Douglas C Harris

Douglas Harris joined the Allard School of Law in 2001. He teaches and writes in the areas of property law and legal history. His earlier published work focussed on the regulation of Indigenous fisheries in British Columbia, and he is the author of two award-winning books Fish, Law, and Colonialism: The Legal Capture of Salmon in British Columbia (U of T Press) and Landing Native Fisheries: Indian Reserves and Fishing Rights in British Columbia, 1849-1925 (UBC Press). Recorded public lectures include “Property & Sovereignty: The Kitsilano Indian Reserve and the City of Vancouver” and his Inaugural Lecture as professor at the Allard School of Law – “Condominium Property Stories”.
 
After completing his BA (UBC History) and LLB (Toronto), Harris articled in Vancouver and was called to the British Columbia bar in 1994. He returned to school to complete LLM (UBC) and PhD (Osgoode Hall, York University) degrees in legal history. During his years as a university student, Harris was a member of Canada's field hockey team that competed at the Olympic Games in Seoul (1988), the Pan American Games (1987, 1991 & 1995), and the World Student Games (1991). Harris served as Associate Dean Graduate Studies & Research in the Law School, 2008-2013, and as Chair of the UBC Press Publications Board, 2016-2021. He received the George Curtis Memorial Award for Teaching Excellence in 2013 and the Law School’s Faculty Scholar Award in 2016.

Professor Harris is currently working on condominium property, a relatively new form of landownership and local government that has come to dominate new-build residential construction in cities around the world. In collaboration with colleagues at the Allard Law School, he created the Law & Cities Research Group to bring together scholars and students working on the intersection of law and cities. He has developed and teaches courses in Condominium Law and A Legal History of Property & the City. Harris is also a co-author of the leading property law casebook in Canada—A Property Law Reader—now in its 5^th edition. He is currently supervising LLM and PhD students working in property law, Aboriginal law, and legal history, and welcomes other students to apply in these and other areas of his research interest.