Lincoln Alexander Law welcomes new faculty

We are delighted to welcome four new full-time faculty members to the Lincoln Alexander School of Law starting July 1, 2025. With a diverse range of expertise, research interests, and practical experience, these distinguished scholars will undoubtedly enrich student learning, enhance our research capacity, and contribute significantly to our law school community.

Professor Basil Alexander is a legal academic who focuses on the realities of achieving social change through legal practice, the law, and other approaches. Prior to returning to academia, he was a public interest and social justice lawyer for several years in Toronto. His experience includes litigation, non-profits, and working with Indigenous clients, with his most well-known proceedings being the Ipperwash Inquiry and the early stages of the Toronto G20 class action. Prof. Alexander has previously taught at the University of New Brunswick’s Faculty of Law, Osgoode Hall Law School (York University), and in the Université de Sherbrooke’s Common Law and Transnational Law Program. His dedication to teaching excellence have been recognized with both UNB Law’s teaching award and the UNB-wide teaching award.

Professor Michele Krech’s research spans international law and global governance, with a particular focus on human rights and gender equality. She is particularly interested in the accountability of transnational organizations and the role of science and other knowledge systems in legal decision-making. Prof. Krech’s work has appeared in the American Journal of International Law (AJIL), AJIL Unbound, the International Journal of Human Rights, and the Berkeley Journal of International Law, among others. She has held prestigious fellowships at the University of Chicago and the European University Institute, where she also served as an Assistant Editor of the European Journal of International Law. She has also worked with various international organizations including the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, and the Centre for Sport and Human Rights.

Professor Deanne Sowter's research focuses on family law, gender-based violence, feminist legal theory, and legal ethics. She is interested in the family justice system, including the lawyers’ role, and exploring the limitations of the applicable legal principles to examine the ways that law and the professional rules governing lawyers could be more responsive to gender-based violence. A recipient of multiple national research awards as well as prestigious fellowships and scholarships, Prof. Sowter has published eleven peer-reviewed papers and her work has been cited by the Supreme Court of Canada. She has previously taught at UCalgary Law, Western Law, and Queen's Law. Prof. Sowter currently sits on the Board of the Canadian Association for Legal Ethics.

Professor Simon Wallace explores the intersection of artificial intelligence and law by examining how computational methods can be used to analyze large datasets of legal texts. He maintains Obiter.ai, an open-source Python library for legal research, and BenchBabble.ca, which tracks historical patterns in Supreme Court of Canada decisions. Prof. Wallace has published large empirical accounts of law’s shape in national and international journals. He has also written on the history of deportation law and how technological innovation has enabled new border enforcement practices. A former immigration detention and deportation defence lawyer, Prof. Wallace has litigated on behalf of detainees before the Immigration and Refugee Board, the Federal Court of Canada, the Ontario Superior Court, and the Supreme Court of Canada.