Our More Than Human Constitutions: RCS Special Double Issue Launch

The Centre for Constitutional Studies is thrilled to be hosting a book launch for our newly released special double issue of the Review of Constitutional Studies (RCS 29:2 and 29:3). This special issue, which is titled "Our More Than Human Constitutions," was guest edited by Professors Jessica Eisen (University of Alberta) and Lindsay Borrows (Queen's University). It comprises contributions from scholars in an array of academic fields -- including Indigenous law, environmental law, and animal law -- on the ways in which our legal orders, Indigenous and state, approach the regulation of the more-than-human.

Our launch event for this special issue will feature Professors Eisen and Borrows, alongside several of the issue's contributors: Hannah Askew (Sierra Club BC), Professor Darcy Lindberg (University of Victoria), Professor Pamala Spalding (University of Victoria), and Professor Stepan Wood (University of British Columbia).

This event will be hosted online via Zoom on Wednesday, November 19, 2025 from 12:00PM-1:00PM. To register for the webinar, please click the red button on the right side of this page, or follow this link.

Speakers

Jessica Eisen

Associate Professor, University of Alberta Faculty of Law

Jessica Eisen is an Associate Professor at the University of Alberta Faculty of Law. Her research interests include animals and the law, constitutional and comparative constitutional law, equality and antidiscrimination law, feminist legal theory, intergenerational justice, and law and social movements. Professor Eisen’s research has been published in the Journal of Law and Equality, Animal Law Review, Canadian Journal of Poverty Law, Transnational Legal Theory, Queen’s Law Journal, ICON: International Journal of Constitutional Law, University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform, University of Toronto Law Journal, and elsewhere. She has studied at Barnard College, Columbia University (BA, Political Science and Human Rights Studies, 2004); The University of Toronto Faculty of Law (JD, 2009); Osgoode Hall Law School (LLM, 2014); and Harvard Law School (SJD, 2019); and has worked at WeirFoulds LLP, the Ontario Ministry of Labour, and the Constitutional Law Branch of the Ministry of the Attorney General for Ontario.

Lindsay Borrows

Assistant Professor, Queens University Faculty of Law

Lindsay Borrows is an Assistant Professor at Queen’s University, Faculty of Law, where she teaches special topics in the field of Indigenous law. Previously she worked as a lawyer and researcher at the Indigenous Law Research Unit (University of Victoria Faculty of Law), and as a staff lawyer at West Coast Environmental Law. In both positions she provided legal support to Indigenous communities and organizations engaged in the revitalization of their own laws for application in contemporary contexts. She has worked on community-engaged projects with different legal traditions including Anishinaabe, Denezhu, Haíɫzaqv, Nlaka’pamux, nuučaan̓uł, St’át’imc, Syilx and Tsilhqot’in. She is particularly passionate about the possibilities within land-based legal education, and since 2014 she has co-facilitated various ‘on-the-land’, community-engaged Anishinaabe Law Camps in partnership with different law schools and communities across Ontario. Her book Otter’s Journey Through Indigenous Language and Law (UBC Press, 2018) explores the connections between language and law. Lindsay is Anishinaabe and a member of the Chippewas of Nawash First Nation.

Hannah Askew

Executive Director, Sierra Club BC

Hannah Askew is an environmental lawyer, and is currently the executive director of Sierra Club British Columbia. For the past 10 years, she has been deeply involved in learning from Indigenous communities about their systems of law and governance. She worked as a researcher on Anishinaabe and Coast Salish legal orders for the Indigenous Law Research Unit at the University of Victoria and also researched Tsilhqot’in and Ktunaxa law as part of the RELAW project (Revitalizing Indigenous Law for Land, Air and Water) at West Coast Environmental Law. The knowledge received from Indigenous colleagues and mentors has been transformative for Hannah and influences every aspect of her work. Hannah holds a master of arts in both history and anthropology, from the University of Toronto and McGill University, respectively, as well as a law degree from Osgoode Hall Law School. She was born on Anishinaabe territory into a family of English and Scottish descent.

Darcy Lindberg

Assistant Professor, University of Victoria Faculty of Law

Darcy Lindberg is mixed-rooted nêhiyaw (Plains Cree) from Wetaskiwin, with his family relations coming from maskwâcîs in Alberta and the Battleford-area in Saskatchewan. He teaches primarily within the JD/JID Program. He previously taught at the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Law. He has taught or teaches courses on nêhiyaw constitutionalism and constitutional traditions, ecological governance and Indigenous laws, nêhiyaw treaties and treaty making, the foundations of Indigenous legal orders, and Canadian constitutional law. His research focuses very much on these same topics: it centers nêhiyaw law, ecological governance through Indigenous legal orders, gender and Indigenous ceremonies, comparative approaches in nêhiyaw and Canadian constitutionalism, and Indigenous treaty making generally.

Pamala Spalding

Assistant Professor, University of Victoria Indigenous Studies program

Pamela Spalding is a Métis Canadian (Scottish, Cree and Ojibwe of the Red River, Manitoba territory), and an enrolled citizen of Métis Nation BC and the Métis Nation of Greater Victoria. She is an ethnobotanist whose research examines dimensions of Indigenous people’s relationships with plants, ecosystems, resource stewardship, Indigenous feminism, Indigenous legal orders, and customary legal landscapes. Her collaborative research with T’Sou-ke Nation over the last decade indicates that the magnitude of plant use in the traditional economies and lifeways of Indigenous peoples (particularly women) across North America warrants a much larger discussion about Indigenous plant use and ecosystem management in Canadian, US, and Indigenous governance. She is a former Mellon postdoctoral fellow with the Center for Global Indigenous Cultures and Environmental Justice at Syracuse University where she was introduced to how Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee relationships with the more than human world are expressed in law.

Stepan Wood

Professor, University of British Columbia Allard School of Law

Professor Stepan Wood’s research relates to sustainability, globalization, transnational governance, voluntary environmental standards, climate change, environmental law, corporate social responsibility and social justice. He holds the Canada Research Chair in Law, Society and Sustainability at the Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia, where he also directs the Centre for Law & the Environment. His current projects relate to the rights of nature, environmental rights, homelessness, the reception of English law in colonial British Columbia, and the future of the International Organization for Standardization.

Event Date(s):

November 19, 2025, 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm

Event Details