Education

Courses

• Introduction to Law (POL-307)

About

Kristopher Kinsinger is an Ontario lawyer. He received his Juris Doctor from Osgoode Hall Law School in 2019, where he was the recipient of several scholarships and prizes, before completing his articles of clerkship with a national law firm in Waterloo, Ontario. He was called to the Ontario Bar in 2020, and received his Master of Laws from McGill University in 2021 on a SSHRC scholarship and with the Pilarczyk Graduate Award in Law. Between 2021 and 2024, he served full-time as the national director of the Runnymede Society, a major Canadian legal organization. Kristopher’s writing regularly appears in periodicals such as The Supreme Court Law Review, Constitutional Forum, the National Post, and The Hub. In 2021, Kristopher was selected to join the inaugural cohort of the prestigious NextGen Fellowship with the Cardus think tank, and served two terms between 2017 and 2023 on the board of directors of Christian Legal Fellowship, Canada’s national association of Christian lawyers and law students. He currently serves as the chair of the Canadian Bar Association’s Constitutional and Human Rights Section and as a member and deacon of Hespeler Baptist Church in Cambridge, Ontario. In his free time, Kristopher can be found reading, writing, drinking coffee, listening to vinyl, or mapping out his next backcountry camping trip.

Research Interests

• Fundamental freedoms
• Constitutionalism and the rule of law
• State religious neutrality
• Constitutional methodology and doctrine
• Legal interpretation
• Canadian legal history 

Recent Publications

Articles and Chapters

Kennedy, Gerard and Kristopher Kinsinger. “Justiciability, Religious Tenets, and Private Law Causes of Action: Towards a Predictable Framework.” SCLR (2d) 114 (2024).

Kinsinger, Kristopher. “To Entrench or Not to Entrench? Canadian Constitutionalism and the Bill of Rights Debate” Rev Const Stud 28, no. 1 (2023): 121; peer reviewed.

Kinsinger, Kristopher. “The Evolving Debate Over Section 33 of the Charter.” In The Notwithstanding Clause and the Canadian Charter: Rights, Reforms and Controversies, Peter Biro, ed. Montreal-Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2024; peer reviewed.

Bird, Brian and Kristopher Kinsinger. “Constitutional Exegesis, Animating Principles and City of Toronto.” SCLR (2d) 110 (2023): 31

Kinsinger, Kristopher. “Bringing About a Reformation? Religious Freedom and Canadian Constitutionalism, 1759-1774.” SCLR (2d) 105 (2022): 395

Kinsinger, Kristopher. “Quebec’s Bill 21 and the Secular Conceit of Religious Neutrality.” IJRF 13, no. 1/2 (2020); peer reviewed.

Kinsinger, Kristopher. “Restricting Freedom of Peaceful Assembly During Public Health Emergencies.” Const Forum Const 30, no. 1 (2021): 1.

Kinsinger, Kristopher. “Positive Freedoms and Peaceful Assemblies: Reenvisioning Section 2(c) of the Charter” SCLR (2d) 98 (2020): 377

Kinsinger, Kristopher. “Inclusive Religious Neutrality: Rearticulating the Relationship Between Sections 2(a) and 15 of the Charter” SCLR (2d) 91 (2019): 219

Edited Collections

Kennedy, Gerard, Kristopher Kinsinger, and Malcolm Lavoie. Private Rights and the Rule of Law. Toronto: LexisNexis, 2024. (symposium held in July 2023; to be concurrently published as a special volume of the Supreme Court Law Review)

St-Hilaire, Maxime, Ryan Alford, and Kristopher Kinsinger. Unwritten Constitutionalism. Toronto: LexisNexis, 2023. (symposium held in March 2022; concurrently published as volume 110 of the Supreme Court Law Review)

Research Funding 

Joseph Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship – Master’s (SSHRC), 2021; awarded for pursuit of LLM research project supervised by Professor Colleen Sheppard at McGill University, titled “Putting the ‘Fundamental’ Back in Fundamental Freedoms (or How to Solve the Problem of the Notwithstanding Clause)”

Awards and Certificates

• NextGen Fellow, Cardus, 2021-2022
• Pilarczyk Graduate Award in Law, McGill University, 2021
• Barrister & Solicitor, Law Society of Ontario, 2020
• Bora Laskin Prize, Osgoode Hall Law School of York University, 2019
• Hon. Ian Scott Public Interest Internship Award, Osgoode Hall Law School of York University; awarded for internship w/ Christian Legal Fellowship, 2017 
• Hon. William G.C. Howland Award of Excellence Entrance Scholarship, Osgoode Hall Law School of York University, 2016, renewed in 2017 and 2018
• Departmental Award for Distinguished Academic Achievement in History, University of Waterloo, 2016
• Dean’s Honours List Graduate, University of Waterloo, 2016