Laura Spitz

Laura Spitz

JSD, JD

Positions

Dean

Faculty of Law

Professor

Faculty of Law

Contact information

Phone number

Office: 403.220.3660

Location

Office: MFH4398

For media enquiries, contact

Kristen Thompson
Senior Manager, Communications
Faculty of Law

kristen.thompson@ucalgary.ca
O: 403.210.8720

Background

Educational Background

JSD Cornell University,

JD University of British Columbia,

BA University of Toronto,

Biography

Laura Spitz is Dean and Professor at the University of Calgary Faculty of Law and a regular Visiting Professor at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne Law School. Dean Spitz’s areas of teaching include contracts, commercial law, business law, and corporate social responsibility. 

Immediately prior to joining the University of Calgary, Dean Spitz was the Vice Provost for Global Engagement and Professor of Law at Seattle University. Dean Spitz previously served as Carl Hatch Endowed Professor of Law at the University of New Mexico, Vice Provost for International Affairs at Cornell University, and Associate Dean for International Affairs at Cornell Law School. She has also taught at Emory University, the University of Colorado, Thompson Rivers University, and the University of Ottawa. 

Dean Spitz is a nonpracticing member of the Law Society of British Columbia and a consulting and testifying expert in contracts, commercial law, and business law. Her practice experience includes both domestic and international business transactions, commercial transactions, social purpose and non-profit business law, and First Nations economic development law. Dean Spitz also volunteered for many years on LEAF subcommittees and has been a contributing author on several factums and briefs filed at both the Supreme Court of Canada and the U.S. Supreme Court.

Research

Dean Spitz’s current scholarship focuses on the law’s role(s) in the social construction of personal, community, national, and regional borders and identities. Within this larger inquiry, Dean Spitz is especially interested in the line between subjects and objects in the common law system and the limits of their utility as categories in both law and society. For example, her co-authored article in the Harvard Environmental Law Review (reprinted in the Land Use and Environment Law Review) asks whether legal subjecthood or personhood is a useful strategy for advancing progressive environmental law claims. She also writes about legal personhood in the context of corporate law.

Research

Areas of Research

Contracts, Commercial Law, Business Law, Corporate Social Responsibility

Awards

  • Graduation Hooding Professor, University of New Mexico School of Law. 2022
  • Graduation Hooding Professor, University of New Mexico School of Law. 2021
  • Nominee, Outstanding Teacher of the Year, University of New Mexico. 2020
  • Nominee, New Faculty of the Year, University of New Mexico. 2019
  • Nominee and Finalist, Convocation Speaker , Cornell Law School. 2016
  • Graduation Hooding Professor, Colorado Law School. 2009
  • Graduation Hooding Professor, Colorado Law School. 2008
  • Outstanding New Faculty Award, Colorado Law School. 2007
  • Outstanding New Faculty Award, Colorado Law School. 2006

Publications