USask research chair shifts perspectives on constitutional law

Dr. Dwight Newman (DPhil) was recently appointed to a Tier 1 CRC in Rights, Communities, and Constitutional Law, with a focus on centring questions of constitutional law on communities alongside the individual.

“The big change I’m trying to make is to think about the rights of communities,” he said. “For example, I’ll be thinking about things like what does it mean for a religious community to claim rights as a community in addition to the freedom of religion rights that individuals might claim, and just what arises from that? These kinds of questions extend across a lot of different rights and freedoms.”

Newman has been a faculty member with USask’s College of Law since 2005 and served as the associate dean academic of the college from 2006 to 2009. In 2016, Newman was selected as a member of the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists of the Royal Society of Canada, and in 2022 he was a recipient of the Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medal in Saskatchewan. He was also recently awarded a King Charles III Coronation Medal for his contributions to the humanities and social sciences.

Newman, who earned his law degree at USask, has more than 200 publications attributed to his name, including 15 different books on various areas of the law. Newman’s writing has been cited in at least 14 Supreme Court of Canada decisions to date.

His fascination with constitutional law is long-standing, and he called the area “always really exciting” because of the way the people of Canada must directly interact with it.

Newman hopes to explore more of what he calls “forgotten freedoms,” freedoms that are entrenched in the Canadian constitution that haven’t received a lot of attention like freedom of thought, freedom of the press, and freedom of assembly, among others.

“The first one I ended up doing a little bit of writing on was freedom of thought,” he said. “Particularly with AI and some of the other technological developments in neuroscience, there are some real questions arising there.”

Newman previously held a Tier 2 CRC in Indigenous Rights in Constitutional and International Law. He said much of his new research builds from work he explored in his previous appointment. According to Newman, Canada already has instances of centring groups instead of individuals in questions of constitutional law, and some of those examples involve Indigenous groups.

“Indigenous rights are a context where we’ve already seen the importance of considering communities in constitutional law,” he said. “There’s still big questions that remain, nuanced things like who represents the community for legal purposes and what’s the scope of the community.”

Newman called the CRC appointment an honour to be recognized and also an opportunity to further important research on constitutional rights. He said there is responsibility with a chair of this nature to keep doing influential work.

Although the CRC appointment is relatively recent, Newman is already hard at work. He hopes to enlist more students and research assistants to explore this part of constitutional law with him.

Looking into the future, Newman wants to expand the resources and contexts available to lawyers, and said he hopes his work will contribute to the development and interpretation of constitutional law in this country.

“I think in law we have that particular audience, in a way that we have a possible direct contribution to policy contexts. That’s where I’d hope we see some impact,” Newman said. “I hope to keep contributing to public conversations as well. Law isn’t the easiest thing to always explain or make really accessible, but I always welcome the opportunity ... to help with the public understanding of the law.”