Ryan Alford
: Senior Fellow
Expert Overview
Professor Ryan Alford received his doctorate in public, constitutional, and international law from the University of South Africa. He was awarded his master’s degree from the University of Oxford and his law degree from New York University. He is called to the bar of Ontario and is an attorney and counselor-at-law of the state of New York.
Upon receiving his law degree, he served as a judicial clerk for the Honorable Robert L. Carter of the Southern District of New York and the Honorable Rosemary S. Pooler of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. After entering practice he worked for the firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton in their New York and Brussels offices, focusing on international arbitration, transnational litigation, and cross-border mergers and acquisitions.
Prof. Alford serves as the faculty supervisor of Bora Laskin's chapter of the Runnymede Society, the national law student membership group dedicated to debating the ideas and the ideals of constitutionalism, individual liberty and the rule of law.
Prior to joining the Bora Laskin Faculty of Law, he was Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Victoria Faculty of Law, where he was awarded the First Year Class Teaching Award.
He also brought a successful constitutional challenge to the provisions of the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians Act (Alford v. Canada (Attorney-General) 2022 ONSC 2911 (CanLII). In that case, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice struck down a federal statute that abridged freedom of speech and debate in Parliament for implicitly amending the unwritten provisions of the Constitution of Canada --the first time that any Canadian court has done so.
Ryan Alford's work for MLI
