Grégoire Webber

Grégoire Webber is Canada Research Chair in Public Law and Philosophy of Law at Queen’s Law, cross-appointed to the Department of Philosophy, and Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is joint convenor of the Queen's Colloquium in Legal and Political Philosophy.

Professor Webber is a graduate of McGill University with bachelors of civil law and common law and of the University of Oxford with a doctorate in law, where he studied as a Trudeau scholar. He clerked for Justice Ian Binnie of the Supreme Court of Canada and, as a student, for Justice André Rochon of the Quebec Court of Appeal.

Professor Webber previously worked as a senior policy advisor with the Privy Council Office and as Legal Affairs Advisor to the Attorney General of Canada and Minister of Justice. He is currently legal agent of the Department of Justice (Canada). He is joint founder and Executive Director of the Supreme Court Advocacy Institute, which provides free advocacy advice to counsel appearing before the Supreme Court of Canada. For his role in co-founding the Institute, he was awarded a Meritorious Service Medal by the Governor General of Canada.

Research

Foundational questions in human rights, public law, and the philosophy of law, including:

• the nature of rights;
• the relationship between positive law and human rights;
• balancing and proportionality in human rights law;
• the political constitution; and
• the natural law tradition.

Recent Professional Achievements

• Appointed Full Professor of Law, 2020-
• Re-appointed Canada Research Chair in Public Law and Philosophy of Law, 2019-
• Appointed to the Royal Society of Canada's College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists, 2019-
• Cross-appointed to the Department of Philosophy, 2018-
• Appointed legal agent of the Department of Justice, 2017-
• Appointed Legal Affairs Advisor to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, 2016-2017
• Awarded a Meritorious Service Medal by the Governor General of Canada, 2015
• Founding convenor (joint) of the Colloquium in Legal and Political Philosophy, 2015
• Appointed Visiting Fellow, London School of Economics and Political Science, 2015-

Select Publications

Books

• Droits et droit (Montréal: Les Éditions Thémis, 2020)
• Legislated Rights: Securing human rights through legislation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018; paperback edition, 2019) (jointly authored with P. Yowell, R. Ekins, M. Köpcke, F.J. Urbina, and B.W. Miller)
• The Negotiable Constitution: On the Limitation of Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009; paperback edition 2012)

Edited collections

• Constitutional Dialogue: Rights, Democracy, Institutions (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019; paperback edition, 2020) (edited with G. Sigalet and R. Dixon)
  
• Proportionality and the Rule of Law: Rights, Reasoning, Justification (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014; paperback edition, 2016) (edited with G. Huscroft and B.W. Miller)

Articles

• "Notwithstanding rights, review, or remedy? On the notwithstanding clause and the operation of legislation" (2021) 71 University of Toronto Law Journal 510-538
• "Legislación, derechos humanos y derechos legislados" (2021) 12 Revista del Centro de Estudios Constitucionales 81-135
• "Legislated Rights in the real world" (2020) 21 Jerusalem Review of Legal Studies 145-170 (with P. Yowell)
• "A conservative disposition and constitutional change" (2019) 39 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 526-552 (with G. Gee)
• "Loyal Opposition and the political constitution" (2017) 37 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 357-382
• "The question why and the common good" (2017) 8 Jurisprudence 99-109
• "Asking why in the study of human affairs" (2015) 60 American Journal of Jurisprudence 51-78
• "Rationalism in Public Law" (2013) 76 Modern Law Review 708-734 (with G. Gee)
• "What is a Political Constitution?" (2010) 30 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 273-299 (with G. Gee)

Chapters in edited collections

• "Human goods and human rights law" in The Cambridge Companion to Natural Law and Human Rights (Tom Angier, Iain Benson, and Mark Retter, eds, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming)
• "Human rights and justice" in Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy (Mortimer Sellars and Stephan Kirste, eds, Springer, 2021)
• "Proportionality and limitations on freedom of speech" in The Oxford Handbook of Freedom of Speech (Frederic Schauer and Adrienne Stone, eds, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021)
• "Opposition" in The Cambridge Handbook of Constitutional Theory (Richard Bellamy and Jeff King, eds, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming)
• "Can the constitution of a fruit fly be written?" in From morality to law and back again: Liber amicorum for John Garder (Michelle Dempsey and François Tanguay-Renaud, eds, Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming)
• "Past, present, and justice in the exercise of judicial responsibility" in Constitutional Dialogue: Rights, Democracy, Institutions (Geoffrey Sigalet, Grégoire Webber, and Rosalind Dixon, eds, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019)
• "Proportionality and absolute rights" in Proportionality: New Frontiers, New Challenges (Vicki Jackson and Mark Tushnet, eds, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017)