Hugo B. Lafrenière is an assistant professor in the French Common Law Program at the University of Ottawa, where he teaches in the fields of private law and legal philosophy. He holds a Bachelor of Civil Law (BCL) and a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) from McGill University (2015), as well as a Master of Laws (LLM) in legal theory and a Doctor of Juridical Science (JSD) from New York University (2017, 2022), where he was awarded the John Bruce Moore Award for Excellence in Legal Philosophy. His current research is funded by an Insight Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).
Before joining the University of Ottawa, Hugo taught property law in both the common law and civil law traditions as a Boulton Fellow at the McGill University Faculty of Law (2023–24). He also taught political philosophy and moral philosophy as a postdoctoral researcher at the Institut d'études politiques de Paris (Sciences Po) (2022–23). He is the recipient of the Macdonald Travelling Scholarship, doctoral and postdoctoral research fellowships from the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture (FRQSC), and a four-year doctoral research fellowship from New York University.
His research program seeks to reinvest the redistributive and subversive potential of the major institutions of private law through an analysis that returns to their foundational normative sources. He is particularly interested in the interaction between private law and personal autonomy, understood as a fundamentally redistributive ideal. His most recent research in property law argues that Canadian courts should recognize homelessness as an emergency giving rise to a private necessity defence to trespass in the common law.