Dayna N Scott | EUC | York University

Professor

Co-Director of the Environmental Justice and Sustainability Clinic

York Research Chair (Tier 2) in Environmental Law & Justice

Credentials

PhD Law, Osgoode Law School
LLB, Osgoode Law School
MES, York University
BSc Ecology, University of Guelph

Research Keywords

Environmental Justice; Extractivism; Gender and Environmental Health; Legal Regulation of Pollution, Toxics and Extraction; Impact Assessment Law; the Jurisdiction of Indigenous Peoples’ in relation to Lands and Resources; and the Justice Dimensions of the Green Economy

Graduate Supervision

I supervise students in the graduate programs in Environmental Studies, Socio-Legal Studies and Osgoode Hall Law School

Contact Information

4700 Keele Street
Toronto, ON M3J 1P3

416 736 2100

dscott@osgoode.yorku.ca

https://www.osgoode.yorku.ca/faculty-and-staff/scott-dayna-n/

Research Interests

I joined York’s faculty in 2006 after completing a SSHRC Post-Doctoral Fellowship at McGill’s Faculty of Law and a Hauser Global Research Fellowship at NYU. My research interests focus on contestation over extraction; exercises of Indigenous jurisdiction over lands and resources; the distribution of pollution burdens affecting marginalized communities and vulnerable populations; gender and environmental health; and the justice dimensions of the transition to a greener economy.

Research Projects

Jurisdiction Back: Infrastructure Beyond Extractivism

Role: Co-Principal Investigator

Research Grant: SSHRC New Frontiers in Research Fund

Summary: I am currently the co-Principal Investigator, with Professor Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark of the University of Victoria’s Center for Indigenous Research and Community-led Engagement (CIRCLE), of a project funded by the SSHRC New Frontiers in Research Fund called “Jurisdiction Back: Infrastructure Beyond Extractivism”. In a partnership between the Yellowhead Institute, the University of Toronto’s Department of Geography and Planning and York University, this project includes 14 academics and land defenders from across the country pursuing research oriented towards how the “just transition” to sustainable economies can be imagined and infrastructured to restore Indigenous jurisdiction, laws and governance systems.

Consent & Contract: Authorizing Extraction in Ontario’s Ring of Fire

Role: Primary Investigator

Research Grant: SSHRC

Summary: This project was pursued with colleagues Andrée Boisselle, Deborah McGregor and Estair Van Wagner, and investigates the role of private agreements in the governance of resource extraction on Indigenous territories with a specific focus on contestation over proposed mining in Ontario’s Ring of Fire region.

Research Output

Dayna Nadine Scott (ed.) Our Chemical Selves: Gender, Toxics and Environmental Health, UBC Press, 2015 (412pp).

Articles

Dayna Nadine Scott, “Extraction Contracting: The Struggle for Control of Indigenous Lands” (2020) 119(2) South Atlantic Quarterly, Special Issue on Getting Back the Land: Anti-Colonial and Indigenous Strategies of Reclamation 269-299.

Dayna Nadine Scott & Andrée Boisselle, “If there can only be ‘one law’, it must be Treaty law. Learning from Kanawayandan D’Aaaki” (2019) 70 University of New Brunswick Law Review, Special Issue on ‘The Perils of Pipelines and the Riddle of Resources’ 230-283.

Jessica Eisen, Roxanne Mykitiuk & Dayna Nadine Scott, “Constituting Bodies into the Future: Intergenerational Harm, Toxics and Relational Theory” (2018) 51(1) UBC Law Review 1-53.

Dayna Nadine Scott & Adrian A. Smith, “Sacrifice Zones in the Green Energy Economy: Towards an Environmental Justice Framework” (2017) 62(3) McGill Law Journal 1-38.

Dayna Nadine Scott & Adrian A. Smith, “Sacrifice Zones in the Green Energy Economy: The ‘New’ Climate Refugees” (2017) 26(2) Transnational Law & Contemporary Problems (Symposium: International Environmental Law, Environmental Justice and the Global South) 371-381.

Dayna Nadine Scott & Adrian A. Smith, “The Abstract Subject of the Climate Migrant: Displaced by the Rising Tides of the Green Energy Economy” (2017) 8(1) Journal of Human Rights and the Environment 30-50.

Dayna Nadine Scott, Jennie Haw & Robyn Lee, “Wannabe Toxic-Free? From Precautionary Consumption to Corporeal Citizenship” (2016) Environmental Politics 21pp.

Dayna Nadine Scott, “Pollution et limites des corps: échelle des perturbations endocriniennes, genre et recours au droit par une communauté amérindienne du Canada” (2016) 34 (3) Sciences Sociales et Santé 77-101 (French translation of book chapter in Feminist Torts, below).

Dayna Nadine Scott, “‘We Are the Monitors Now’: Experiential Knowledge, Transcorporeality and Environmental Justice” (2016) 25(3) Social & Legal Studies 261-287 (2015 for OnlineFirst version).

Gus Van Harten & Dayna Nadine Scott, “Investment Treaties and the Internal Vetting of Regulatory Proposals: A Case Study from Canada” (2016) 7(1) Journal of International Dispute Settlement 92-116.

Leila Harris, Megan Peloso, Dayna Nadine Scott & Jyoti Phartiyal, “Women Talking about Water: Feminist Subjectivities and Intersectional Understandings” (2015) 2/3 30 Canadian Women’s Studies Journal, Special Issue on Women and Water 15-22.

Dayna Nadine Scott, “The Networked Infrastructure of Fossil Capitalism: Implications of the New Pipeline Debates for Environmental Justice in Canada” (2013) 43 Revue générale de droit, Special Issue on Environmental Justice and Human Rights 11-66.

Dayna Nadine Scott, “Situating Sarnia: Unimagined Communities in the National Energy Debate”, Special Issue on the National Energy Strategy, (2013) 25 Journal of Environmental Law and Practice 81-112.

Roxanne Mykitiuk & Dayna Nadine Scott, “Risky Pregnancy: Liability, Blame and Insurance in the Governance of Pre-natal Harm”, (2011) 43(2) UBC Law Review 311-360.

Dayna Nadine Scott, “Body Polluted: Questions of Scale, Gender and Remedy”, (2010) 44(1) Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 121-156 (Special Symposium Issue on Injuries Without Remedies).

Book Chapters

Dayna Nadine Scott, “Extractivism” in Mariana Valverde, Kamari Clarke, Eve Darian-Smith and Prabha Kotiswaran, eds, The Routledge Handbook of Law and Society (Abingdon: Routledge, 2021);

Dayna Nadine Scott, “The Environment and Federalism, In Context” in Natalie Des Rosiers, Patrick Macklem and Peter Oliver (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the Canadian Constitution, OUP, forthcoming.

Dayna Nadine Scott, “The Smell of Neglect: Material Feminisms for Environmental Justice”, Sheryl Hamilton, Diana Majury, Neil Sargeant, Dawn Moore, and Christiane Wilke (eds.) Sensing the Law (forthcoming, Routledge).

Dayna Nadine Scott, Lauren Rakowski, Laila Zahra Harris & Troy Dixon, “The Production of Pollution and the Consumption of Chemicals in Canada”, in Dayna Nadine S

cott (ed.) Our Chemical Selves: Gender, Toxics and Environmental Health, UBC Press, 2015.

Dayna Nadine Scott & Sarah Lewis, “Sex, Gender and the Chemicals Management Plan”, in Dayna Nadine Scott (ed.) Our Chemical Selves: Gender, Toxics and Environmental Health, UBC Press, 2015.

Dayna Nadine Scott, “Pollution and the Body Boundary: Exploring Scale, Gender and Remedy” in Janice Richardson and Erica Rackley (eds.) Feminist Perspectives on Tort Law (Routledge, 2012) 55-79.

Dayna Nadine Scott & Sidra Sabzwari, "The Quest for Environmental Justice on a Canadian Aboriginal Reserve", in Yves Le Bouthillier, Miriam Alfie Cohen, Jose Juan Gonzalez, Albert Mumma and Susan Smith, Environment, Law & Poverty, IUCN Academy of Environmental Law (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012).

Recognition & Awards

Co-Editor of Canadian Environmental Law scholarship (with Professor Deborah Curran)
Editor of Our Chemical Selves: Gender, Toxics and Environmental Health (UBC Press, 2015)
Past Director of the National Network on Environments and Women`s Health
York-Massey Fellowship
Fullbright Fellowhsip
Law Commission of Canada, "Audacity of Imagination” Award.