From: Trevor Young, Vice-President & Provost
Date: January 29, 2025
Re: Update on the Dean, Faculty of Law (PDAD&C #21)

I am writing to let you know that University Professor Jutta Brunnée, Dean of the Faculty of Law, has informed me that she will not seek reappointment when her current term as Dean ends on December 31, 2025. Professor Brunnée serves as the James Marshall Tory Dean’s Chair at the Faculty of Law and will be returning to her research and teaching full-time in 2026. While University Professor Brunnée will be sorely missed as an administrative leader, I am excited for her return to critical scholarship in the important areas of climate change and international law.

As Dean, University Professor Brunnée has led the Faculty through a period of post-COVID transition, solidifying the community in its new home, the Jackman Law Building, and overseeing major changes. Led by the Dean, the Faculty of Law completed a new academic plan (2023-2028) that is rooted in its values of scholarly excellence and inclusive community. Under her stewardship, seven new faculty members have joined the school thus far and its QS ranking has steadily risen, now 17th in the world, reflecting the Faculty’s incredible research and reputation for teaching in a range of areas from corporate governance to private law to public law to Indigenous law. The Dean has been an advocate for the Faculty, engaging alumni and the profession in support for the school’s initiatives, including several new endowed chairs and funding for academic projects and scholarships.

Focusing on student experience, University Professor Brunnée provided committed leadership on inclusive excellence and belonging, revitalized the Faculty’s clinical and experiential learning programs, and led strategic efforts to leverage the linkages between these and its academic programs for the benefit of all law students. Professor Brunnée has also continued to foster alumni networks for the benefit of graduates and current students with high-profile speaker events from government, academia, and corporate life, and the recent ongoing celebrations of the Faculty’s 75th anniversary.

With the steady, wise, and consultative leadership of University Professor Brunnée, the Faculty has continued to be the preeminent law school in Canada, attracting the most brilliant legal minds as students and faculty, and contributing cutting-edge legal thought to the contemporary issues and cases in Canada and around the world. Her leadership and commitment to the Faculty’s pivotal role in training lawyers and leaders for an era of rapid change has positioned the Faculty of Law for further success. As a world-leading scholar of international environmental law, Professor Brunnée’s work on the general theory of international law will be critical in addressing global warming and its impacts in a complex, precarious world.

Please join me in thanking University Professor Jutta Brunnée for her dedicated service over the past four years. More information about the search for a new Dean of the Faculty of Law will be forthcoming.