The University of Alberta Faculty of Law would like to congratulate its esteemed colleague, Professor Shannon O'Byrne, '84 M.A., '85 LL.B., '91 LL.M., on being the recipient of the University of Alberta's 2014 Alumni Award of Excellence. This award celebrates specific outstanding accomplishments by alumni in the past 12 months that garner national and/or international attention.
Professor O'Byrne is both an award-winning teacher and an authoritative legal scholar. A small library could be built around her scholarly publications and that library would certainly be well frequented. Her articles have received over 40 judicial citations at different levels of the court, including the Supreme Court of Canada. Professor O'Byrne's analysis of both private and public law issues speak to her breadth of knowledge. A few subjects cited as particularly influential include: her advocacy for the development of the doctrine of good faith performance in Canadian contract law, her approach to recovery for mental distress damages and her path-breaking work on discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation.
Professor O'Byrne's first-rate reputation has earned invitations to present at numerous academic and continuing legal education conferences, most notably the National Judicial Institute Conference. She has also co-authored four editions of Canada's leading business law textbook, Canadian Business & the Law, which is taught at business schools across the country. Shannon has published in a diverse range of journals including the American Business Law Journal, the Canadian Business Law Journal, the Canadian Bar Review, the UCLA Women's Law Journal as well as the Journal of Law and Inequality. Professor O'Byrne was the 1995 recipient of the Southwestern Publishing Distinguished Proceedings Paper Award through the Academy of Legal Studies in Business. As noted by her colleagues, Professor O'Byrne has always emphasized that teaching and research directly support each other. She has published and delivered papers in the areas of good faith in contractual performance; recovery of mental distress damages in a breach of contract action; discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation; disclosure duties; economic justice; law and emotions; public law theory as well as the relationship between law and literature. She has presented papers at conferences as distant as Japan and Ireland.
In a similar regard, she has been commended as "one of the faculty members from whom the University of Alberta Faculty of Law derives much of its strength." Passionate about her students' education, Professor Shannon O'Byrne was the recipient of the Faculty of Law's Tevie H. Miller Teaching Excellence Award in 2012, that same year she also received the University's highest teaching award The AC Rutherford Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. Professor O'Byrne teaches contracts law, corporations law, and judicial remedies. In 2014, the Law Society of Alberta and the Canadian Bar Association - Alberta Branch presented her with a Law Society of Alberta's Distinguished Service Award for Legal Scholarship.
Professor Shannon O'Byrne will receive the University of Alberta's Alumni Award of Excellence on the evening of Thursday, September 18, at the Northern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium in Edmonton.
The Alumni Awards are a free, public event. Find out more on the Alumni Association website