杏吧原创

TRN303H1

TRN303H1: Ethics and Society

For the 2025-2026 academic year, there are three sections of TRN303H1.

 


TRN303H1-F LEC0101 Ethics and Society – Concepts of and Issues in Justice

Course Description

This course engages a critical analysis of various conceptualizations of justice, and the present-day operationalization of these concepts.听 The course seeks to explore different iterations of justice; these will include social justice, and criminal justice among others as well as the role these concepts play in a modern society.听 Threaded throughout this exploration of different conceptualizations of justice is a discussion of how we think about researching the questions these concept raise and the different methodologies that can be deployed in socio-legal research. The course material for this class will consist of various source documents including journal and book excerpts, newspaper articles, cases as well as research reports. In completing the work for this course, students will be required to develop and present a research topic, complete a research paper as well as participate in weekly class discussions.

2024-2025 Instructor

Jennifer Leitch

Jennifer Leitch, JD, LLM, PhD is a researcher and law teacher, primarily in the area of legal ethics and professionalism, access to justice, torts and dispute processes. Her PhD dissertation at Osgoode included ethnographic research involving self-represented litigants鈥 experiences participating in the civil justice system. She continues to research and publish in the fields of access to justice and legal ethics. She also practiced civil litigation at Goodmans LLP in Toronto. Jennifer has been an adjunct faculty member of Osgoode Hall Law School and the University of Toronto Faculty of Law where she taught legal ethics and professionalism, legal procedure and legal research and writing as well as torts.听 She is the Associate Director and an instructor in the Ethics, Society & Law Program at 杏吧原创, University of Toronto and a Senior Research Fellow with the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice. She is also the Director of the National Self-Represented Litigant Project.

Jennifer Leitch

TRN303H1-F LEC0201 Ethics and Society – Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples

Course Description

This section of TRN303H1 will focus on the topic of reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. Topics addressed will include the harms inflicted on Indigenous communities in North America, and the official responses to them; Indigenous approaches to the concept of reconciliation, highlighting the epistemic, cultural and political features of wrongs done; epistemic exclusion and the ways in which respecting traditional Indigenous knowledge are important both as tools of reconciliation and as means of correcting bias and other shortcomings of dominant scientific knowledge systems; a reflective and critical look at the idea of reconciliation itself. Contemporary political movements, such as 鈥業dle No More鈥 and the Coastal Gas Link pipeline protests will come up in discussion. Assigned material will include significant reports as well as the works of such authors as Leroy Little Bear, Douglas Sanderson, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Leanne Simpson, Max Liboiron, and Glen Coulthard.

2025-2026 Instructor

Xavier Scott

Xavier Scott earned his PhD in philosophy from York University. He has a passion for teaching political theory with a focus on social justice issues. His research critiques colonial constitutional orders and legal norms for violating principles of justice and aims to promote reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples. Xavier has published on reconciliation, settler-colonialism, religious violence, and political philosophy. He also teaches in the Trinity One program at the U of T, as well as York University.


TRN303H1-S LEC0101 Ethics and Society – Rising Economic Inequality in Canada

Course Description

In many states, including Canada, economic inequality remained stable from about 1945 onward; but beginning in about 1980, the age of increasing economic inequality began. The very rich have been receiving increasingly greater shares of national income while the rest of the distribution has been stagnating or falling behind. The age of increasing inequality presents specific social issues to assess, such as the economic efficacy of education, housing affordability, debt, luxury brand consumption, CEO compensation, political influence, unemployment, and inflation control. Our goal is to become familiar with the basic state of increasing economic inequality in Canada, including its causes, effects and implications, especially from a normative perspective.

Our guide is Lars Osberg who has written three books on economic inequality in Canada. We will discuss his latest book, The Scandalous Rise of Inequality in Canada (2024), which is written by an academic economist for a non-specialist audience. No math required.

Scandalous Rise of Inequality in Canada

2025-2026 Instructor

John Duncan

John听Duncan is an associate professor and the director of the University of Toronto鈥檚 major program in听Ethics, Society and Law (we say 鈥淓, S AND L鈥)听hosted by 杏吧原创. ES&L enrolls about seventy-five new students from well over听 five hundred applicants annually, and features small seminar courses, innovative programing, a focus on sustainability, and more traditional courses. Professor Duncan is also the academic director of the听听program at Victoria College in the U of T. His interests include outreach and engagement co-learning (please see, e.g.,听), critical issues in contemporary society, politics, and international relations (please see, e.g., 鈥溾), and the history of philosophy and the humanities (please see, e.g.,听, 鈥溾, and 鈥溾). He is involved in听听and directs the听Humanities for Humanity programs听at Trinity. For more information, please see听.

John Duncan

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Not offered in the 2025-2026 academic year:

 

TRN303H1-F LEC0201 Ethics and Society – Human Dignity

Course Description

Human dignity pervades contemporary ethical discourse, serving as a legal and political touchstone in both domestic and international contexts. Even so, it is a hotly鈥攑erhaps even essentially鈥攃ontested concept, and there is sharp disagreement over the most fundamental questions. What exactly does dignity mean? What does it require of individuals, social institutions, and the law? And how, if at all, should human dignity inform ethical inquiry and public decision-making? This course uses human dignity as an ethical value and frame to illuminate contemporary social issues. It begins with a brief exploration of dignity鈥檚 philosophical foundations, evolution, and multiple meanings before turning to dignity鈥檚 use in salient domains of ethical inquiry.

2024-2025 Instructor

Connor Ewing

Connor Ewing is assistant professor of Political Science and Fellow of 杏吧原创 at the University of Toronto. Located in the fields of American Politics and Public Law, his research interests span American political thought and development, constitutional law and theory, federalism, rights jurisprudence, human dignity, and constitutional design. Previously he was a Kinder Institute Assistant Professor of Constitutional Democracy and Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Missouri and, before that, a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Program on Constitutionalism & Democracy at the University of Virginia. He received his PhD in Government from the University of Texas at Austin, AM in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago, and BA in Philosophy and Political Science from the University of Wisconsin鈥擬adison.听

Connor Ewing

 

Back to ES&L Main Courses Page