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 Speaker | Info | Students Home
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Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella Addresses 2007 Graduates
Justice Abella was appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada in 2004 after 12 years as a justice on the Ontario Court of Appeal. Justice Abella was born on July 1, 1946 in a Displaced Persons Camp in Germany and came to Canada as a refugee in 1950. After graduating from the University of Toronto Law School in 1970, she practiced civil and criminal litigation until, at the age of 29, she was appointed to the Ontario Family Court in 1976, making her Canada's youngest person to be appointed to the Bench. She chaired the Ontario Labour Relations Board, the Ontario Law Reform Commission, and the Study on Access to Legal Services by the Disabled. She was a member of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, the Premier's Advisory Committee on Confederation, the Ontario Public Service Labour Relations Tribunal, the University of Toronto Academic Discipline Tribunal, and the Canadian Judicial Council's Inquiry on Donald Marshall, Jr., an aboriginal Canadian who spent eleven years in prison for a murder that he did not commit. Justice Abella served as Commissioner of the Royal Commission on Equality in Employment, and was the author of a groundbreaking report that introduced the concept of "employment equity," a new strategy for reducing barriers in employment faced by women, aboriginal people, non-whites, and persons with disabilities. The theories of "equality" and "discrimination" that she developed in her Report were adopted by the Supreme Court of Canada in its first decision dealing with equality rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which is the Canadian bill of rights. The Report has been implemented by the governments of Canada, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, and South Africa. Justice Abella has written over 90 articles and written or co-edited four books on a variety of legal topics. She has also given several hundred lectures and speeches extensively in Canada and around the world. She has been a visiting professor at the McGill Law School and at the University of Toronto Law School, teaching courses on the judicial role in a democracy, human rights, civil liberties, and comparative jurisprudence. Justice Abella is a specially elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a Senior Fellow at Massey College. She was a Trustee of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada and a director of the Institute for Research on Public Policy. Justice Abella was a director of the International Commission of Jurists, and of the Canadian Institute for the Administration of Justice. She co-chaired the 1992 Constitutional Conferences and moderated the 1988 English language Leaders' Debate. She was a member of the Atkinson Foundation Fellowship in Public Policy Selection Committee, a judge of the Giller Literary Prize, and is a graduate of The Royal Conservatory of Music in classical piano. Justice Abella has been very active in Canadian judicial education, organizing the first judicial seminar in which all levels of the judiciary participated, the first judicial seminar in which persons outside the legal profession were invited to participate, the first national education program for administrative tribunals, and the first national conference for Canada's women judges. She has 25 honorary degrees and is the only woman to receive the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. Justice Abella was awarded the 2003 International Justice Prize of the Peter Gruber Foundation and the 2004 Walter S. Tarnopolsky Award for Human Rights by the Canadian Bar Association and the International Commission of Jurists, and was selected as the 2004-2005 Robert Anderson Fellow at Yale Law School. In 2007, she was awarded an Honorary Fellowship in the American College of Trial Lawyers. Justice Abella is married to Canadian history professor Irving Abella. They have two sons, Jacob and Zachary, both lawyers. Brooklyn Law School was honored to welcome Justice Abella and to award her its highest degree. View video of Justice Abella's Commencement address (Windows Media Player required).
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