Professor of Law
Osgoode Hall Law School
Email: rwai@osgoode.yorku.ca
Website: www.osgoode.yorku.ca/faculty/robertswai.html

BCom (McGill), MPhil (Oxford), LLB (British Columbia), SJD (Harvard), of the Bars of British Columbia and New York

Robert Wai has been a professor at Osgoode Hall Law School since 1998. He previously served as law clerk to Justice Gérard La Forest of the Supreme Court of Canada, and worked as a lawyer at law firms in Vancouver and New York. He teaches Contracts, International Trade Regulation, International Business Transactions, and Canada/U.S./Mexico Economic and Business Relations. His research focuses on the overlap between public and private law in areas such as international trade regulation, transnational litigation and international business transactions. From 2002 to 2004, he was Director of the York University Centre for Public Law and Public Policy. In 2004-5, he is a Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute, Florence. From January 1, 2006, he will be Associate Dean of the law school.


Selected Publications

with Craig Scott, “Transnational Governance of Corporate Conduct through the Migration of Human Rights Norms: The Potential Contribution of Transnational Private Litigation”, in C. Joerges, I.-J. Sand & G. Teubner, eds., Transnational Governance and Constitutionalism (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2004), pp.287-319.
“International Trade Agreements, Internationalist Policy Consciousness, and the Reform of Canadian Private International Law”, in The Measure of International Law: Effectiveness, Fairness and Validity (Proceedings of the 31st Annual Conference of the Canadian Council on International Law) (The Hague: Kluwer, 2004), pp.123-131.

“Countering, Branding, Dealing: Using Economic and Social Rights in and around the International Trade Regime”, 14 European Journal of International Law (2003), pp.35-84.

“Transnational Liftoff and Juridical Touchdown: The Regulatory Function of Private International Law in an Era of Globalization”, 40 Columbia Journal of Transnational Law (2002), pp.209-274.

“In the Name of the International: The Supreme Court of Canada and the Internationalist Transformation of Canadian Private International Law”, 39 Canadian Yearbook of International Law [2001], pp.117-209.

“The Commercial Activity Exception to Sovereign Immunity and the Boundaries of Contemporary International Legalism”, in C. Scott, ed., Torture as Tort: Comparative Perspectives on the Development of Transnational Human Rights Litigation (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2001), pp. 213-245

“Justice Gérard La Forest and the Internationalist Turn in Canadian Jurisprudence”, in R. Johnson and J. McEvoy, eds., Gérard V. La Forest at The Supreme Court of Canada, 1985-1997 (Canadian Legal History Project and The Supreme Court of Canada Historical Society, 2000), pp. 471-495