Peter A Allard School of Law

Hoi Kong

Rt. Hon. Beverley McLachlin, P.C., UBC Professorship in Constitutional Law
BA, MA, LLB/BCL (McGill), LLM, JSD (Columbia)

Profile

Professor Hoi Kong is a full professor and the inaugural holder of The Rt. Hon. Beverley McLachlin, P.C., UBC Professorship in Constitutional Law, which he assumed in 2018. He is a Fellow of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation (2024-2027), a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin’s Program on Constitutional Studies, a Peter Wall Scholar (2020-2021) and Visiting Professor at the Cornell Law School. He researches and teaches in the areas of constitutional, administrative, municipal and comparative law, and constitutional and public law theory.

Prior to joining the Allard School of Law, Professor Kong was an Assistant and then Associate Professor at McGill University’s Faculty of Law, where he served a term as Associate Dean (Academic). He was previously an Assistant Professor of Law, cross-appointed with the School of Urban Planning at Queen’s University, and an Associate-in-Law at the Columbia Law School. Professor Kong clerked for Justice L’Heureux-Dubé and Justice Deschamps at the Supreme Court of Canada.

Over the years, Professor Kong has received a number of accolades for his teaching. These include the Queen’s University Law Students’ Society Teaching Excellence Award; the John W. Durnford Award for Teaching Excellence, awarded by McGill’s Law Students’ Association; McGill University’s Principal’s Prize for Excellence in Teaching; the Allard School of Law’s George Curtis Memorial Award for Teaching Excellence; and the University of British Columbia’s Killam Teaching Prize.

In 2017, he received the Canadian Association of Law Teachers’ Academic Excellence Award, for outstanding contributions to teaching and research in law.

Professor Kong co-directs with Professor Ron Levy (the Australian National University) the Project on Deliberative Governance and Law. He also directs a research axis at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Montreal and is on the editorial boards of the Review of Constitutional Studies and American Journal of Comparative Law, as well as the international board of distinguished advisors for the Federal Law Review.

Research and Publications

To learn more about my research, please visit my PURE Research profile. You can also access my publications on the following sites: 

Courses

  • Public Law
  • Charter of Rights and Freedoms

Publications

Recent and Forthcoming Publications:

Books

  • Sustainability, Citizen Participation, and City Governance: Multidisciplinary Perspectives(University of Toronto Press, 2022) (co-editor with Tanya Monforte).
  • Chromatic: Ten Meditations on Crisis in Arts and Letters (Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies, 2021) (co-author with Purang Abolmaesumi, Jennifer Black, Carrie Jenkins, M.V. Ramana, Steven Reynolds, Michelle Stack, Sheila Teves and Y-Dang Troeung.
  • Deliberative Peace Referendums (Oxford University Press, 2021) (co-author with Ron Levy and Ian O’Flynn).
  • The Cambridge Handbook of Deliberative Constitutionalism (Cambridge University Press, 2018) (co-editor with Ron Levy, Graeme Orr and Jeff King).

Articles and Chapters

  • “Overturning Ford” Constitutional Forum (forthcoming, 2023)
  • “Comparative Urban Sustainable Development Law and Governance” in Comparative Environmental Law Tseming Yang, Anastasia Teletsky and Sara Phillips (eds.), (Edward Elgar, forthcoming 2023).
  • “Section 15(1): Precedent and Principles” Supreme Law Review (forthcoming, 2023).
  • “Constitutional Amendment and the Canadian City” in Unlocking the Constitutional Handcuffs on Canadian Cities Alexandra Flynn, Richard Albert and Nathalie Des Rosiers (eds.), McGill-Queen’s Press, forthcoming)
  • “Should Quebec Adopt a Written Constitution: A (But Not The) Conclusion” in A Written Constitution for Quebec? Richard Albert and Léonid Sirota (eds.) (McGill- Queen’s University Press: 2023).
  • “Thresholds, Powers and Accountability in the Emergencies Act” (2023) 46:1 Manitoba Law Journal J 41.
  • “Federalism Theory and the Canadian City” in Cities in Federal Constitutional Theory Erika Arban (ed.) (Oxford University Press, 2022)
  • “Sustainable Urban Design: The Case of Montreal” in Sustainability, Citizen Participation, and City Governance: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, Hoi Kong & Tanya Monforte (eds.) (Toronto: University of Toronto Press: 2022).
  • With Tanya Monforte, “Introduction” in Sustainability, Citizen Participation, and City Governance: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, Hoi Kong & Tanya Monforte (eds.) (Toronto: University of Toronto Press: 2022).
  •  “Comparative Election Law in Canada”, in Comparative Election Law, James Gardner (ed.) (Edward Elgar: 2022) 32-50.
  • With Kinvin Wroth, “Introduction” to Special Issue After NAFTA: The United States- Mexico-Canada Agreement and Sustainability, (2021) 46:2 Vermont Law Review 188- 199.
  • “The Submissions on Enforcement Matters Process: Changes in Law and Theory” (2021) 46:2 Vermont Law Review 265-290.
  • Reference Re: Genetic Non-Discrimination Act: How to Make Space for Some Certainty” in (2021) 104 Supreme Court Law Review 45-66.
  • “Trudeau, Patriation and Constitutional Theory” in (2020) 99 Supreme Court Law Review 429-461, reprinted in The Political and Constitutional Legacy of Pierre Elliott Trudeau / L’héritage politique et constitutionnel de Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Noura Karazivan and Jean Leclair (eds.) (Toronto: Lexi Nexis, 2020).
  • “The Deliberative Mandate Referendum” (2020) 53:1 UBC Law Review 177-202
  • “Comeau and Constitutional Interpretation” (2020) 94 Supreme Court Law Review (2d) 57-83.
  • “Deliberative Constitutionalism in Canada” (2018) 31:1 Journal of Parliamentary and Political Law 101-116.
  • “Compromise, Rights and Federalism: Academic Reflections and Constitutional Jurisprudence” in Daniel Jutras and Marcus Moore (eds.) Canada’s Chief Justice: Beverley McLachlin’s Legacy of Law and Leadership (Lexis-Nexis, 2018) 375-391 and (2018) 87 Supreme Court Law Review 83-99.
  • With Ron Levy, “Deliberative Constitutionalism: An Introduction” in Ron Levy, Hoi Kong, Graeme Orr and Jeff King (eds.) The Cambridge Handbook of Deliberative Constitutionalism (Cambridge University Press, 2018) 1-13.
  • With Ron Levy, “Deliberative Constitutionalism” in John Dryzek, Andre Bachtiger, Jane Mansbridge and Mark Warren (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Deliberative Democracy, (Oxford University Press, 2018) 625-639.

​​​​​​​Publications listed on the Law Library Faculty Research Publications Database

Hoi Profile

Organization Affiliations

  • Centre for Asian Legal Studies

Research Interests

  • Administrative law and regulatory governance
  • Comparative law
  • Environmental law, natural resources, and climate change
  • Jurisprudence, legal theory, and critical studies
  • Public and constitutional law

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