Jamie Baxter

Associate Professor of Law and Associate Dean Research


Email: jamie.baxter@dal.ca
Phone: 902-494-7113
Mailing Address: 
Room 326, Weldon Law Building, 6061 University Avenue
PO Box 15000 Halifax, Nova Scotia B3H 4R2
 
Research Topics:
  • Property and land law
  • Food and agricultural law
  • Local government law
  • Law, economics and political economy
  • Access to justice


Education

  • B.ArtsSc, MA (McMaster)
  • JD (Toronto)
  • LLM, JSD (Yale)


Bar admissions

  • Law Society of Upper Canada (Ontario), 2011

Bio

Before studying law, Jamie completed his graduate studies in economics, focusing on rural and community development, and was a visiting Fulbright Scholar at the Appalachian Center, University of Kentucky. After law school, he articled with a solo practice in Toronto specializing in cases of state and institutional misconduct, civil rights and Indigenous rights, and taught part-time in the Department of Food, Agriculture and Resource Economics at the University of Guelph. Jamie then clerked at the Federal Court of Canada before returning to graduate studies in law.

Teaching

  • Property in its Historical Context (LAWS 1005)
  • Planning Law (LAWS 2015)
  • Legal Profession and Professional Responsibility (LAWS 2099)

Research Interests

I am interested mainly in food systems, agriculture, land, rural-urban connections, and local governance. Most of my work looks at what are sometimes called the "working rules" that shape human interaction and cooperation--those rules and norms that operate where formal laws and actual practices meet.

 

Selected awards & honours

  • 2013: Schulich Fellow (Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie)
  • 2013: SSHRC Doctoral Fellow (Yale)
  • 2008: Borden Ladner Gervais LLP Research Fellow (University of Toronto)
  • 2006: Canada-U.S. Fulbright Scholar (Appalachian Center, University of Kentucky)

Selected publications

  • Jamie Baxter, “Leadership, Law and Development” (2018) 12(1) Law and Development Review 119 DOI
  • Jamie Baxter, “Recovering Farmland Commons” in Megan Bailey & Jessica Duncan, eds., Sustainable Food Futures: Multidisciplinary Perspectives (New York: Routledge, 2017)
  • Jamie Baxter, “From Integrity Agency to Accountability Network: The Political Economy of Public Sector Oversight in Canada” (2015) 46(2) Ottawa Law Review 231
  • Jamie Baxter, “Storytelling, Social Movements, and the ‘Evolution’ of Indigenous Land Tenure” (2015) 18(2) Australian Indigenous Law Review 64
  • Jamie Baxter & Albert Yoon, “No Lawyer for a Hundred Miles? Mapping the New Geography of Access to Justice in Canada” (2014) 52 Osgoode Hall Law Journal 9
  • Jamie Baxter “Legal Institutions of Farmland Succession: Implications for Sustainable Food Systems” (2013) 65 Maine Law Review 382
  • Jamie Baxter “Property, Information and Institutional Design” (2013) 8(2) Journal of Aboriginal Economic Development 55
  • Lorne Sossin and Jamie Baxter, “Ontario’s Administrative Tribunal Clusters: A Glass Half-Full or Half-Empty for Administrative Justice?” (2012) 12 Oxford University Commonwealth Law Journal 157
  • Jamie Baxter, Michael Trebilcock & Albert Yoon, "The Ontario Civil Legal Needs Project: A Comparative Analysis of the 2009 Survey Data" in Michael Trebilcock, Tony Duggan & Lorne Sossin, eds, Middle Income Access to Justice (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012)
  • Jamie Baxter & Michael Trebilcock, “‘Formalizing’ Land Tenure in First Nations: Evaluating the Case for Reserve Tenure Reform” (2009) 7(2) Indigenous Law Journal 45 (with Michael Trebilcock)
  • B. James Deaton, Jamie Baxter and Carolyn S. Bratt, "Examining the Consequences and Character of Heir Property" (2009) 68 Ecological Economics 2344

Service & activity

  • Member, Law Commission of Ontario Community Council