Mark Walters

Mark Walters began his five-year term as Dean of Law on July 1, 2019. He is recognized as one of Canada’s leading scholars in public and constitutional law, legal history and legal theory. Dean Walters has researched and published extensively in these areas, with a special emphasis on the rights of Indigenous peoples, institutional structures and the history of legal ideas. His work on the rights of Indigenous peoples, focused on treaty relations between the Crown and Canada’s Indigenous nations, has been cited by the Supreme Court of Canada, as well as by courts in Australia and New Zealand. 

He held the distinguished F.R. Scott Chair in Public and Constitutional Law at the McGill University Faculty of Law from July 1, 2016, until June 30, 2019. For the 17 years before that, he was a faculty member at Queen’s Law, where he was appointed the school’s the inaugural Associate Dean of Graduate Studies and Research, led the 2008 launch of its doctoral program and co-chaired the committee that developed its 2014-2019 strategic plan. Previously, he taught at Oxford University after practising law Toronto in the area of Aboriginal title and treaty rights. 

Over his academic career, he has held a number of fellowships, including the H.L.A. Hart Fellowship (Oxford University, 2013), the Herbert Smith Fellowship (Cambridge University 2013 and 2005), the Sir Neil MacCormick Fellowship (University of Edinburgh, 2010), and the Jules and Gabrielle Léger Fellowship (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, 2002-2003). He received the Canadian Association of Law Teachers’ Award for Academic Excellence in 2006.