Vulnerability, Inequality and Justice Workshop

Event Description

Building on a successful panel at the Canadian Association of Law Teachers Annual Conference in Saskatoon in June 2025, this Workshop brings together scholars from across Canada to critically engage with the concept of vulnerability in different areas of law and its role in the equality and justice project, and to explore new approaches to theorizing vulnerability in the context of marginality.

Vulnerability is often used as a means of classifying deserving groups for the allocation of scarce resources, for example, legal aid to address issues of access to justice and financial education, but too often the term is not clearly defined. Vulnerability as a designation can also serve to reinforce negative stereotypes. Martha Fineman’s conception of vulnerability as “universal” may be useful in combatting stereotypes and in arguing for state intervention, but it is also contradicted by evidence of differential impact, historical marginalization, and intergenerational inequality. For these reasons, Vulnerability Theory, as formulated by Fineman, can obscure the work—imperfect as it may be—done so far in equality jurisprudence. In terms of the application of Vulnerability Theory to “concrete legal issues facing contemporary society,” this Workshop will examine the use of vulnerability in a wide range of areas of law and policy, including access to justice, global health, gender equality, gender-based violence, immigration, elder abuse, financial consumer protection, and the regulation of artificial intelligence, among others. 

This workshop is organized by Dr. Irehobhude O. Iyioha (Allard School of Law), in collaboration with Dr. Uche Ngwaba (Lincoln Alexander School of Law) and Gail Henderson (Queen’s Law).

Keynote Speaker

Abstract

Police Targeting of Racial Minorities: A Challenge for Vulnerability Theory

Vulnerability theory offers a universal conception of human fragility that argues for a shift in equality jurisprudence from a focus on individualized discrimination analysis to enhanced state responsibility to treat everyone well. Professor Cooper’s talk will explain why the recent transition from broken windows policing theory to hot spots policing theory has failed to decrease targeting of racial minorities and how that example challenges vulnerability theory as presently conceived.

Biography

Frank Rudy Cooper is a William S. Boyd Professor of Law and Director of the Program on Race, Gender & Policing at the Boyd School of Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.  He has also taught at, inter alia, Boston University Law School and Suffolk University Law School. Professor Cooper’s dozens of publications have appeared in several journals, including the University of California Davis Law Review, Columbia Journal of Gender & Law, and the University of Illinois Law Review. Professor Cooper was the 2024 winner of the Association of American Law Schools Minority Section's Clyde Ferguson Award for “an outstanding law teacher, who, in the course of his or her career, has achieved excellence in the areas of public service, teaching, and scholarship”.