Vanessa MacDonnell
Assistant Professor
University of Ottawa Faculty of Law
57 Louis Pasteur, Ottawa,
ON K1N 6N5
Office: Brooks 423
vmacdonn@uottawa.ca
(P) 613-562-5800 ext 7917
(F) 613-562-5124
BSc (St Francis Xavier University), JD (Toronto), LLM (Harvard), of the Bar of Ontario
Vanessa MacDonnell joined the Faculty of Law (Common Law Section) in 2012. She is a graduate of the University of Toronto Faculty of Law (JD) and Harvard Law School (LLM). She clerked for Justice Louise Charron at the Supreme Court of Canada and from 2010-2012 was an Assistant Professor at the University of New Brunswick Faculty of Law. She has been a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, and in 2013 will be a Visiting Scholar at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public and International Law in Heidelberg, Germany.
Vanessa teaches or has taught criminal law, evidence, constitutional law, comparative constitutional law and administrative law. In 2011 she received the University of New Brunswick Faculty of Law’s Award for Teaching Excellence.
Vanessa’s current research focusses on a number of issues in constitutional theory, including popular constitutionalism and the government's role in securing and promoting constitutional rights and interests. She is also completing a project on the role of the jury in contemporary criminal law.
Follow Vanessa on Twitter: @vanessa_macd
Read Vanessa’s papers on SSRN: http://ssrn.com/author=1615707
Articles and Book Chapters
"Social Science Evidence in the German Constitutional Court and in the Supreme Court of Canada: Some Comparative Observations" (2013) National Journal of Constitutional Law (forthcoming) (with Jula Hughes)
"The Constitution as Framework for Governance" (2013) University of Toronto L J (forthcoming)
"Internet Surveillance and Popular Constitutionalism" in George Williams, Fergal Davis and Nicola McGarrity, eds, Surveillance, Counter-Terrorism and Comparative Constitutionalism (Routledge, 2013) (forthcoming)
"The German Abortion Decisions and the Protective Function in German and Canadian Constitutional Law" (2013) 50 Osgoode Hall L J (forthcoming) (with Jula Hughes)
"Equality & Incrementalism? The Role of Common Law Reasoning in Constitutional Rights Cases after Bedford (ONCA)" (2013) 44 Ottawa L Rev (forthcoming) (with Jula Hughes and Karen Pearlston)
"R v Sinclair: A New Trend in Balancing Individual Rights Against Societal Interests Outside of Section One of the Charter" (2012) 38 Queen's L J 137
"Developments in Constitutional Law, 2011-2012 Term" (2012) 59 Supreme Court L Rev (2d) 51
"Assessing the Impact of the Ancillary Powers Doctrine on Three Decades of Charter Jurisprudence" (2012) 58 Supreme Court L Rev 225
"The Protective Function and Section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms" (2012) 17 Review of Constitutional Studies 53
Notes and Case Comments
"Problems with the Newly Expanded Powers of Citizen's Arrest" (2012) 33:5 For the Defence 22 (with Leo Russomanno)
"Harnessing Debates in Comparative Constitutional Law as Teaching Tools: My Experiences in the Classroom" (2012) 6 Canadian Legal Education Annual Review 117
"Novel Applications of the Statutory Defence of Duress" (2011) 84 Criminal Reports (6th) 316
"R v. Lanteigne: The "Temporal" Scope of Section 11(b) of the Charter and "Process Control" (2011) 81 Criminal Reports (6th) 248