Professor Malcolm Thorburn appointed first Canada Research Chair at Queen’s Law

Photo by Randy deKleine-Stimpson

Professor Malcolm Thorburn

KINGSTON, ON (Nov. 24, 2010) -- The Government of Canada has awarded a Canada Research Chair (CRC) to Queen’s Law Professor Malcolm Thorburn, making him the first recipient of this distinguished honour in the Law Faculty’s history. Thorburn’s grant is a renewable Tier 2 Chair, worth $500,000 over five years and awarded to those who are expected to become internationally recognized leaders in their field. In Thorburn’s case, the award is for his topical research on constitutionalism and crime, specializing in security and policing concerns – subjects of urgent and growing concern to Canadians.

"I am, of course, thrilled to have this opportunity,” Thorburn says, “and very grateful to all the people at Queen’s who worked so hard on my nomination.”

“I am also really happy that the Faculty is reinvesting in the strong research culture at Queen's Law,” he adds, noting that a large portion of the funds will be used to support his shared work with faculty colleagues and graduate students.

The Canada Research Chair program was founded in 2000 to help strengthen Canada’s position in leading-edge research. Thorburn's grant is one of four new CRCs awarded to Queen's in 2010.

“This is a marvellous and well-earned recognition of his distinguished record of scholarship,” says Dean Bill Flanagan. “It also represents a milestone for us all as this is the first CRC in the history of the law school.”

Now that he has received the grant, Thorburn is planning to continue expanding his research on law, security and crime to build a new foundation for debate over the legitimacy of security operations. His first priority is research regarding how the principles of liberal constitutionalism inform our understanding of the criminal justice process. He has argued that these principles give shape and content to such criminal law justification defences as self-defence or lawful arrest. He has also examined how the state's police powers and its authority to respond to emergencies such as terrorist threats are limited by the same principles in important ways.

To add to this exploration of Canadian security and policing practices, Thorburn will go abroad for an international perspective. He will travel to criminology and criminal law theory research institutes in Europe, where he will be researching the history of policing in Paris and the development of post-war German criminal law in Munich.  Following that, Thorburn will spend the 2011-12 academic year in England as a visiting fellow at Oxford’s Centre for Criminology, working on legal theory.

Thorburn is well aware of the importance of research to the well-being of a law school. “It is the law schools with the most vibrant research cultures that are also the centres of teaching excellence worldwide; that’s no accident,” he says. “Dedicated researchers are people who care passionately about their subject area and who think deeply about it every day, keeping on top of the most recent developments and coming up with thoughtful and original ways of understanding them and, where necessary, reforming them.”