Message from the Director
Welcome to Ethics, Society & Law (ES&L)! We commonly pronounce the program “E, S AND L”.
ES&L is a University of Toronto (U of T), Faculty of Arts and Science (FAS) major program hosted by Trinity College. ES&L maintains a commitment to small class sizes, student research opportunities, diversity, sustainability and community engagement. The program receives about 500 applications for 75 seats annually, with typically about 80% of students in the program having their primary affiliation at a U of T college other than Trinity. It is a program with excellent students.
ES&L offers undergraduates a broad and deep investigation of crucial issues at the heart of our lives in society. This interdisciplinary program allows students to encounter issues like refugee experience, environmental ethics, human rights and colonialism by looking through ethical, legal and socio-political lenses. The same intersection breathes challenging life into concepts like consent, choice, justice and dignity. Small class sizes mean close interaction with an engaged teaching faculty and a real chance for dialogue and community-building with the other students in your courses – relationships that both enrich university life and endure beyond it.
The major can be built to suit your passions, and course requirements can be met with a rich array of offerings from Ethics, Sociology, Political Science, Philosophy and beyond. Engaging in legal reasoning, socio-political analysis and ethical action, ES&L majors are immersed in the foundational, leading and controversial issues of justice and law in our world. In keeping with the normative questions about human relations at the program’s core, our graduates go on to work in the world to find solutions for the thorniest questions we face and to enhance well-being and fairness, be it in the legal, non-profit, public sector, academic, or social enterprise arenas.
The program hosts, or is closely associated with, many innovative learning opportunities both inside and outside of the classroom, including required and elective courses, student groups and co-curricular outreach and community engagement programs.
If you have any questions about the program, please contact us.
Professor John Duncan
Director, Ethics, Society & Law Program