Prof. Annalise Acorn inspired students to practise al modo mio

Professor Annalise Acorn, ‘85 LLB, is bidding students and fellow faculty members farewell after decades of making an impact on campus with the University of Alberta Faculty of Law.

“Professor Acorn has been a widely respected member of our Faculty for many years and will be missed,” notes Dean Barbara Billingsley. “She has enriched generations of Alberta legal professionals by challenging students to look deeply at the purpose and impact of law as a tool for positive change.” 

Since joining the Faculty in 1989, Acorn has established herself as an influential researcher and been a fellow and visiting scholar at post-secondary institutions around the world, including University of Hawaii at Manoa, University of Michigan, University of Siena, the Einstein Forum in Potsdam Germany and All Souls College, Oxford.

Her teaching has included constitutional law, private international law, jurisprudence, and professionalism and ethics.

“My fondest memories of the law school will always be lively and sophisticated and fun discussions I’ve had in these classes with such excellent students over the years,” she says. “So many of them put so much into these conversations.”

Two of her most notable courses, ‘Emotions of Conflict and Justice’ and ‘Greek and Shakespearean Drama and Justice,’ incorporate unique learning opportunities.

The latter includes a three-hour role play exercise of King Lear, which asks the students to interpret the play as a failed succession plan of a family corporation and then pitch new plans to the king-turned-CEO.

“What Shakespeare writes is not too far from what often happens in family corporations,” says Acorn. “Parents build up a business and want to pass it on, but the kids are in conflict, don’t have the skills or can’t align their individual interests with the interest of the corporation.”

Each student plays a character or a character’s lawyer, and employing Harvard’s Three Circle Model for succession planning, the class reimagines an alternate, successful outcome instead of the disaster that plays out in Lear.

“Every year I marvel at how well the students take on the roles and all the wonderful insights they come up with.”

For Acorn’s Professional Responsibility course, jointly taught with her dear friend Allan Shewchuk, KC, ‘84 LLB, the theme is al modo mio, Italian for “my way.” The final class each year features a four course Italian lunch prepared by Shewchuk, as students reflect on managing their legal career and lives so that they align with their values.

For the very last class of her career, Shewchuk served up a lunch for the students that is now a cherished memory for Acorn. “I will always be so grateful to him for making that such a special day for me.”

Above all, no matter what the course, Acorn hopes she taught her students to believe how meaningful their voices can be in the world.

“Too often students do not believe that they will have the power to shape the professional world they’re going to inhabit or the power to shape the substance of the law itself,” she says.

“I’ve tried to get students to be more aware of their power, more aware that thinking about justice matters because they will find themselves in positions where they are in fact able to forward the cause of justice. They will always be more than a cog in the wheel and what they do will matter.”

After retirement, Acorn plans to relocate abroad with her husband, Timothy Endicott, who is Vinerian Professor of English Law at All Souls College in Oxford. “We recently bought an 18th-century Cotswold stone house in Kidlington, a village outside of Oxford, and that will become home for us now.”