Prof. Sina Akbari pushes law students to think outside the legal box

Challenging students to think beyond the letter of the law is a core teaching philosophy for Assistant Professor Sina Akbari of the University of Alberta Faculty of Law. 

That emphasis on critical thinking has earned Akbari the 2023 Tevie H. Miller Teaching Excellence Award. The award recognizes excellence in teaching by a full-time faculty member at the Faculty of Law.

“I’m incredibly honoured to receive this award,” says Akbari. “As a newer faculty member, I am still finding my feet, so it’s really nice to hear that my teaching style and delivery connects with students.”

"Since joining the Faculty of Law in January 2021, Professor Akbari has quickly gained a reputation among his students for clear, effective and engaging instruction of complex legal topics,” says Dean Barbara Billingsley. “We are very pleased and proud to see his contributions being recognized by this award, which is fittingly named for Tevie Miller, who was a great friend of the Faculty of Law, a great supporter of law students, and a pillar of the legal community.”

Akbari’s teaching and research centers on the relationship between ideas in political theory and private law. For the 2022-2023 academic year, he taught contracts, corporations and the jurisprudence course, ‘Tax, Justice and Society’. 

Students in his courses describe Akbari as thorough, engaging and deeply invested in student learning. That learning does not start or end with memorizing black letter law. In his classroom, Akbari inspires students to question the values and assumptions that underpin law.

“An important part of legal education is learning the technical concepts and rules in legal practice,” says Akbari. “But sometimes a focus on these technical aspects of the practice can make us lose sight of the fact that they reflect certain assumptions and values.”

“Tax law is a good example of this: it’s often perceived as a dry and highly technical area of law, but thinking about how the institution of taxation might be justified requires us to think about questions of distributive justice and moral ideas like what people deserve.”

Akbari’s teaching style also prioritizes the importance of approaching legal issues from multiple perspectives so that students are exposed to different ways of thinking about the law.

“Some of the scholars I teach in my Jurisprudence class argue that changes to tax law can have systemic effects along racial and gender lines, and I think these are important ideas for students to take with them into their careers,” he says.

Creating a welcoming and inclusive environment is another tenet of Akbari’s teaching philosophy. He actively encourages students to explore their ideas and to raise questions in whatever setting makes them most comfortable — whether that is during lectures, office hours or via email.

“I feel very fortunate to teach at a faculty with such engaged and thoughtful students,” says Akbari.

“I’d also like to add that any success I have as an educator is due in no small part to the mentorship and guidance I’ve received from more experienced members of the faculty.”