Douglas Harris

Douglas Harris joined the Allard School of Law in 2001. He teaches in the areas of property law and legal history, and his research focuses on the history of the regulation of the Aboriginal fisheries in British Columbia and on the nature of property ownership within condominium.  His earlier published work includes studies of Aboriginal rights to fish in Canada and analysis of systems for registering interests in land. Recent public lectures include “Condominium & the Country: The Sprawl of Property in British Columbia” and “Property & Sovereignty: The Kitsilano Indian Reserve and the City of Vancouver”. He presented “Condominium Property Stories” in his Inaugural Lecture as a professor at the Allard School of Law.
 
After completing his B.A. (UBC History) and LL.B. (Toronto), Harris articled in Vancouver and was called to the British Columbia bar in 1994. He returned to school to complete LL.M. (UBC) and PhD (Osgoode Hall, York University) degrees in legal history. During his years as a university student, Harris was a member of Canada's field hockey team that competed at the Olympic Games in Seoul (1988), the Pan American Games (1987, 1991, 1995), and the World Student Games (1991). Harris served as Associate Dean Graduate Studies & Research in the Law School, 2008-2013, and he is currently Chair of the UBC Press Publications Board. In 2016, he received the law school’s Faculty Scholar Award.

In 2013, Professor Harris received the George Curtis Memorial Award for Teaching Excellence, the Faculty's annual teaching award. He is also a co-author of the leading property law casebook in Canada, A Property Law Reader, 4th Ed. Professor Harris is currently supervising LLM and PhD students working in property law, Aboriginal law and legal history, and welcomes other students to apply in these and other areas of his research interest.

• Property Law
• Condominium Law 
• Legal History

Books

• Landing Native Fisheries: Indian Reserves and Fishing Rights in British Columbia, 1849-1925 (UBC Press, 2008) (winner of the John T. Saywell Prize for Canadian Constitutional Legal History in 2011)
• Fish, Law, and Colonialism: The Legal Capture of Salmon in British Columbia (U of T Press, 2001)

Articles & Book Chapters

• "Condominium Government and the Right to Live in the City" (2019) 34:3 Canadian Journal of Law & Society 371-392 (PDF full text)
• “Owning and Dissolving Strata Property” (2017) 50:4 UBC Law Review 935-970 (PDF full text)
• “Property and Sovereignty: An Indian Reserve and a Canadian City” (2017) 50:2 UBC Law Review 321 (PDF full text)
• “Anti-Social Behaviour, Expulsion from Condominium, and the Reconstruction of Ownership,” (2016) 54:1 Osgoode Hall Law Journal (PDF full text).
• Douglas C. Harris & Nicole Gilewicz, “Dissolving Condominium, Private Takings, and the Nature of Property,” in B. Hoops et al, eds, Rethinking Expropriation Law II: Context, Criteria, and Consequences of Expropriation (The Hague, NL: Eleven, 2015) 263-297 (PDF full text).
• Douglas C. Harris and May Au, “Title Registration and the Abolition of Notice in British Columbia,” (2014) 47 UBC Law Review. (PDF full text)
• "A Railway, a City and the Public Regulation of Private Property: C.P.R. v. The City of Vancouver" in Tucker, Ziff, and Muir, eds., Canadian Cases in Context (Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History and Irwin Law, 2012) 455-486. (PDF full text)
• Douglas C. Harris and Karin Mickelson, "Finding Nemo Dat in the Land Title Act: A Comment on Gill v. Bucholt" (2012) 45 UBC Law Review 205-221 (PDF full text).
• "Condominium and the City: The Rise of Property in Vancouver" (2011) 36 Law & Social Inquiry 694-726.
• Douglas C. Harris and Peter Millerd, “Food Fish, Commercial Fish, and Fish to Support a Moderate Livelihood: Characterizing Aboriginal and Treaty Rights to Canadian Fisheries” (2010) 1 Arctic Review on Law and Policy 82-107.
• "The Boldt Decision in Canada: Aboriginal Treaty Rights to Fish on the Pacific" in Alexandra Harmon, ed., The Power of Promises: Rethinking Indian Treaties in the Pacific Northwest (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008) pp. 128-153 (PDF full text).

Publications listed on the Law Library Faculty Research Publications Database