Queen’s Law and BLG celebrate 2009 research fellowship

Photo by Logan Crowell

Dean Bill Flanagan, Joanne Silkauskas of BLG, Professor Malcolm Thorburn, and T. Kirk Boyd, Law '97, and Greg McCashin, Law '87, of BLG, at the BLG cocktail reception in Macdonald Hall on November 24

Professor Malcolm Thorburn and Alison Barclay, Law ’11, were honoured on November 24 for completing a project sponsored by the 2009 Borden Ladner Gervais LLP (BLG) Research Fellowship.

The presentation was made at the Queen’s Law student lounge, filled with representatives from BLG, Dean Bill Flanagan, faculty and staff. Thorburn thanked BLG on behalf of himself and Alison, who could not attend.

“It’s a wonderful opportunity and I’m very grateful for what it’s done to help my research,” Thorburn said. “It’s also an excellent opportunity for a student to get some in-depth exposure to legal doctrine and legal scholarship.”

The $12,000 award allowed Alison to work full-time as a research assistant over the summer of 2009, assisting Thorburn in the expansion of his previous research into the privatization of police powers. Thorburn has long held that criminal law restricts police powers and his research looked at how privatization changes and affects those restrictions.

The research culminated in the journal article, “Reinventing the Night-watchman State?,” Thorburn presented at the University of Toronto on October 2. It will be published by the University of Toronto Law Journal in spring 2010.

The research also contributed to Thorburn’s chapter entitled “Criminal Law as Public Law: Police Powers and Justifications” in the upcoming book Philosophical Foundations of Criminal Law, which will be published in 2010 by the Oxford University Press. Earlier this fall, he presented this work during visits to Brooklyn Law School, and law schools at Cornell University, the University of Syracuse and Rutgers University.

Photo by Bernard Clark

Professor Malcolm Thorburn and Alison Barclay, Law '11

For Thorburn, Alison’s contribution was an essential part of the work.

“Because she read so much in the area, she developed a distinct point of view. This meant that she was not just giving me assistance, she was also discussing the ideas and research with me in detail,” he said. “She had well-informed opinions and could formulate and critique arguments with great skill.”

The BLG Research Fellowship

This marks the sixth year Borden Ladner Garvais has awarded the research fellowship. Initially a five-year, $10,000 per year commitment, the award was renewed through to 2013 and increased to $12,000.

T. Kirk Boyd, Law ‘97, spoke on behalf of the firm. Amidst reminiscences of his time at Queen’s Law, he emphasized the award’s importance to BLG.

“We’ve been doing this a number of years...and we’ve seen some fascinating work,” he said.

The BLG Research Fellowship is awarded to twenty first-year students across 14 participating Canadian law schools. The funds pay for the student to work full-time during the summer as a research assistant to a faculty member on an approved project. The project and student researcher are chosen by the school in a highly competitive application process.

The application process for 2010 will open during the winter term once the BLG faculty researcher has been selected.