Biography

Richard Jochelson is the Dean of Law at the Faculty of Law, University of Manitoba. He holds a Ph.D. in Law from Osgoode Hall Law School at York University, a Master of Laws from the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, a Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of Calgary Faculty of Law (Gold Medal), and a Bachelor of Science in Zoology (with Distinction), also from the University of Calgary.  He served his articling year as a clerk at the Alberta Court of Appeal and Court of Queen’s Bench, before working at one of Canada’s largest law firms. He taught criminal law for 10 years at the University of Winnipeg prior to joining the University of Manitoba’s Faculty of Law.

Teaching Profile

Since 2006, Dr. Jochelson has developed an accomplished teaching record at the post-secondary level, first at the University of Winnipeg and since July 1, 2016, at the University of Manitoba’s Faculty of Law. During  his time at Robson Hall, he has developed a student-centered pedagogy which is responsive to student needs, and which permits the course to be formatted to students’ talents. While the academic rigour of the course is maintained, with the curriculum being curated by Dr. Jochelson, the delivery of the course and evaluation is flexible and sensitive to student learning preferences. Students are encouraged to choose their means of evaluations within the parameters of Faculty guidelines, which might include seminar presentations, failsafe exams, papers, short papers, a final exam or any combination of these. Dr. Jochelson is committed to the principles of universal design, access for all, and innovative pedagogical design. The students are also surveyed as to their preference for use of technology in the classroom and the form of instruction is tailored to student desires in this context as well. Dr. Jochelson has achieved excellent teaching evaluations and earned a Student Teacher Recognition (CATL) (2018) for excellence in student support. Beyond innovative classroom practice, Dr. Jochelson has demonstrated his interest and leadership in teaching by conducting research in pedagogy, having written peer reviewed works on professional orientations/practice in critical disciplines, on socio-legal approaches to teaching in law, on the use of trigger warnings in law school and on the use of technology in law school classrooms. His approach to teaching is to lead through collaboration with the students while maintaining an intellectual and analytical interest in teaching, technology, curriculum and the needs of professional legal practice.

Research Profile

As a researcher, Dr. Jochelson has disseminated over 70 publications. His sole-authored, published peer reviewed law journal articles, mainly deal with police powers and jurisprudential approaches to police powers and to the socio-legal placement of the laws of obscenity and indecency. He has also published more than 15 co-authored books and edited work demonstrating a commitment to advancing his collaborative approach to scholarship. Through such collaboration and team building, mainly in the disciplines of sociology and psychology he has been able to add interdisciplinary rigour to his research, developing deeper theoretical, empirical and experimental lenses to some of his studies.

The path of academic research he has followed speaks to his commitment to social justice and equality in Canada. This research program could be summarized as an interest in the administration of justice including jurisprudential approaches to police powers and deployment of state power; an interest in the tools and means in which the judiciary deploys power, including language, and with particular focus on the relationship between judges and jurors during the charge to the jury; an interest in the study of overinclusion or exclusion of vulnerable persons in the justice system and justice making, respectively, with an interest in disability and race in both cases; an interest in the ways the state regulates sexual freedom and deviance, the ways courts speak about sexual issues, the role judges play in discourses of sexual oppression and the role of difficult sexual speech and conduct in our understandings of justice in Canada; the role that concepts such as risk, precaution, visibility, threat, and similar concepts play in empowering state action or instantiating legal wrongdoing by courts; and the study of how to teach law in a manner that is doctrinally sound, but remaining open to the application of critical lenses.

Dr. Jochelson is the recipient as both Principal Investigator (PI) and Co-investigator (CI), of Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Grants in teams of four to six people. His research accomplishments display a talent for proliferation, Supreme Court and Appellate Court citation, organization, funding success, teamwork and mentorship of students and junior academics. He has developed a formula for success in working with others to achieve research output, and in leading research teams including his assembly of nearly 40 cross-Canada interdisciplinary scholars to help the research network that has become Robsoncrim.com (a leading research blog). Together, this collective of legal scholars has helped make the Criminal Law Edition of the Manitoba Law Journal one of Canada’s preeminent criminal law journals.

News and stories

Research Areas

  • Charter Issues in Criminal Law
  • Criminal Law and Procedure
  • Sexual Expression, Conduct and Work in Canada

 

Selected Publications

Refereed Books and Edited Collections/Volumes/Journal Editions (all refereed)

* indicates SSHRC Funded

Criminal Law Edition of the Manitoba Law Journal. 2021. Manitoba Law Journal. Volume 44(5) (Editors Jochelson, Ireland, Jaremko, Gacek)

Criminal Law Edition of the Manitoba Law Journal. 2021. Manitoba Law Journal. Volume 44(4) (Editors Jochelson, Ireland, Jaremko, Gacek)

Criminal Law Edition of the Manitoba Law Journal. 2021. Manitoba Law Journal. Volume 44(3) (Editors Jochelson, Ireland, Jaremko, Gacek)

Green Criminology and the Law. Palgrave Studies in Green Criminology series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2022 (Editors Gacek, Jochelson).

Law and Disability in Canada: Cases and Materials. Lexis-Nexis, 2021. (Jacobs, Ireland, Jochelson et al)

Sexual Regulation and the Law: a Canadian Perspective. 2019/20. (Editors Jochelson, Gacek). Demeter Press. <chapter contributions delineated below>

Privacy in Peril: Hunter v Southam and the Drift from Reasonable Search Protections. 2019. UBC Press (Jochelson, Ireland).

Criminal Law and Precrime: Legal Studies in Punishment and Surveillance in Anticipation of Criminal Guilt. 2018Routledge (Jochelson, Gacek, Menzie, Kramar, Doerksen).

Criminal Law Edition of the Manitoba Law Journal. 2019. Manitoba Law Journal. Volume 42(4) (Editors Jochelson, Ireland)

Criminal Law Edition of the Manitoba Law Journal. 2020. Manitoba Law Journal. Volume 43(3) (Editors Jochelson, Ireland, Jaremko, Gacek)

Criminal Law Edition of the Manitoba Law Journal. 2020. Manitoba Law Journal. Volume 43(4) (Editors Jochelson, Ireland, Jaremko, Gacek)

Criminal Law Edition of the Manitoba Law Journal. 2020. Manitoba Law Journal. Volume 43(5) (Editors Jochelson, Ireland, Jaremko, Gacek)

Criminal Law Edition of the Manitoba Law Journal. 2019. Manitoba Law Journal. Volume 42(3) (Editors Jochelson, Ireland)

Criminal Law Edition of the Manitoba Law Journal. 2018. Manitoba Law Journal. Volume 41(4) (Editors Jochelson, Ireland, Khoday)

Criminal Law Edition of the Manitoba Law Journal. 2018. Manitoba Law Journal. Volume 41(3) (Editors Jochelson, Ireland, Khoday)

Criminal Law Edition of the Manitoba Law Journal. 2017. Manitoba Law Journal. Volume 40(3) (Ireland, Khoday)

Visualizing Justice: Critical Perspectives on Visibility, Law, and Order. Annual Review of Interdisciplinary Justice Research. Volume 5. 2016 (Richard Jochelson, Kevin Walby, Michelle Bertrand).

The Disappearance of Criminal Law: Police Powers and the Supreme Court. 2015. Fernwood Books (Equally coauthored with Kirsten Kramar, with Mark Doerksen)

Thinking About Justice: A Book of Readings. 2011. Fernwood Books. (Gorkoff and Jochelson)

Sex and the Supreme Court: Obscenity and Indecency Law in Canada. 2011. Fernwood Books (Jochelson and Kramar)

Refereed Publications and Journal Articles

Melanie Murchison, Dr. Richard Jochelson, David Ireland, Tan Ciyilepe, Silas Koulack, Remote Learning in Law School During the Pandemic: A Canadian Survey (2022) 8(1) Canadian Journal of Comparative and Contemporary Law.

Dr. Michelle Bertrand, Prof David Ireland and Dr. Richard Jochelson, “Jury Selection Is Not Random Selection: A Methodological Critique of R. v. Kokopenace and a Recommended Solution” in Criminal Law Quarterly.” (2021) Criminal Law Quarterly 69 C.L.Q. 464

Dr. Richard Jochelson, Prof. David Ireland & Robson Hall law student Hannah Taylor, “Clearing Your History: A Review of Non-Consensual Distribution of Intimate Images in Canada and Future Responses” in the University of British Columbia Law Review – (2021) 54:3 UBC L Rev 763 Vol 54 No 3

Dr. Richard Jochelson, David Ireland, Melanie Murchison, Tan Ciyilepe, and Silas Koulak, “Students Face Acute Mental Health Needs During Pandemic Learning” for the Canadian Council of Law Deans on the Slaw online legal magazine (Dec 2, 2021) – see http://www.slaw.ca/2021/12/02/students-face-acute-mental-health-needs-during-pandemic-learning/

Dispensing Digital Justice: COVID-19, Courts, and the Potentially Diminishing Role of Jury Trials. 2021. IJR Volume 10. (Bertrand, Jochelson, Ireland)

Generation and Deployment of Common Law Police Powers by Canadian Courts and the Double-Edged Charter. 2020. Critical Criminology- an International Journal (Springer Nature Series) 28(1). 107-126. (Jochelson et al)

 “We have centuries of work undone by a few bone-heads”- A Review of Jury History and a Present Snapshot of Crown and Defence Counsel Perspectives on Bill C-75’s Elimination of Peremptory Challenges and Representativeness Issues. 2020. MLJ. 43. (Bertrand, Jochelson et al).

Propensities for Guilt and the Canadian Criminal Jury: Jury eligible participant studies across three charging scenarios and three fact patterns. 2020. Criminal Law Quarterly. 68 (Jochelson, Bertrand, Ireland, Desroches, Kerr- Donahue)

Animals as Something More Than Mere Property: Interweaving Green Criminology and Law. 2020. Social Sciences – an International Journal of MDPI. Volume 9. ISSN 2076-0760. (Gacek and Jochelson)

Critiquing the Conception of “Crimes Against Nature”: The Necessity for a New “Natural” Law. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology. October 2020. (Gacek J, Jochelson R, Dueck-Read A.) doi:10.1177/0306624X20967945

Reconstitutions of Harm: Novel Applications of the Labaye Test Since 2005.2019. Alberta Law Review. 56:4. (Jochelson, Gacek)

Exclusion of Evidence Under Section 24(2) of the Charter Post-Grant in the Years 2014-2017:A Comprehensive Analysis of 600 Cases. 2019.Criminal Law Quarterly. 67 (Johnson, Jochelson and Weir).

Prairie Vice: Reflecting on Robson’s Report of the Royal Commission on Charges Re Vice and of Graft Against the Police - A Winnipeg Study. 2020. Manitoba Law Journal. 42(2). (Jochelson, Laidlaw, Bertrand)

Mock-jurors’ self-reported understanding of Canadian judicial instructions (is not very good). 66(1 and 2). 2018. Criminal Law Quarterly (R. Jochelson, M. Bertrand).

Ruff Justice: Canine Cases and Judicial Law Making as an Instrument of Change to Animal Law. 2018. Animal Law Review. 24(1) (Jochelson and Gacek).

Law Student Responses to Innovation: A study of law student perspectives in respect of digital knowledge transmission, flipped classrooms, video capsules and other means of classroom dissemination. Underneath the Golden Boy. Volume 41(1). 2018 (Jochelson and Ireland)

 ‘Animal Justice’ and Sexual (Ab)use: Precautionary Governance of Bestiality in Canada. 2017. 40(3) Manitoba Law Journal (Jochelson and Gacek).

Reconsidering Legal Pedagogy: Assessing Trigger Warnings, Evaluative Instruments, and Articling Integration in Canada’s Modern Law School Curricula. Underneath the Golden Boy. Volume 42(1). 2019 (Equally first authored with Ireland and Gacek).

Legal Texts and ‘Bestial’ Acts: Shifting Legal Meanings of ‘Bestiality’ within Canadian Judicial Decisions 2017. Annual Review of Interdisciplinary Justice Research. Volume 6 (Jochelson and Gacek).

The Jury Representativeness Guarantee in Canada: The Curious Case of Disability and Justice Making. 2017 Journal of Ethics in Mental Health. V9. (R. Jochelson, M. Bertrand, L. Menzie).

Measuring Activism and Restraint or How to Conflate Doctrine with Activism – A Response to Professor Riddell’s Small Scale Judicial Output Study. 2016. Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice 58:1. 112. (Jochelson and Murchison)

An Empirical Analysis of 5 Years After Grant. Criminal Law Quarterly. 2015. Volume 63. (Jochelson, Huang and Murchison).

An Empirical Comparison of the Exclusion of Evidence Pre/Post 9/11: A Model of Judicial Discourse. Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice. 2015 vol. 57, no. 1. 115 (Jochelson and Murchison).

Let Law Be Law, and Let us Critique: Teaching Law to Undergraduate Students of Criminal Justice. Annual Review of Interdisciplinary Justice Research. 2015. Volume 4 (Jochelson).

Revisiting Representativeness in the Manitoban Criminal Jury. Underneath the Golden Boy- Manitoba Law Journal. 2015. 37 (2). 365 (Jochelson et al.)

Situating Exclusion of Evidence Analysis in Its Socio-Legal Place: A Tale of Judicial Populism. 2014 Crime, Law and Social Change. Vol. 61, No. 5. 541. (Jochelson and Kramar)

Searching and Seizing After 9/11 – Developing and Applying Empirical Methodology to Measure Judicial Output in the Supreme Court’s Section 8 Jurisprudence. 2013. Dalhousie Law Journal 35(1) 179 (1st author with coauthors Michael Weinrath and Melanie Murchison)

Mitigating the Protective Services Orientation in Criminal Justice: An Opening Salvo at the University of Winnipeg. 2013 Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice. 55(1). 1 (Jochelson and Kohm)

Essentialism Makes for Strange Bedmates: The Supreme Court Case of J.A. and the Intervention of LEAF. Windsor Yearbook Access to Justice. 2013. 30(1). 77 (Jochelson and Kramar)

Ancillary Issues with Oakes: The Development of the Waterfield Test and the Problem of Fundamental Constitutional Theory. 2013. Ottawa Law Review. Vol. 43, No. 3. 355 (Jochelson)

Governing through Precaution to Protect Equality and Freedom: Obscenity and Indecency Law in Canada after R. v. Labaye. 2013 Canadian Journal of Sociology. 36:4. 283 (Jochelson and Kramar)

Multidimensional Analysis of Judicial Decision-Making: Reframing Judicial Activism as the Study of Judicial Discourse (or taking the judgment out of the Judgment). Annual Review of Interdisciplinary Justice Research. 2011. Volume 2. 122 (First authored with second author Melanie Murchison)

Practicing Justice by Practicing Method: A Brief Rethinking of Feminist Analytics of Obscenity and Indecency Law in Canada. Annual Review of Interdisciplinary Justice Research. 2010. Volume 1. 26. (1st author, with second author Kirsten Kramar)

Multidimensional Analysis as a Window into Activism Scholarship: Searching for Meaning with Sniffer Dogs. Canadian Journal of Law and Society. 2009 24:2, 231 (sole author).

Trashcans and Constitutional Custodians: The Liminal Spaces of Privacy in the Wake of Patrick. (2009) Saskatchewan Law Review Volume 72 165-188 (sole author)

After Labaye: The Harm Test of Obscenity, the New Judicial Vacuum and the Relev nce of Familiar Voices. (2009) Alberta Law Review 46:3 1-26 (sole author)

R v. Labaye: The Fogginess of “Increased” Causality in Obscenity Law. (2009) Law Review Supplement February Edition Alberta 1-10 (sole author)

Crossing the Rubicon – of sniffer dogs, justifications and preemptive deference. (2008) Review of Constitutional Studies 13:2 67-98 (sole author)

Refereed Contributions/Chapters/Journal Introductory Chapters/Book Reviews (all refereed)

Dr. Richard Jochelson and David Ireland, “"Reasonable Expectations of Privacy and Digital Developments: Police searches, Charter values and new constitutions of crime” in The Last Frontier: Digital Privacy and the Charter eds Hunt and Diab (Toronto: Thomson Reuters, 2022).

Instructor-Student Sexual Misconduct: The Fraught Silences of Liminal Policy Spaces at Canadian Universities in Violence Interrupted: Confronting Sexual Violence on University Campuses (D. Crocker, J. Minaker, & A. Nelund Eds.)McGill-Queen’s University Press

Let’s Talk About Sex- Time to Tap Taboo in Sexual Regulation and the Law- a Canadian Perspective (Demeter 2019/20) (Co-authored with James Gacek)

Indecency and Obscenity Law: From Hicklin to the post-Labaye Era- A (Tall) Tale of Risk in Sexual Regulation and the Law- a Canadian Perspective (Demeter 2019/20) (Co-authored with James Gacek)

Sex Work in Canada: Beginnings, Bedford and Beyond in Sexual Regulation and the Law- a Canadian Perspective (Demeter 2019/20) (Co-authored with James Gacek)

Intimate Images and the Law in Sexual Regulation and the Law- a Canadian Perspective (Demeter 2019/20) (Co- authored with Gacek et al)

Rethinking Bestial Regulation in Sexual Regulation and the Law- a Canadian Perspective (Demeter 2019/20) (Co- authored with Gacek et al)

Reflections on Making the “Strange” Familiar and Future Directions in Sexual Regulation and the Law - a Canadian Perspective (Demeter 2019/20) (Co-authored with James Gacek)

Case by Case Privilege. A Canadian Overview for Prof Chris Hunt. Perspectives on Evidentiary Privilege. 2019. Thomson Reuters. (Ireland, Jochelson, Stoez).

Students Fostering Legal Literacy: A Professor’s Perspective about the Canadian Journal of Law and Justice. 2019. Canadian Journal of Law and Justice. 1:1. (Jochelson).

Towards Dialogue in the Crim Disciplines.2019. Manitoba Law Journal. 42(3)(4). (Ireland, Jochelson)

Robson Crim: A Vision for Multivalent Interrogations of Criminal Law. 2017 40(3). Manitoba Law Journal. (Jochelson, Ireland, Khoday)

The Supreme Court of Canada Presents: The Surveillant Charter in “National Security, Surveillance, and Emergencies: Canadian and Australian Sovereignty Compared”. Lippert, R. et al. Editors. Palgrave-MacMillan Press. 2017 (with second author Mark Doerksen)

Book Review of Policing in Israel: Studying Crime Control, Community Policing and Counterterrorism. Police Practice and Research: An International Journal. 2017. 18(1). (Jochelson)

Justice Making: Scrutinizing Canada’s Jury Representativeness Guarantees while Ameliorating Stewart and Russell’s Conceptions of “Social Wreckage” in Canadians with Disabilities in Disability Politics in a Global Economy: Essays in Honour of Marta Russell. Malhotra, R. Editor. Routledge. 2017. 42 (Jochelson and Bertrand).

A History of Settlement Ten Years Later – Revisiting Cronenberg’s A History of Violence. Screening Justice. Fernwood Books. 2017. (Jochelson).

An Addendum on Bedford: Sex and the Supreme Court- Obscenity and Indecency Law in Canada. Sex and the Supreme Court. Fernwood Books. 2014. ISBN: 9781552664155. (Jochelson)

Educating Justice: Postsecondary Education in the Justice Disciplines. Annual Review of Interdisciplinary Justice Research. Volume 4. 2015 (Steven Kohm; Kelly Gorkoff, Richard Jochelson, and Kevin Walby). ISSN 1925-2420.

After Bedford: Recent Developments in Sex and the Law. Sociology in Our Times. Seventh Canadian Edition. Lothian-Murray et. al. 2016.Nelson Education. Jochelson

Recent Developments in Sex and the Law: Recent Developments: Feminist Law Reform and Sexual Assault. Sociology in Our Times. Sixth Canadian Edition. Lothian-Murray et. al. 2014. Nelson Education. ISBN-10: 0176648747 ISBN-13: 9780176648749. Jochelson

Adopting the Governmentality Approach Obscenity and Indecency: Tracking Harm Through Discourse of the Supreme Court of Canada. “Locating Law “Race/Class/Gender/Sexuality Connections, 3rd Edition. Elizabeth Comack, 2014, Fernwood Books (Jochelson and Kramar)

Talking Trash with the Supreme Court of Canada: The Reasonable Expectation of Privacy under the Charter. “Criminology: Critical Canadian Perspectives”, Kirsten Kramar Ed., (2010) Pearson Canada (sole author)

Community Involvement

Dr. Jochelson has been involved in multiple critical committee obligations in the Faculty of Law. He served on Academic Affairs in helping to maintain, develop, protect and adapt the law school curriculum, and was instrumental in helping draft the tenure and promotion policy at the Faculty, before a set of guidelines was mandated by the collective agreement. He was on the workload policy committee that negotiated with the previous (non-acting) Dean to develop uniform teaching guidelines for the Faculty. He served on multiple hiring and tenure/promotion committees since arriving at the Faculty including chairing those committees on multiple occasions. His leadership in these service committees has been instrumental in defining innovation and direction within the Faculty. He served at the highest levels at his previous workplace, on the Faculty Association, culminating in its presidency. His service record brought him into close contact with the now defunct Council on Post-Secondary Education (COPSE) in a number of different contexts. He was a key stakeholder invited to attend meetings with the provincial government about the future of Post-Secondary education at the Deputy Minister of Education’s offices.

The level at which he has served at Manitoba universities has afforded him insight into the organization of post-secondary education in Manitoba. Prior to July 1, 2016, he served multiple terms on the University of Winnipeg Senate and Senate Executive, and was involved in drafting Senate Bylaws for application across the entire university. He served on the research awards committee and chaired that committee at the university level and on the university wide tenure and promotion committee. There, he sat on the university-wide student misconduct committee. Dr. Jochelson is committed to collegial governance and leadership in the academy.

Awards

  • Students’ Teacher Recognition Award (CATL) – 2018