Wallenberg Lecture with Supreme Court of Canada Justice Rosalie Abella

Join us for the 2017 Wallenberg Lecture, which will be given by the Honourable Rosalie Silberman Abella, Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada.

About the speaker

Rosalie Silberman Abella was appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada in 2004 after serving on the Ontario Court of Appeal for 12 years. She practised civil and criminal litigation until she was appointed to the Ontario Family Court in 1976.  She subsequently chaired the Ontario Law Reform Commission and the Ontario Labour Relations Board. Justice Abella was the sole Commissioner and author of the 1984 Royal Commission on Equality in Employment, creating the term and concept of “employment equity.”

She was the Boulton Visiting Professor at McGill's Faculty of Law from 1988 to1992, teaching jurisprudence, administrative law, and constitutional law.  She is a specially elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as a graduate of the Royal Conservatory of Music in classical piano.  She was a judge of the Giller Literary Prize, and has written over 90 articles and written or co-edited four books on a wide variety of legal topics. She has 37 honourary degrees. Justice Abella is married to Canadian historian Irving Abella and they have two sons, both lawyers. 

About this annual conference

Organized by the McGill Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism, the Wallenberg Lectures honour Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat whose actions saved the lives of thousands of Jews in Hungary during the Second World War.