He will hold the post until December 31, 2030
The Henry N.R. Jackman Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto has appointed JD program associate dean Christopher Essert as its new dean.
He takes up the role on February 1, 2026 and will remain in it until December 31, 2030. Prior to this appointment, he was the associate dean of the University of Toronto’s JD program for five years.
Essert commenced with the university in 2018 after making the jump from the Queen’s University Faculty of Law, where he was an associate professor. His research concentrates on private law, property and tort theory, as well as legal and political philosophy; he has taught a course in property law and conducted a workshop on legal theory.
A NSERC and SSHRC funded researcher, he co-wrote Tort Law: Cases and Materials with Jason Neyers and Ernest J Weinrib. Essert also authored the Property Law in the Society of Equals monograph. His work has been published in Philosophy & Public Affairs, Legal Theory, Law & Philosophy, Jurisprudence, the McGill Law Journal, and the University of Toronto Law Journal.
Essert has been a visiting professor at the UCLA School of Law and a visiting academic at the Auckland Law School. He received Queen’s University Society of Law Students Teaching Award in 2014.
He is on the International Advisory Panel for the American Law Institute’s project on the Restatement of the Law (Fourth), Property and has been consulted on the National Housing Strategy. In addition, he is a School of Cities faculty affiliate.
Essert received his BA from McGill University, his JD at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, and his LLM and JSD at Yale Law School. He clerked with Justice Michel Bastarache at the Supreme Court of Canada and articled at Paliare Roland LLP.
His appointment as the Henry N.R. Jackman Faculty of Law dean followed a comprehensive global recruitment process.
