Professor Joseph Weiler created the first academic courses in Canada in sports law, media and entertainment law, the law and economic development, the law of cyberspace and the law of the Olympic Games. He has taken great joy in supporting and mentoring his students, having supervised hundreds of students in directed studies projects and graduate theses. He is Founding Co-Director of the Anti-Corruption Law Program, a collaborative effort in public education programming by the Allard School of Law at UBC, Transparency International (Canada Chapter) and the ICCLR and Criminal Justice Policy. He is the Vice-Chair of Transparency International Canada and will also continue his research and writing as a very active member of the UBC Emeritus College.
What did you enjoy most about being a law professor at Allard?
My fondest memories from my career as a law professor at Allard stem from the close personal relationships that I enjoyed with individual students who served as my research assistants, directed studies and graduate students. What a joy it is for a professor to mentor bright young law students in a one to one context.
I also really appreciated the friendships that flowed from the discussion-based seminar format of my various courses. This discussion (rather than lecture) format allowed me to invite expert guests from the legal profession, government and business who provided stories and insights to our classes about the law in action in our community. Every class was a new learning experience for all of us involved in the search for optimal regulatory systems in these content areas. What a gift to be immersed in such a vibrant learning context and to make lasting friendships from this iterative learning environment.
I have also been truly blessed to have been given so much leeway and encouragement by my deans at Allard over the years to create new courses in areas that were emerging as important drivers in our society. In addition, my deans were very flexible in enabling me engage in some ongoing professional and policy consulting work outside of the law school. This external exposure allowed me to be at the top of my game in the many areas that I taught, researched and wrote about during my 46 years at Allard. These external work opportunities allowed me to ‘practice what I preached and preached what I practiced’ in criminal law, labour law, sports law, entertainment law, alternative dispute resolution, and most recently, in the area of anti-corruption law. My periodic immersion in a non-university work environment has inspired and informed both my scholarly research as well as my classroom teaching, which in. turn was enormously beneficial to me and my students.
The third area that my deans supported throughout my career at Allard was my role in organizing ongoing professional education in a variety of content areas. I am particularly grateful to Dean Peter Burns and Dean Catherine Dauvergne who provided robust encouragement and support for my endeavors in ongoing professional education. It has always been my understanding about the optimal role of a professor in a modern professional faculty in a university is that the beneficiaries of our teaching should not only be students in the university classroom, but also those in legal practice, business and government. So for the past 40 years, starting in the area of labour and industrial relations, then business in the Asia Pacific Region, then in relation to sectoral-level governance, and more recently in the area of anti-corruption, I was tasked with creating collaborative learning opportunities that brought together leading academic and professional authorities. These ‘town and gown’ experts shared their insights from their personal experiences in areas of their core competence to teach each other about best practices in their respective areas of activity. And, because of my role as the convenor of these public education events, a major benefit to me personally was that I also was able to learn from all of these experts and then could share these insights with my students at Allard as well as through my academic writing.
The net result of the variety of work assignments that my deans allowed me to experience while a professor at Allard is that my life was constantly enriched with diverse learning opportunities. In effect, I have been both professor and a student for my entire time at Allard.
Tell Us About the Anti-Corruption Law Program
My most recent foray into public education has been as co-director of the Anti-Corruption Law Program (ACLP). Dean Catherine Dauvergne through the Franklin Lew Innovation Fund has supported the creation and operation of the ACLP starting in the Fall of 2016. This has truly been a community effort that I have helped to lead working closely with my co-director John Ritchie, who is a consulting engineer and a globally recognized expert in anti-corruption compliance systems.
The ACLP is a working partnership of the Centre for Business Law of the Peter A. Allard School of Law, Transparency International Canada and the International Centre for Criminal Law Reform and Criminal Justice (ICCRL). Each of these organizations prior to 2016 had some experience with anti-corruption education programming and research. Rather than compete, they decided in 2016 to join forces in a working partnership to provide the best quality of ongoing professional education about fighting corruption anywhere.
Experts from Canada the USA and Europe have come together in the past 4 years in 20 conferences, seminars and colloquia organized through the ACLP to share their views about the best practices in fighting corruption. Students and former students from Allard have served as Research Associates for the ACLP. All current students at Allard are able to attend the sessions of the ACLP at no cost. Topic areas and speakers for ACLP sessions reflect ongoing feedback that is provided by ACLP participants.
What research topics are currently of particular importance to you that you would like to highlight?
I will continue to be very active in public education in the area of anti-corruption through the ACLP. In addition, I will be a representative of Allard in the Emeritus College at UBC.
This summer of 2020, I am engaged in research and writing on a number of law journal articles that reflect my key current interests in anti-corruption and integrity in sports governance: (i) a piece on Canada’s new Remediation (Deferred Prosecution) Agreement provisions in the Criminal Code (ii) an article on cryptocurrencies and money laundering, (iii) a study on reporting systems in various countries and sports contexts to address competition manipulation (match fixing) in sports.
When the current pandemic allows, I will also complete the work that I have been doing to organize a conference as part of Allard Law School’s 75th Anniversary celebration. The Conference will bring together leading participants to the successful organizing of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games. They will discuss best practices in the planning, building and hosting of the 2010 Games and how these contributed to the lasting positive economic, environmental and social legacies to the host communities in the Lower Mainland of BC. The Proceedings of this Olympic Legacies Conference will provide the final inputs to a book project that I have been working on for the last 15 years on sustainability and sports mega events. The completion of this book project will truly be an ‘Allard community event’ in the sense that it will involve former Allard students who contributed to the creation of the course on the Law of the Olympic Games that I created and taught at Allard from 2006-2011, as well as my research assistants who helped me to research and write the commissioned external reports that I authored or co-authored on the sustainability performance of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games.
What are your plans during retirement?
I do not plan to retire. I like to be busy. I will do some professional consulting work and will continue to serve as a member of the Boards of Directors of various public and private sector organizations whose mission and values are a good fit for me and where I might be able to make a significant contribution. For example, I currently am Vice-Chair of Transparency International Canada, and I am a Board Member of the International Centre for Criminal Law Reform and Criminal Justice. I also enjoy being a member of the Legacy Council of the Kay Meek Centre for the Performing Arts in my home town of West Vancouver as well as serve on the Council of my church, St. Francis in the Wood. Because I love to cycle, I have recently become an active member of HUB North Shore, the local safe cycling advocacy organization that operates where I live and play.
But my major new focus will be to be involved as grandpa for my three grandsons (and hopefully more grandkids to come). I am truly blessed with good health, a loving and supportive wife, great children with exciting lives who reside nearby, and wonderful extended family and friends. And maybe now I have some time to spare?