Luke Taylor
Prior to his postgraduate studies, Luke Taylor worked as a commercial litigator in Australia, and served as legal research officer at the High Court of Australia. He has also taught courses on legal method and reasoning, legal history, and gender issues in the law at the University of Toronto, McGill University, and the University of New South Wales.
Taylor’s research traverses contemporary and historical dimensions of Canadian, English and Australian family law, employment law and criminal law, and the intersections of these fields with questions of gender and sexuality.
He is particularly interested in the development of the field of family law in different national contexts; the diffusion of legal ideas concerning the family and sexuality throughout the British Empire in the 19th century; and contemporary dimensions of the regulation of adult personal relationships. His work has appeared in, among others, the University of Toronto Law Journal, the McGill Law Journal, and Law & History Review.
Taylor holds an SJD and LLM from the University of Toronto, where he was a CGS Bombardier scholar and received the Marks Medal in 2018-19. In 2019-20, he was the Boulton Fellow at the Faculty of Law, McGill University.
Books
Constructing the Family: Marriage and Work in Nineteenth-Century English Law (U of T Press, 2023).
Papers in Peer-Reviewed Publications
‘Diffusion and Confusion: Marriage Law in Colonial New South Wales, 1788-1861’ (2026) Journal of Legal History (published online 15 June 2026, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/01440365.2026.2687396 (external link) , forthcoming in print).
‘Family Violence, Gender, and Access to Justice: Ahluwalia v Ahluwalia’ (2024) 75 University of New Brunswick Law Journal 89.
‘Domestic Contracts and Family Law Exceptionalism: An Historical Perspective’ (2020) 60:2 McGill Law Journal 303.
‘Marriage, Work, and the Invention of Family Law in English Legal Thought’ (2020) 70:2 University of Toronto Law Journal 137-176.
‘Speaking the Unspeakable: Buggery, Law, and Community Surveillance in Colonial New South Wales, 1788-1838’ (2020) 38:4 Law & History Review 737-75.
‘Designated Inhospitality: The Treatment of Asylum Seekers Who Arrive by Boat in Canada and Australia’ (2015) 60(2) McGill Law Journal 333-379.
‘The Trouble with Windsor’ (2014) 23(4) Griffith Law Review 519-544.
‘Getting Over It? The Future of Same-Sex Marriage in Australia’ (2013) 27 Australian Journal of Family Law 26-58.
Chapters
‘Competing Considerations: Marriage, Divorce, and Religion in Canada’ in Henry Kha and Mark Hernaghan (eds), Family Law and Religion: Global Perspectives (Routledge, 2026) (forthcoming).
Book Reviews
Luke Taylor, Book Review of Childhood and the Law in Canada: The Family/State Relationship by Patrick Joseph Ryan, (2026) Journal of Family History (published online 16 July 2026, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/03631990261464044 (external link) , forthcoming in print).
Conference and Workshop Presentations (Selected)
Opening Remarks, Launch of The Amicus Forum, Toronto Metropolitan University, April 2026.
‘“Leave” and “Fight”: Women Talking and the Possibilities of Litigation’, Imagining Feminist Dispute Resolution Conference, Toronto Metropolitan University, March 2026.
‘Turning to the Family: Contextualizing the Supreme Court’s Recent Interest in Family Law’, Family Law and Feminist Theory Conference, University of Toronto, May 2025.
Opening Remarks, Launch of Volume 2 of the TMU Law Review, Toronto Metropolitan University, February 2025.
Discussant (with Professors Brenda Cossman and Kerry Rittich), Constructing the Family: Marriage and Work in Nineteenth-Century English Law, Lincoln Alexander School of Law, 4 April 2023.
“Diffusion, Innovation, and Resistance: The Laws and Practices of Marriage and Divorce in Colonial Australia,” McGill Lincoln Alexander School of Law, Montreal, QC, March 2020.
“Constituting Family Law and Employment Law in Nineteenth-Century English Legal Thought,” Law & Society Annual Meeting, Toronto, ON, July 2018.
“Marriage, Work, and the Dissolution of the Productive Household,” The Sexual Contract: 30 Years On, Cardiff Law School, May 2018.
“Speaking of Buggery in Colonial New South Wales,” Irish Conference of Historians, University College Cork, Ireland, April 2018.
“Constituting Family and Employment in Nineteenth-Century English Legal Thought,” Law, Culture & the Humanities Annual Conference, Georgetown University Law Center, March 2018.
“Technologies of Sexual Injustice,” Canadian Law & Society Association, Oshawa, ON, January 2018.
“Marriage, Status, and the Making of English Family Law,” Yale Law School Doctoral Scholars Conference, November 2017.
Marks Medal, Best Thesis in the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, 2020.
Boulton Fellowship, McGill University, 2019-20.
Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarships, 2016-19.
Hallam Prize for Best Performance in Sexual Diversity Studies, 2014.
University of Toronto Faculty Scholarship for LLM, 2013-14.
| Degree | Institution | Year |
|---|---|---|
| SJD (Doctor of Juridical Science) | University of Toronto | 2019 |
| LLM (Master of Laws) | University of Toronto | 2014 |
| LLB/BA (Bachelor of Laws (Hons 1)/(Bachelor of Arts) | University of New South Wales | 2009 |