Event Description
This session with Professor Bruce MacDougall, our Dean pro tem, provides an overview of the critical components of reasons for judgment, including how courts make factual findings based on the assessment of evidence, articulate the relevant law, and apply that law to the facts. It will highlight key distinctions between trial and appellate analysis, explain the difference between ratio decidendi and obiter dicta, and outline the roles of majority, minority, and dissenting opinions. Building on this foundation, the lecture will also introduce the basic court hierarchies and the operation of precedent, including when courts are bound by prior decisions and the role of persuasive authority.
Speaker
Bruce MacDougall was called to the Bar of B.C. in 1990. He joined the Allard School of Law as Assistant Professor in 1988. He was Associate Professor from 1996-2002. He has been Professor of Law since 2002.
Professor MacDougall studied at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar and served as Law Clerk at the Supreme Court of Canada for Mr. Justice Gerald Le Dain from 1986-87. He was a Visiting Scholar at the University of Florida, Gainesville in 1993, and Distinguished Research Fellow at King's College, London, in 2001.
Professor MacDougall practised law in Toronto and Vancouver. He has served on Judicial Council of Tsawwassen First Nation starting in 2012, currently as Chair.
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