Vanessa MacDonnell joined the Faculty of Law (Common Law Section) in 2012. An internationally recognized expert in Canadian and comparative constitutional law, human rights and the protection of democracy, she holds the University Research Chair in Democratic Constitutionalism and is founding Co-Director of the uOttawa Public Law Centre, a position she has held since 2019.
Professor MacDonnell’s innovative scholarship takes readers inside the institutions of state, shedding new light on how policymakers and courts approach constitutional questions. Employing doctrinal, comparative, theoretical, and empirical approaches, her research has generated fresh insights about the actors and processes at the heart of constitutional government. She is currently the Canadian Principal Investigator on a $1.7 million interdisciplinary, international research project on unwritten constitutional norms and principles, funded in Round 7 of the Open Research Area competition.
Professor MacDonnell is a graduate of the University of Toronto Faculty of Law (J.D.) and Harvard Law School (LL.M.). She is currently pursuing doctoral studies at McGill University. Between 2007 and 2008, she served as law clerk to Justice Louise Charron at the Supreme Court of Canada. She has held visiting research fellowships at Cambridge University, the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights at Oxford University, the Laureate Program in Comparative Constitutional Law at Melbourne Law School, the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public and International Law, the University of the Witwatersrand, and King's College London. Between 2019 and 2024, she was an elected member of the Global Young Academy.
Professor MacDonnell teaches or has taught constitutional law, comparative constitutional law, criminal law, evidence, administrative law, seminars on the Supreme Court of Canada and executive power, and a graduate course on the impact of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms on criminal law and procedure.
Professor MacDonnell consistently mobilizes her research findings beyond the academy. She has served as Scholar-in-Residence at Canada’s Department of Justice, written op-eds and offered media commentary, and testified before parliamentary committees and the Public Order Emergency Commission. Her scholarship has been relied upon by courts across Canada, including the Supreme Court of Canada. In 2023, along with colleagues in academia and private practice, she founded the Canadian Constitutional Law Initiative. This appellate advocacy initiative is designed to assist courts with complex constitutional issues, generate timely research and create opportunities for students to participate in real-life interventions before Canadian courts. To date, the Initiative has intervened in the Federal Court, the Federal Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada.
Professor MacDonnell welcomes the opportunity to supervise graduate students in her areas of expertise, including Canadian and comparative constitutional law and constitutional theory. She is particularly interested in projects on executive power, unwritten constitutional principles, norms and practices, democratic resilience, and constitutional amendment. Professor MacDonnell is willing to read preliminary proposals from strong students in the areas listed and comment on interest in supervision prior to submission of an official application.
Read Vanessa's papers on SSRN: http://ssrn.com/author=1615707