Honouring Lives and Legacies Through Legal Scholarship

When Philip Anisman (LLB ‘67) thinks about giving, he doesn’t think in abstract terms about institutions or legacy. He thinks about people: teachers, family, friends and colleagues - relationships that he values.

His philanthropic efforts, he says, are rooted in commemoration of those individuals in a meaningful, practical way.

Anisman earned undergraduate and law degrees at the University of Toronto and LLM and JSD degrees at the University of California, Berkeley. His educational experience, combined with his later work as a law professor, public servant and practising lawyer, reinforced his belief in the importance of rigorous thinking, intellectual openness and fairness in legal processes and decision-making. Although his academic path eventually took him beyond U of T, he chose the U of T and the Henry N.R. Jackman Faculty of Law for philanthropic initiatives to commemorate people who mattered to him. 

Philanthropy as Commemoration

Anisman says his giving has always been about honouring people. He created the Mary and Louis Anisman Fellowship in Law and Fairness at the Faculty in honour of his parents, neither of whom had attended university. He chose to create a fellowship in their name as a way to support graduate students who were doing advanced work with the potential to make a serious scholarly contribution on an element of law he believes important.

“The motivation was to honour my parents. The fellowship was the vehicle.”

Over the years, he has taken a similar approach in commemorating teachers, friends and colleagues. For example, he initiated and led the efforts that established the F.E.L. Priestley Memorial Lectures in the History of Ideas at University College to honour the best teacher he had at the U of T, and he created the H.S. Thurston Fellowship in Policing and Organized Crime at the Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies in memory of his friend, Herb. Currently, he has been working to establish a student prize in memory of Professor Hudson Janisch, who taught at the Faculty from 1978 to 2004.  

Anisman first met Janisch in September, 1968 at the University of Western Ontario, where both began their teaching careers. What followed was a personal and professional friendship that spanned decades, institutions and overlapping areas of legal interest, although their academic specializations differed in some respects. Anisman recalls that their professional exchanges were marked by intellectual candour and vigorous debate.

“Hudson and I were friends. We would talk about all kinds of things from quitting smoking and our restaurant preferences to somewhat esoteric legal standards. He had a strong presence that came through in his openness and directness. He spoke very boldly, and we sometimes had direct debates in which we strongly disagreed, on occasion in public forums.”  

After Janisch’s death in July, 2025, Anisman assisted his family, particularly his daughter, Ellen, by working with the Faculty to shape a meaningful form of commemoration. The result of this collaboration is the Hudson Janisch Prize in Administrative Law and Regulation.

“The prize reflects Hudson’s commitment to teaching, to his students and to encouraging excellence in legal scholarship and writing,” Anisman says. “Among the things he was happiest about were the graduate students he mentored and helping students develop into good lawyers and good scholars. The prize is now open to JD students. With additional donations, it may be made available to graduate students, as well. This, of course, is the goal.”

Anisman coordinated the effort to establish the prize, reaching out to individuals who had or might have known Janisch through different stages of his career. These included former students, academic and professional colleagues, practising lawyers and others who had encountered Janisch in regulatory and advisory contexts. Some of them reached out to others, expanding the network of support.  

“Hudson was generous intellectually and in his friendships and that was reciprocated by the people who supported the prize,” Anisman says. “It’s a way of memorializing a friend, colleague and teacher through the work of future students.”

On Advice – or the Lack of It

Anisman is careful to draw a distinction between reflecting on his own education and offering guidance to others. When asked what advice he would give to current students, he is clear that he does not see that as his role.

“I don’t give advice to people about how to live their lives,” he says. Nor does he believe that careers or intellectual paths are shaped by direct instruction. In his view, the impact of education comes not from prescriptions, but from the effect that exposure to the give and take of the analysis of concepts and structures and to the personalities of those with whom they engage in this process may have on the proclivities and receptivity of those so exposed.

What mattered most in his own experience were teachers who demonstrated how to analyze – not by providing answers, but by exposing the structures of concepts or ideas and the choices in making decisions applying them, whether in developing policies, drafting legislation, deciding a case or writing a poem or novel. He says he was drawn to approaches that emphasized intellectual openness and sustained thought: taking the time to understand how legal materials are constructed, the alternatives that were and are available and the values that underpin decisions being made.  

“The most valuable part of a legal education,” he says, “is the way it trains students to understand how policies are determined and may be implemented, weighing the sometimes contradictory values sought, the choices available to achieve them and their consequences. I want to support the kind of scholarship that encourages openness of mind, intellectual rigour and hard work.”