Laura Spitz
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
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
- The Case for Outside Reverse Veil Piercing in New Mexico. Laura Spitz. 51 N.M. L. REV. 349. (2021)
- Nature's Personhood and Property's Virtues. Laura Spitz & Eduardo M. Peñalver. 45 HARV. ENVTL. L. REV. 67 . (2021)
- U.S. Nonprofit Activity in Cuba: Challenges in Cuban Law and Practice. Elizabeth Brundige, Lucía Domínguez Cisneros, Eduardo Peñalver & Laura Spitz. 50 CORNELL INT’L L. J. 199. (2017)
- The Evolving Architecture of North American Integration. Laura Spitz. 80 COL. L. REV.. 735-792. (2009)
- Wands Away (or Preaching to Infidels Who Wear Earplugs). Laura Spitz. 41 LAW TEACHER: INT’L J. LEGAL EDUC.. 314. (2007)
- The Gift of Enron: An Opportunity to Talk About Capitalism, Equality and the Promise of a North American Charter of Fundamental Rights. Laura Spitz. 66 OHIO ST. L. J. 315 . (2005)
- I Think, Therefore I Am; I Feel, Therefore I Am Taxed: Descartes, Tort Reform, and the Civil Rights Tax Relief Act. Laura Spitz. 35 N.M. L. REV. 429. (2005)
- At the Intersection of North American Free Trade and Same-Sex Marriage. Laura Spitz. 9 U.C.L.A. J. OF INT’L L. 163. (2004)
- The Jurisprudence of the Military Industrial Complex. Laura Spitz & Ann Scales. 1 SEATTLE J. SOC. JUST.. 541-565. (2003)
- R. v. Parks: Automatism and Murder. Isabel Grant & Laura Spitz. 72 CAN. BAR. REV. 224 . (1993)
- Law, Vulnerability, and the Responsive State: Beyond Equality and Liberty. Martha Fineman & Laura Spitz (eds.). Routledge. (2023)
- Using Vulnerability Theory to Reconceive the Relationships between Native Nations, the United States, and State Governments. Nazune Menka & Laura Spitz. in Laura Spitz and Martha Fineman (eds.), Law, Vulnerability, and the Responsive State: Beyond Equality and Liberty. (2023)
- More or Less Human: Colonialism, Law, and the Social Construction of Humanity on Vancouver Island. Laura Spitz. in Peter Cook, Neil Vallance, John Lutz, Graham Brazier, and Hamar Foster, eds., To Share, Not Surrender: Indigenous and Settler Visions of Treaty Making in the Colonies Of Vancouver Island and British Columbia. 1849-1864. (2022)
- Theorizing the More Responsive State: The Radical Potential for Constitutional Pluralism in North America. Laura Spitz. in Martha Albertson Fineman (ed.), Transcending the Boundaries of Law 305. (2010)
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