Professional Affiliation

Director and Professor, Law and Society/Political Science and Institute for Social Research, York University, Canada.

Expert Bio

Les Jacobs is Professor of Law & Society and Political Science and Director of the Institute for Social Research at York University. He is also the past Executive Director and now Senior Research Fellow of the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice, a pan-Canadian access to justice NGO housed at Osgoode Hall Law School. Currently, he is the Fulbright Research Chair at the Woodrow Wilson Center, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. He completed his PhD at Oxford University. He has also held a range of visiting appointments including at University of California, Berkeley, Harvard Law School, University of British Columbia, Wolfson College, Oxford, Emory University, Waseda Law School, and the Law Commission of Canada. He is the author of numerous books including Rights and Deprivation (Oxford University Press, 1993, ebook edition 2012), The Democratic Vision of Politics (Simon & Schuster, 1997), Pursuing Equal Opportunities: The Theory and Practice of Egalitarian Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2004), Balancing Competing Human Rights in a Diverse Society (Irwin Law Books, 2012), Linking Global Trade and Human Rights: New Policy Space in Hard Economic Times (Cambridge University Press, 2014), and Privacy Rights in the Global Digital Economy: Legal Problems and Canadian Paths to Justice (Irwin Law Books, 2014).

Wilson Center Project

"The Impact of New Opportunities for International Legal Mobilization by Nonstate Actors on Canada-United States Relations: Mapping the Trans-Pacific Partnership"

Project Summary

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a proposed trade agreement between 12 pacific rim countries including both the United States and Canada. TPP has the largest geographical reach of any trade agreement since the World Trade Organization.  Non-state actors bring complaints before international dispute bodies created by trade agreements in order to address specific issues, improve their existing circumstances, and affect public policy space. NAFTA was a pioneer in international economic law by providing non-state actors with opportunities for legal mobilization. The idea that legal mobilization under NAFTA has impacted Canada-US relations is well recognized. TPP is likely to create new opportunities for international legal mobilization for non-state actors. The focus for the research project is on the impact of these new opportunities on Canada-US relations.

Major Publications

Linking Global Trade and Human Rights (Cambridge University Press, 2014)

Privacy Rights in the Global Digital Economy (Irwin Law Books, 2014)

Pursuing Equal Opportunities (Cambridge University Press, 2012)