Dr. Dwight Newman, KC DPhil

DPhil (Oxford – Philosophy of Law) 2005
MPhil (Oxford) 2004
BCL (Oxford) 2002
MSc (SOAS/London – Finance and Financial Law) 2022
JD (Saskatchewan) 1999
MATS (Regent College – History of Christianity) 2022
BA (Regina – Economics) 1996

Dwight Newman, KC, DPhil (Oxford) is Professor of Law and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Rights, Communities, and Constitutional Law at the University of Saskatchewan, where he has been on faculty since 2005. He served the maximum two terms in a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Rights in Constitutional and International Law from 2013 to 2023. He has also served a term as Associate Dean Academic. He has over 200 publications of various types, including 15 books. His writing is regularly cited as an authority in judicial decisions, and he has been cited in many Supreme Court of Canada judgments. He has been on academic fellowships or visitorships at a range of prestigious institutions, including Cambridge, Oxford, l’Université Laval, McGill, l’Université de Montréal, Princeton, the University of Toronto, and University of the Witwatersrand (Wits). He is a member of the bars of Ontario and Saskatchewan and he carries on a selective constitutional law practice consistent with his academic role (he is not available to provide legal services directly to members of the general public and will not respond to attempts to contact him). He was a law clerk to Chief Justice Antonio Lamer and Justice Louis LeBel at the Supreme Court of Canada and has also worked for Justice Canada and for human rights organizations in Hong Kong and South Africa. His initial studies were in his home province of Saskatchewan (BA in Economics at Regina and JD at Saskatchewan), and he completed three graduate degrees at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar (BCL, MPhil, DPhil). He also completed two additional graduate degrees that deepen his interdisciplinary understandings and sense on the social place of law (MATS in History of Christianity and MSc in Finance and Financial Law). He was previously a Munk Senior Fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, and he is a Senior Fellow at Cardus. He serves as a Commissioner of the Law Reform Commission of Saskatchewan, and he has served in various board or committee roles, including at different times as member of the Board of Directors of the Sylvia Fedoruk Canadian Centre for Nuclear Innovation Inc, voting member of the Canadian Bar Association (CBA) national council, member of the International Law Association (ILA) Committee on the Implementation of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Co-Chair of the American Society of International Law (ASIL) Rights of Indigenous Peoples Interest Group, Vice-President of the Canadian Law and Society Association, member of the Commonwealth Lawyers Association Public Law Committee, member and Vice-President of the board of an organization providing family-like homes for persons with intellectual disabilities, and member of the boards of organizations involved in legal education and public interest litigation. He has received awards for his broader contributions, in addition to his having been designated a King’s Counsel (KC, originally designated a QC in 2018), that include a Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medal and a King Charles III Coronation Medal. He also has a longstanding role as a volunteer judge for the Jessup International Law Moot, regularly judging up to advanced rounds in Washington DC, and previously competed for the USask team (top English-language oralist in Canada, Dillard Prize for Memorials, Baxter Prize for best respondent memorial in the world). In addition to all Canadian provinces and territories, he has travelled to over 90 countries.

Dr. Newman actively supervises graduate students within the research program associated with his Canada Research Chair and welcomes inquiries from prospective graduate students who have focused ideas that fit within the theme of Rights, Communities, and Constitutional Law (especially on historical development of the interaction of individual rights and the community, development of underdeveloped rights and freedoms (“forgotten freedoms”), and related theory questions).