Jessica Eisen, BA (Political Science and Human Rights Studies), JD, LLM, SJD

About

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.

Research

• Animal Law
• Charter of Rights & Freedoms
• Comparative Constitutional Law

Selected Publications

• “The Unwritten Constitution and the More-than-Human World” Review of Constitutional Studies (forthcoming 2025)
  
  
• “Our More-than-Human Constitutions” Review of Constitutional Studies (with Lindsay Borrows; forthcoming 2025)
  
  
• “Constitutional Animal Protection: Written Provisions and Unwritten Principles” in Anne Peters, Kristen Stilt & Saskia Stucki, eds, Oxford Handbook of Global Animal Law (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2025)
  
  
• “The Case Method After Formalism: A Reflection on the Strangeness of Law, Toronto Metropolitan University Law Review (forthcoming 2025)
  
  
• “Multiple Consciousness and Philosophical Method” (2024) 63:1 Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review 59
  
  
• “Analogy and Alterity” in Chloë Taylor, ed, Routledge Companion to Gender and Animals (2024) 115
  
  
• “Of Linchpins and Bedrock: Hope, Despair, and Pragmatism in Animal Law” (2022) 72:4 University of Toronto Law Journal 468
  
  
• “Litigating Animal Captivity: Habeas Corpus in the Carceral State” in Lori Gruen & Justin Marceau, eds, Carceral Logics: Connections Between Human Incarceration and Animal Confinement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022) 343
  
  
• “Private Farms, Public Power: Governing the Lives of Dairy Cattle” (2020) 16:2 Journal of Food Law & Policy 158
  
  
• “Dairy Tales: Global Portraits of Milk and Law” (2020) 16:1 Journal of Food Law & Policy 1 (with Xiaoqian Hu & Erum Sattar)
  
  
• “Down on the Farm: Status, Exploitation and Agricultural Exceptionalism” in Charlotte Blattner, Kendra Coulter & Will Kymlicka, eds, Animal Labour: A New Frontier of Interspecies Justice? (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019) 139
  
  
• “Milked: Nature, Necessity, and American Law” (2019) 34 Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice 71
  
  
• “Feminist Jurisprudence for Farmed Animals” (2019) 5 CJCCL 1
  
  
• "Beyond Rights and Welfare: Democracy, Dialogue, and the Animal Welfare Act" (2018) 51 U Mich JL Reform 469
  
  
• “Constituting Bodies into the Future: Toward a Relational Theory of Intergenerational Justice” (2018) 51 UBC L Rev 1 (with Roxanne Mykitiuk & Dayna Nadine Scott)
  
  
• "Animals in the Constitutional State" (2018) 15 ICON 909
  
  
• “Milk and Meaning: Puzzles in Posthumanist Method” in Mathilde Cohen & Yoriko Otomo, eds, Making Milk: The Past, Present and Future of our Primary Food (London: Bloomsbury, 2017)
  
  
• “Grounding Equality in Social Relations: Suspect Classification, Analogous Grounds and Relational Theory” (2017) 42 Queen’s LJ 41
  
  
• “Protection and Status of Animals” in Rainer Grote, Frauke Lachenmann & Rüdiger Wolfrum, eds, The Max Planck Encyclopedia of Comparative Constitutional Law (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016) (with Kristen Stilt)
  
  
• "Perspectives on the Global" (2014) 4 Transnat'l Legal Theory 502
  
  
• "On Shaky Grounds: Poverty and Analogous Grounds under the Charter" (2013) 2 Can J of Poverty L 1
  
  
• "Liberating Animal Law: Breaking Free from Human-Use Typologies" (2010) 17 Animal L 59
  
  
• "Rethinking Affirmative Action Analysis in the Wake of Kapp: A Limitations-Interpretation Approach" (2008) 6 J L & Equality 1

LAW 435A - Constitutional Law

An introduction to the legal framework governing the exercise of power by the legislative, executive and judicial branches of the Canadian state, covering who has the power to make new laws, the power to implement laws, and the power to adjudicate disputes. The limitations imposed on these powers by the rules of federalism and by the provisions of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms are also considered. An introduction to the constitutional provisions concerning Indigenous peoples in Canada is also included.

LAW 435B - Constitutional Law

An introduction to the legal framework governing the exercise of power by the legislative, executive and judicial branches of the Canadian state, covering who has the power to make new laws, the power to implement laws, and the power to adjudicate disputes. The limitations imposed on these powers by the rules of federalism and by the provisions of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms are also considered. An introduction to the constitutional provisions concerning Indigenous peoples in Canada is also included.

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