John Borrows

Professor, University of Victoria  Victoria, B.C.

Not only is he the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Law at the University of Victoria, John Borrows was also responsible for the first-ever dual Indigenous law degree program. He won the Killam Prize in Social Sciences by the Canada Council for the Arts for his continuing work of research and application in ameliorating Indigenous rights in the legal realm. His ideas have helped form the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada and the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. Borrows is the author of two legal texts — Recovering Canada: The Resurgence of Indigenous Law and Aboriginal Legal issues: Cases, Materials & Commentary. He helped start the June Callwood Program in Aboriginal Law at the University of Toronto. His scholarship ranges from engagement of Indigenous legal traditions in Canada and abroad to calling out the inequalities against these communities in the justice system to the improvement of these conditions. He has also been cited by the Supreme Court of Canada.

WHAT VOTERS HAD TO SAY:

“His thinking has become influential in many areas of the law and provides the underpinning for a legal revolution in which legal pluralism could become a reality.”
“Incredibly influential in my legal education thus far.”
“Indigenous legal academic central to the emergence of Indigenous legal orders within the country and abroad.”