Associate Dean Erik Knutsen has become one of only a dozen Canadians ever selected to the American Law Institute’s membership of accomplished academics, judges and legal professionals who “produce scholarly work to clarify, modernize, and otherwise improve the law.” (Photo by Greg Black)
Associate Dean Erik Knutsen has become one of only a dozen Canadians ever selected to the American Law Institute’s membership of accomplished academics, judges and legal professionals who “produce scholarly work to clarify, modernize, and otherwise improve the law.” (Photo by Greg Black)

Fast Facts on Erik Knutsen

Law Degrees:
JD (Osgoode),LLM (Harvard)
Hometown:
Thunder Bay, Ontario
Research Areas:
Insurance law, torts, accident law, civil litigation and procedure, medical malpractice

What does Erik Knutsen, Associate Dean (Academic) at Queen’s Law, have in common with most sitting justices of the United States Supreme Court and many of America’s other senior legal figures? They are all elected members of the American Law Institute (ALI), known as “the leading independent organization in the U.S. producing scholarly work to clarify, modernize, and otherwise improve the law.”

Knutsen is one of only a dozen Canadians ever selected to the ALI, which caps membership of “highly accomplished academics, judges and legal professionals” at 3,000. “I am honoured and humbled to be a Canadian on the American Law Institute,” he says of his election in December. “The selection process (from confidential nominations submitted by ALI members) for non-Americans apparently adds an additional hurdle – one must also be seen to be providing some comparative international insight of value to the organization, and in an array of subject areas that are germane to the work of the ALI.”

As a member, Knutsen will be bringing his expertise to help clarify the law through ALI-produced Restatements, Principles and Model Codes. Already he has become part of three working groups directly related to his main subject areas: liability insurance, torts and consumer contracts. 

Members participate in Member Consultative Groups (MCGs), reviewing the work of Reporters who take on the task of initial drafts of a project. The MCG members debate and engage with drafts of Restatements projects, refining the project as it progresses. “The final project results in an authoritative Restatement of the American law in a particular subject matter, useful for courts and lawyers,” explains Knutsen. “It is quite a scholarly, iterative process.”

Knutsen has co-authored Canadian Tort Law, a leading Canadian tort treatise, Stempel and Knutsen on Insurance Coverage, a leading American insurance law treatise, the leading casebook on Canadian civil litigation and one of the core casebooks on American insurance law. Top-ranked Canadian, American and international journals have published his articles and he has presented his work in North America, the U.K. and China. A multiple teaching-award recipient at Queen’s Law, he has also taught in the Queen’s School of Medicine and as a core faculty member in the Queen’s interdisciplinary Master of Science in Healthcare Quality program, and received the 2018 Queen’s University Chancellor A. Charles Baillie Teaching Award. He is often relied upon as a consultant to lawyers taking cases to trial or appeal – some of these at the Supreme Court of Canada and the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom.

With his ALI membership, his connections and influence will expand deeper. “The ALI provides a prime opportunity for international networking with top American scholars and jurists,” he says. “With 50 states, multiple levels of courts in each state, and a unique, corresponding federal system with its own trial and appeals, there is a lot of law going on in the United States. 

“I’m hopeful,” he adds, “that providing a comparative Canadian experience can be of assistance when wrestling with how to define what is the law on a particular subject.” 

By Lisa Graham