Courses and seminars

This course aims to provide students with in-depth knowledge of the main international public law instruments that shape global and national food security. Students will develop their critical thinking regarding these legal instruments by analyzing them through the lens of the concept of sustainable food security. Topics covered: food aid, production and commercial circulation of food products, territorialized food systems, food risk management, the precautionary principle, consumer protection, transfer of technologies and knowledge to developing countries, agricultural production.

This course aims to familiarize students with intellectual property rights in the context of food systems, and more particularly with patent regimes on living matter, plant variety certificates, and distinctive signs. The course examines issues and challenges related to intellectual property rights in the agricultural and food sector, in relation to farmers' rights, the rights of Indigenous and local communities, and consumer rights.

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This course offers an introduction to the main international agreements and federal and provincial laws governing agri-food activities. It specifically covers the national and international trade of agricultural and food products, the marketing of agri-food products, the organization of marketing boards, sanitary protection, packaging, labeling and advertising of food products, as well as the protection of agricultural land.

This course aims to conduct a critical analysis of the concept of food systems understood as the set of means, institutions, practices and actors that societies use to ensure their food supply. Environmental, socio-economic, legal and health issues related to food systems. Diversity and sustainability of food systems. Interdisciplinary action perspectives to improve food systems at the local and international scale.

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The phenomenon of globalization affects the agri-food sector and generates significant challenges for this field of activity, which merit reflection from a multidisciplinary perspective.

Indeed, the disciplines now called upon by this reality are as varied as the actors affected. Law, economics, political science, administration, management, and sociology can all contribute to a constructive examination of the challenges posed by, for example: food and financial crises, trade liberalization, environmental imperatives, biodiversity loss and sustainable development, agricultural development project management and governance, access to and sharing of biological and agrobiological resources, modern biotechnologies, land grabbing and competing land uses, etc.

This course pursues the general objective of familiarizing students with the general principles and rules of public international law. The concept of law in international relations. The sources of public international law. The relationship between public international law and domestic law. The subjects of public international law. Peaceful and non-peaceful settlement of disputes. Introduction to specialized branches of public international law. 

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