode Hall at the corner of Queen Street and University Avenue near the University of Toronto. The law school was not affiliated with the university of Toronto since law schools at that time traditionally were not connected with a university. The Law Society of Upper Canada maintained control of professional legal education in Ontario until 1957. In 1969, after a decision by the Ontario Ministry of Education requiring law schools to be affiliated with a university, the Osgoode Hall Law School moved to York University.
The buildings known as "Osgoode Hall" (the earliest dating from 1832) remain the headquarters of the Law Society and house the Ontario Court of Appeal. The structure at Queen and University is still known as Osgoode Hall.
The law school has been a leader and innovator in legal education in Canada. Osgoode was the first law school to introduce curricular streams (in 2001), giving a student the opportunity to graduate with a concentration in a particular area of law, namely International, Litigation or Tax. Osgoode was the first law school to establish a combined law and business degree. Osgoode was the first law school to establish a combined law and environmental studies degree. Osgoode the first law school to establish a student-staffed community legal services clinic (Parkdale Community Legal Services, in 1972). Osgoode was the first law school to develop innovative intensive programs and clinical teaching programs.
[edit] Academics
Osgoode Hall Law School is the most selective law school in Canada[citation needed] and uses a holistic evaluation to weigh each applicant competitively based on many factors. The current admissions policy as stated on Osgoode's website is to expedite attractive applications whose LSAT score is at the 85th percentile and above due to efficiency requirements, followed by a review of selected applications which are attractive regardless of their LSAT scores. The philosophy of the law school is that LSAT scores alone do not foretell which applicants will be most successful. Since the law school seeks out the most competitive and brightest candidates, it evaluates applicants using a holistic approach, like McGill University, based on a combination of many factors including undergraduate GPA, LSAT score, prior degrees, and difficulty of prior education among others to obtain a full picture of each applicant. According to statistics published in the Official Guide to Canadian Law Schools by the Law School Admission Council, the median undergraduate GPA of accepted students is 3.8 (85%), and the median LSAT score is 160 (83rd percentile). Traditionally the law school has placed little value on the LSAT since Osgoode Hall Law School originally based their law degree on the British system which to this day still does not require standardized testing for admission to a law degree. Despite this, a law degree at the University of Oxford for example is still considered one of the most prestigious and competitive degrees in the world. While it is possible to be admitted with only two years of undergraduate university study, in practice the majority of successful candidates arrive to first year law at Osgoode already possessing one or more degrees. Admission is extremely competitive; according to the Official Guide to Canadian Law Schools, only 608 offers of admission were made to 2,397 applicants in 2006.
In 2007 teams from Osgoode Hall Law School won several major mooting competitions in Canada.[1]
Osgoode Hall Law School offers a joint MBA/LLB program with the Schulich School of Business at York University, and a combined law and environmental studies degree. In 2006, The Schulich School of Business was ranked 1st in Canada, by both The Economist and Forbes.
Osgoode is also the home of the largest Graduate Program in Canada and with the only Professional Development Program in Canada, whose coures are taught at the satellite campus located at the Osgoode Professional Development Centre in the Toronto Eaton Centre. A variety of LLM and PhD degrees in law are available. The law school houses the largest law library in the Commonwealth.
In 2005, Osgoode Hall Law School signed a memorandum of understanding with the New York University School of Law to offer the joint Osgoode-NYU LLB/JD degree. Both schools offer joint-degree programs where students can earn an American JD (ABA-Approved) and Canadian LLB in four years, spending two years at each institution.[2]
Osgoode is also one of the few law schools to offer the possibility of graduating with both an English Canadian LL.B and a Quebec LL.L degree, enabling graduates to practice in the province of Quebec and providing graduates of this program with training in the Civil Law System in addition to common law. This program is offered in conjunction with the law school at the Universite de Montreal.
Canadian Lawyer Magazine, in its 2006 Law School Alumni Survey, ranked Osgoode Hall Law School first in Canada, on the basis of rankings given by graduates to their own law schools.
