Jasminka Kalajdzic, Assistant Professor

Biography

Jasminka Kalajdzic joined the Faculty of Law in 2009 after twelve years in private practice as a civil litigator. Her current research focuses on three areas: access to justice; class actions; and the legal issues related to national security, including human rights and the laws of evidence. She has published a number of recent peer-reviewed articles on judicial approaches to settlement standards in class actions, national security privilege, and access to justice mechanisms for wrongfully accused terrorism suspects.

Professor Kalajdzic has presented her research at a number of conferences, including the 5th Globalization of Class Actions and Mass Litigation in The Hague (December 2011), the 2011 Law and Society Association Annual Meeting in San Francisco, and the 40th Annual Consumer and Commercial Law Workshop at the University of Toronto (October 2010).  She organized a two-day conference held in March 2011 entitled "Accessing Justice: Appraising Class Actions Ten Years After Dutton, Hollick & Rumley".  Over 80 academics, practising lawyers, judges and students attended the event.  A special volume of the Supreme Court Law Review and a book containing conference papers, of which she is the General Editor, were published in October 2011.

Professor Kalajdzic teaches Access to Justice and Evidence, and was selected by students for a teaching award in 2007. She is the Articles Editor for the Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice, the faculty's refereed law journal.  In July 2011, she was appointed to a three-year term as a member of the Law Foundation of Ontario's Class Proceedings Committee.
 

Key Works

Books

Accessing Justice: Appraising Class Actions Ten Years After Dutton, Hollick & Rumley (LexisNexis, 2011)
 

Journal Articles

• “Accessing Justice: Appraising Class Actions Ten Years After Dutton, Hollick & Rumley” (2011) 53 S.C.L.R. (2d) 3-16.
• "Self-Interest, Public Interest and the Interests of the Absent Client: Legal Ethics and Class Action Praxis" (2011) 49:2 Osgoode Hall L.J. 1-37
• "Setting Standards: Evidence, Proof and the Certification Motion" (2011) 8:2 Class Action 514-521
• "Consumer (In)Justice: Reflections on Canadian Consumer Class Actions" (2011) 50 Can. Bus. L.J. 356-375
• “Outsiders: The Nature and Impact of Secrecy at the Iacobucci Inquiry” (2010) 36 Queen’s L. J. 161-201
• “Litigating State Secrets:  A Comparative Study of National Security Privilege in Canadian, U.S. and English Civil Cases” (2010) 41:2 Ottawa Law Review 289-323
• “Access to a Just Result: Revisiting Settlement Standards and Cy Près Distributions” (2010) 6:1 Can. Class Action Review 217-253
• “Access to Justice for the Wrongfully Accused in National Security Investigations” (2009) 27 Windsor Y.B. Access Just. 171-205
• Review Essay of Defending Humanity: When Force is Justified and Why by George P. Fletcher and Jens David Ohlin (2009) 2 Journal of Parliamentary and Political Law 571-585 (with the Hon. Bill Graham)
• “Class Actions in Canada:  Country Report Prepared for the Globalization of Class Actions Conference” (2009) 622 Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 41-52 (lead author, with W.A. Bogart & I. Matthews)
• “Class Actions in Canada: Country Report Update” (December 2008).  Available online: (Stanford University website)
• “Cameron’s Rejection of a Duty of Care to Problem Gamblers:  A Problematic Defence of the Gaming Industry” (2008) 12 Gaming Law Review 55-59
• “Class Actions in Canada:  A National Procedure in a Multi-Jurisdictional Society?” (Paper prepared for the Globalization of Class Actions Conference, Oxford University, December 2007) (with W.A. Bogart and I. Matthews).  Available online: (Stanford University website)
•  “Do Ontario and Its Gaming Venues Owe a Duty of Care to Problem Gamblers?” (2006) 10 Gaming Law Review 552-570 (with W.V. Sasso)

Conference Presentations (2011-2012)

• 2012 International Association of Procedural Law World Conference on Civil Procedure, Moscow (September)
• 2012 Law and Society Association Annual Meeting, Hawaii (July)
• 9th Annual Osgoode Symposium on Class Actions (Toronto, April 2012)
• 5th Annual Conference on the Globalization of Class Actions , The Hague (December 2011)
• IMF Shareholder Class Action Conference, Sydney (November 2011)
• 2011 Law and Society Association Annual Meeting, San Francisco (July)
• Symposium on Funding the Charter Challenge, University of Toronto (April 2011)
• Accessing Justice: Appraising Class Actions Ten Years After Dutton, Hollick & Rumley, Univ. of Windsor (March 2011)
• Middle Income Access to Civil Justice Colloquium, University of Toronto (February 2011)

 Newspapers

• "Are Class Actions Trying To Do Too Much?" Law Times (March 5, 2012) p. 7
• “Anti-Terrorism Practices Create Victims” The Lawyers Weekly (May 22, 2009) (lead author, with Alex Neve)
• “Defusing the Ticking Time Bomb” Law Times, May 4, 2009 (with Reem Bahdi)
• “Justice demands that we now repatriate Omar Khadr” The Globe and Mail (January 26, 2009) (lead author, with Allan Rock)