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Joel Conrad Bakan (born 1959) is a Canadian lawyer and writer.Born in Lansing, Michigan and raised for most of his childhood in East Lansing, Michigan where his parents, Paul and Rita Bakan, were both long-time professors in psychology at Michigan State University. In 1971, he moved with his parents to Vancouver, British Columbia. He was educated at Simon Fraser University (BA, 1981), University of Oxford (BA in law, 1983) and Dalhousie University (LLB, 1984).

He served as a law clerk to Brian Dickson in 1985, during his tenure as clerk Chief Justice Dickson authored the judgment R. v. Oakes among others. He then pursued a Masters degree at Harvard Law School. After graduation, he returned to Canada, where he has taught law at Osgoode Hall Law School of York University and the University of British Columbia.

Bakan authored The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, a book analyzing the evolution and modern-day behavior of corporations from a critical perspective. Published in 2004, it was made into a film the same year and won 25 international awards.

He is also the author of a number of books on Canadian constitutional law, including Just Words: Constitutional Rights and Social Wrongs, which analyzes the historical effect that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms has had in promoting social justice. Joel Bakan is distinct by criticizing the actions of civil liberties groups and their overemphasis on individual liberty at the expense of collective rights and duties.

Bakan has a son from his first wife, Marlee Gayle Klein, also a scholar and Professor of Law at the University of British Columbia. Professor Klein died of leukemia in 2001 after a long struggle and Bakan supported his wife through her illness, while working on The Corporation, and established The Marlee Klein Memorial Lectures in Social Justice to commemorate her contributions to Canadian law and feminist legal theory. He is now married to Canadian actress and singer Rebecca Jenkins. His sister, Laura Naomi Bakan Q.C., is a prominent Vancouver lawyer, and his brother, Michael Bakan, a noted ethnomusicologist.

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Joel Bakan", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0