Book Review: Canadian University Law: Essentials for Legal and Higher Education Professionals

Several times each month, we are pleased to republish a recent book review from the Canadian Law Library Review (CLLR). CLLR is the official journal of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries (CALL/ACBD), and its reviews cover both practice-oriented and academic publications related to the law.

Canadian University Law: Essentials for Legal and Higher Education Professionals. By Sayeh Hassan & Anna S.P. Wong. Toronto: LexisNexis, 2025. xv, 212 p. Includes bibliographic references and index. ISBN 9780433533450 (softcover) $120.00.

Reviewed by Julie A. Lavigne
Legal Studies Librarian
Carleton University

Academic freedom and institutional autonomy, both foundations of the modern-day Canadian university, are surprisingly underdeveloped areas of the law. Courts have traditionally found that, despite receiving public funding and serving a public purpose, universities are not government institutions and therefore are not bound by laws that would otherwise apply, most notably the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. At the same time, private law rules have often been found to be lacking. Lawyers Sayeh Hassan and Anna S.P. Wong have written Canadian University Law: Essentials for Legal and Higher Education Professionals to serve as a road map for navigating this public–private terrain.

The first half of the book looks at the current state of the law. In his foreword, law professor Kent Roach writes about the importance of understanding academic freedom as well as the role of collegial governance within academia. Chapters 1 and 2 look at the concept of academic freedom in more detail, using the recent abortive hiring scandal of Dr. Valentina Azarova at the University of Toronto as a springboard. Chapters 3 and 4 take deep dives into administrative and private law, the two substantive law fields that are most relied upon in litigation involving universities. These chapters outline the main mechanisms for appeal and judicial review (and their appropriate use) and compare outcomes in academic versus non-academic disputes.

The authors see university-based Charter litigation as a growth industry, turning their focus to the Charter and its application to university issues in the second half of the book. This half, unfortunately, was not as well-executed as the first. Chapter 5 sets out a history of the Charter, highlighting key cases heard under each section. While a useful overview, this book is not meant to be an introductory text; readers will likely already have a passing familiarity with the Charter, so it does not seem necessary to include here. Chapter 6, on the other hand, meticulously examines whether the Charter applies to universities, laying out the inconsistencies and challenges inherent in this area of the law. Chapter 7, which discusses remedies, suffers from the same problem as Chapter 5. Even though the authors note that “many of the remedies … may be relevant and can apply to university-Charter cases” (p. 182–83), the discussion around applying these remedies was underdeveloped, barely filling one page at the end of this chapter.

In Chapter 8, the authors return to the question of academic freedom and the related freedoms in section 2 of the Charter (freedom of religion, expression, assembly, and association). This excellent, detailed analysis is then capped by a few pages that revisit the question of whether the Charter even applies—a repetition of arguments from Chapter 6. Chapter 9 concludes the text by looking at contemporary developments, such as the adoption of Québec’s Bill 32, the Academic Freedom Act.

Despite these concerns, the writing is concise and easy to follow. The book is obviously well researched with extensive footnotes; however, a table of cases and a list of references would have been helpful. Instead, each reference was cited in its entirety every single time (i.e., no use of ibid, supra, or any other means of cross-referencing), which felt overwhelming. There was no way to simply consult a complete list of references, nor could I quickly see where or how many times each case was discussed. There is an index, but it only listed a couple of cases and did not go into this level of detail.

I would nevertheless recommend libraries acquire this text as it helps to fill a gap in the literature. While Michiel Horn’s 1999 text Academic Freedom in Canada: A History (UTP, 1999) continues to be regularly cited, not many books published in the last decade or so have focused on academic freedom or broader issues of university governance, and even fewer in the Canadian context. This book would be an excellent addition to any law library. While the subject matter is too advanced for most public library patrons, other specialized libraries or organizations dealing with universities and their academic staff (such as unions and faculty associations) will also find this text invaluable.