Category: UVic Law

Professor John Borrows has been appointed to the Nexen Chair in Indigenous Leadership at The Banff Centre. “The Nexen Chair leads research and reporting on critical success factors among Indigenous communities and organizations across Canada at the Peter Lougheed Leadership Institute at The Banff Centre,” reports The Muskrat, which also captured his reaction:

I am grateful for what I have learned about leadership from many Elders over the years. I am really looking forward to working with The Banff Centre, and putting these teachings into action. […] My work has focused on how Indigenous peoples’ own laws and values play a role in understanding leadership. I hope to continue to learn and share what I have learned about Indigenous peoples’ own laws during my tenure as the Nexen Chair in Indigenous Leadership.

Borrows has produced a number of groundbreaking works in the past 10 years including:

• Indigenous Legal Traditions in Canada: Report for the Law Commission of Canada (2006). Online
• Crown and Aboriginal Occupations of Land (2005). Online
• Canada’s Indigenous Constitution (2010). Call number: KE 7709 B673 2010
• Drawing out the Law: A Spirit’s Guide (2010). Call number: KE 7749 C6 B677 2010
• Seven Generations, Seven Teachings: Ending the Indian Act (2010). Online
• Recovering Canada : the resurgence of Indigenous law (2002). KE7709 B68 2002

The Law Library recognizes the need for available group study rooms in the Law Library specific to the needs of law students. In our efforts to ensure that the group rooms are accessible to all students while also meeting your specific needs, we will be implementing the following strategy:

• The 4 group study rooms on the second floor will be taken off the online booking system and reserved for law students only. Bookings will now be made with the front desk staff at the Law Library. Law students will be able to book these rooms 7 days in advance and will be required to show ID at the time of placing a booking. Bookings can be made in 2-hour blocks, and consecutive bookings can be made (by individual or group), subject to room availability. Please be considerate of others’ needs when making consecutive bookings. As always, we encourage students to make advance bookings, whenever possible, to ensure their needs are met.
• We are adding a 5th room to the number of group study rooms accessible to law students on the second floor. Room 252 will now become a group study room.
• Additionally, we recognize that law students may have immediate, day-of needs for a group room. To assist with these immediate needs, we are now adding room 184 (the Collaboration Room). Please note the Collaboration Room, as in the past, will sometimes be booked in advance for other users who specifically need to use the collaboration equipment in this room. Thus this may occasionally impact last-minute availability for law students.
• Room 172 will be a bookable group study room for law students. This room will also be reserved for day-of bookings only. There will be no advance bookings for this room for group work. Access to 172 will be limited to this term only as this will become the new Adaptive Technology Room as of January 2015.
• The remaining 3 group study rooms on the main floor will be open to all students on campus and available via the online booking system. Law students are free to book these rooms whenever available.

These changes will take effect October 14th in order to honor existing bookings. Also, as mentioned in previous communications, access to the group rooms will be available only to law students during the exam periods in December and April.

The Law Library is also working with law faculty and staff to produce a quick and easy system to determine available space in the Fraser Building for groups to meet. We hope to provide more information on this shortly.

Please note that study space is at a premium across campus for all students regardless of discipline. This current space allocation plan will be monitored in terms of usage statistics and assessed over the course of the year and adjusted as necessary.

We wish all students the very best for end-of-term exams and papers. We’re pleased to provide what we hope is a pleasant and welcoming space to study and work.

The law library may become busier at this time of year, as more students from other faculties seek study space here.

The law library is a shared space in the university, and everyone is welcome. The second floor of the law library is a quiet study area, and law library staff work to ensure it remains this way.

At this time of year students are able to book group study rooms up to a week in advance, via the front desk, and we encourage law students to take advantage of this opportunity to ensure study space in the law library. This will continue until the end of December exams and, we hope, will help to ensure you have space when you need it.