Associate Professor - On leave
wendy.adams [at] mcgill.ca (Email)
My research interests include commodification, post humanist approaches to animal-human relations, critical legal pluralism, and law and popular culture. I am interested in analyzing the ways in which we govern ourselves, and our obligations to each other, with reference to legal norms that originate within popular culture rather than the political state.
I focus on works of critical dystopia, particularly the bio-punk genre, to explore a discursive understanding of law as knowledge rather than reified rules. From this perspective, law is understood as normative aspiration, an "alternity", to use Cover's term, that takes us from听the world-that-is to the world-that-ought-to-be.
"Playing" within popular culture is more than entertainment. As we use narrative fiction to explore the normative possibilities open to us, we are quite literally "playing for keeps".
Education
LL.M. (University of Michigan) 2000
J.D. (University of Toronto) 1996
Employment
Resident Faculty Fellow, IPLAI, 2012-2015
Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, 91社区, 2008-
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law, 91社区, 2003-2008
Assistant Professor, University of Western Ontario, Faculty of Law, 1999-2003
Clerk to the Honourable Mr. Justice Iacobucci, Supreme Court of Canada, 1998-1999
Articling Student, Torys, 1996-1997
Areas of interest
Commodification; Post-humanist approaches to animal-human relations; Critical legal pluralism; Law and popular culture.
Publications
Adams, Wendy. . 218 pages. Routledge, 2017.
Adams, Wendy. "鈥淚 Made a Promise to a Lady鈥�: Critical Legal Pluralism as Improvised Law in Buffy the Vampire Slayer" Critical Studies in Improvisation / 脡tudes critiques en improvisation [Online], 6 16 Jun 2010
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Adams, W.A., 鈥淗uman subjects and animal objects: animals as 'other' in law鈥� (2009), 3 Journal of Animal Law and Ethics 29-51.
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Adams, W.A., 鈥淎 Transdisciplinary Ontology of Innovation Governance鈥� (2008), 16 Artificial Intelligence and Law 147 -184.
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Adams, W.A., 鈥淒eterminate/Indeterminate Duality: The Necessity of a Temporal Dimension in Legal Classification鈥� (2006), 44 Alberta Law Review 403 鈥� 428.
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Adams, W.A., "Confronting the Patentability Line in Biotechnological Innovation" (2004), 41 Canadian Business Law Journal 393 - 412.
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Adams, W.A., "There is no "there" there: Intel v. Hamidi and the Creation of New Property Rights Online" (2004), 40 Canadian Business Law Journal 87 - 108.
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Gold, E.R., Adams, W.A., Castle, D. et al., "The Unexamined Assumptions of Intellectual Property: Adopting an Evaluative Approach to Patenting Biotechnological Innovation" (2004), 18 Public Affairs Quarterly 273.
Gold, E.R. and Adams, W.A., "The Monsanto Decision: The Edge or the Wedge?", 19 Nature Biotechnology 587 (2001) [cited by Iacobucci, Bastarache, Arbour and LeBel JJ. (dissenting in part) in Monsanto Canada Inc. v. Schmeiser, 2004 SCC 34]
Adams, W.A., "Beyond Trade Mark: Common Law Property Rights in Domain Names" (2003), 52 Intellectual Property Forum 10 - 19.
Adams, W.A., "The Myth of Patent Neutrality: Property Rights, Animal Rights and Animal Welfare in Commissioner of Patents v. President and Fellows of Harvard College" (2003), 39 Canadian Business Law Journal 1 - 34.
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Adams, W.A., "Intellectual Property Protection in Global Networks: The Implications of Protection Ahead of the Curve" (2002), 10 International Journal of Law and Information Technology 71 - 132.
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Adams, W.A., "Personal Property Law and Information Assets: Rehabilitation and Relevance" (2002), 36 Can. Bus. L.J. 267 - 291.
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Gold, E.R. and Adams, W.A., "Reconciling Private Benefit and Public Risk in Biotechnology: Xenotransplantation as a Case Study in Consent" (2002), Health Law Journal 31 - 76. 听
Adams, W.A., "Secondary Markets for Copyrighted Works and the Ownership Divide: Reconciling Competing Intellectual and Personal Property Rights" (2002), 37 Canadian Business Law Journal 321 - 356.
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Adams, W.A., "In Search of a Defence of the Transnational Human Rights Paradigm: May Jus Cogens Norms be Invoked to Create Implied Exceptions in Domestic Immunity Statutes?", in Craig Scott, ed., Torture as Tort: Comparative Perspectives on the Development of Transnational Human Rights Litigation (Oxford, U.K.: Hart Publishing, June 2001).
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Adams, W.A. and Takach, G.G.S., "Insecure Transactions: Deficiencies in the Treatment of Technology Licenses in Commercial Transactions Involving Secured Debt or Bankruptcy" (2000), 33 Can. Bus. L.J. 321-372. 听
Adams, W.A., "Same-sex Relationships and Anglo-Canadian Choice of Law: An Argument for Universal Validity" (1996), 34 Can. Y.B. Int. L. 103-136.
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