Hugo B. Lafrenière is an associate professor in the French Common Law Program, where he teaches in the fields of property law, torts law, and legal philosophy. He received a Bachelor of Civil Law (BCL) and a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) from McGill University (2015) as well as a masters of law in legal theory (LLM) and a doctorate in law (JSD) from the University of New York (2017, 2022), where he was awarded the John Bruce Moore Award for highest excellence in legal philosophy.
Before joining the University of Ottawa, Hugo was teaching property law in common law and civil law as a Boulton Fellow at the McGill University Faculty of Law (2023-24). He also taught political and moral philosophy at the Institut d’études politiques de Paris (Sciences Po) (2022-23). He is the recipient of the Macdonald Travelling Scholarship, a doctoral and postdoctoral research fellowship from the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture (FRQSC), and a doctoral research fellowship from the University of New York.
His research program proposes to reinvest the redistributive and subversive potential or our most important private law institutions. He is especially interested in the interaction between private law and personal autonomy understood as a fundamentally redistributive ideal. His most recent research in property law suggest that Canadian courts should recognize homelessness as an emergency situation giving rise, for those who face it, to a defense of private necessity for trespass in common law.