It has been an impressive year for Sujit Choudhry. A professor in the Faculty of Law, Choudhry has recently received both a Trudeau Foundation Fellowship and an appointment to the United Nations mediation roster, a panel of experts set to be deployed to assist with a ceasefire or peace and constitutional negotiations.
Choudhry said he will use his $225,000 Trudeau Fellowship to transform Canada into an innovative and leading international centre for the study and practice of post-conflict constitution-making. Choudhry’s new role at the UN complements his position at U of T where he is a full-time member.
“It’s nice to be asked, and it dovetails into a lot of teaching and research I do at U of T so it fits in nicely,” said Choudhry while speaking about his appointment to the United Nations. A scholar in comparative constitutional law, Chouldhry has consulted on post-conflict constitutional processes in Nepal, Sri Lanka, and South Africa.
Choudry believes there is a pressing need for Canadian knowledge in peace negotiations. “In many situations, the central issue in peace negotiations is the adoption of a new constitution,” says Choudhry. “But while constitutions matter centrally to the peaceful resolution of civil wars, we do not always know whether the pre-existing constitution was itself the cause of the civil war, or merely a consequence of broader forces that led to civil war. Canadian expertise is increasingly in demand to address these issues.”
With a B.Sc. in Cell and Molecular Developmental Biology, Choudhry had initial plans of entering medicine. “…I studied biology and I got very interested in bioethics, the ethical issues surrounding biotechnology. I approached Peter Singer, who at that time was the first year professor at medical school. The major medical project I worked with him for was a legal medical project on the new package of legislation adapted in Ontario, governing consent to treatment.
“…I found that legal reasons seemed to be quite imprecise in comparison to what I was used to dealing with in biology. The amount of reading was enormous compared to what I was used to. Although it was analytical, it wasn’t as precise as mathematics or science so that was challenging. And of course, getting used to the writing was a real change.”
He joined U of T as assistant professor in 1999 but has a long connection with the institution. “I feel like I’ve spent my whole life more or less along Bloor Street. I went to the University of Toronto Schools and my father was a professor at U of T.”
Choudhry holds the Scholl Chair and is associate dean of the first-year program at the Faculty of Law. He is cross-appointed to the Department of Political Science and the School of Public Policy and Governance. He is a senior fellow of Massey College and a member of the University of Toronto Centre for Ethics.
