Professor Lionel Smith Awarded 2014 Killam Fellowship

Lionel Smith, Professor of Private Law in The Dickson Poon School of Law, has been awarded a 2014 Killam Research Fellowship.

Fellowships are awarded each year, normally to full professors at Canadian universities (Professor Smith, is also Director of the Paul-André Crépeau Centre for Private and Comparative Law and a James McGill Professor at the Faculty of Law of McGill University) who have an outstanding reputation in their area of research. 

The fellowship provides two years of release from teaching and administrative duties. Professor Lionel Smith's Killam award will allow him to carry out a two-year full-time research project entitled Conflicts of Interest and Fiduciary Obligations. This legal field has expanded at a rapid pace, leading to difficulties and confusion both in private law and public policy.

As Professor Smith explains, 'the recent proliferation of rules and policies on conflicts of interest reflects an increasing concern about the importance of the disinterested exercise of judgment and power, in a wide range of circumstances. My research aims to explore the normative foundations of this concern. I aim to develop a rational legal framework to guide jurists of all legal traditions through the complex challenges of conflicts of interest.'

Professor Lionel Smith studied law at Western University and Cambridge University before becoming a law clerk to Mr Justice John Sopinka at the Supreme Court of Canada. He conducted his doctoral research at Oxford under the supervision of Professor Peter Birks. He taught law at the University of Alberta (1991-1992; 1994-1996) and Oxford University (1996-2000) before being appointed to McGill University in 2000. Professor Smith was appointed Professor of Private Law at The Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London in 2012.

Find out more about the 2014 Killam Research Fellowships on the Canada Council for the Arts website.