Samuel Beswick

Associate Professor Samuel Beswick is a private law scholar with primary research interests in the areas of torts, unjust enrichment, limitations, and remedies. His current research concerns the temporal scope of judicial changes in the law, as well as the rule of law in public authority civil liability. His work was relied upon by the Supreme Court of Canada in its novel tort decision, Ahluwalia v. Ahluwalia, 2026 SCC 16 (majority and dissent). He is the editor of two long-form open-access publications: Tort Law: Cases and Commentaries (2021 CanLIIDocs 1859) and the Canadian Torts Wiki. He is also an editor of a forthcoming Encyclopedia of Private Law: Torts (Edward Elgar Publishing), currently in development, and Faculty Advisor to the UBC Law Review. 

Dr. Beswick is a Green College Member of Common Room and former Leading Scholar. He studied at Harvard Law School as a Frank Knox Memorial Fellow and a Peter Brooks Saltonstall Memorial Scholar. He wrote his dissertation under Professor John C.P. Goldberg, a chapter of which received the HLS Irving Oberman Memorial Prize in Constitutional Law. His thesis has been favourably cited by the United Kingdom Supreme Court, the High Court of Australia and the Constitutional Court of South Africa. Dr. Beswick was also Deputy Executive Editor of the Harvard National Security Journal and President of the SJD Association. At Auckland Law School, he wrote his dissertation under Professor Scott Optican, which was published and received the New Zealand Ministry of Justice Article Prize. He was also an Editor-in-Chief of the Auckland University Law Review and graduated a Senior Scholar in Law.

Prior to joining Allard Law, Dr. Beswick had held teaching positions at Harvard Law School, King’s College London, and the University of Auckland. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Law School’s Project on the Foundations of Private Law, practised in the Solicitor’s Office of HM Revenue & Customs (London, UK), practised as a litigator at Meredith Connell (the Office of the Crown Solicitor for Auckland), and was a judges' clerk in the High Court of New Zealand.