News

Lara Khoury awarded prestigious CBA Prize

Published: 11 July 2023

The Faculty of Law is pleased to announce that Professor Lara Khoury, Ad E, has received the 2023 Ramon John Hnatyshyn Award for Law of the Canadian Bar Association (CBA).

She was presented with an engraved bronze medallion designed by the Governor General’s Office of Heraldry at the CBA President’s Dinner in Ottawa on 21 June.

The prestigious Ramon John Hnatyshyn award is given to recognize outstanding contribution in law reform, legal scholarship and/or legal research. Lara Khoury became the third McGill Law faculty member to win this prize, after the late Roderick A. Macdonald, OC, FRSC (2010), and its inaugural recipient, Paul-André Crépeau, CC, OQ, FRSC (1993).

A full professor, Lara Khoury is a leading expert in the fields of comparative medical, public health and environmental law, with a focus on liability. She joined the Faculty of Law as a Boulton Junior Fellow in 2000 before becoming an assistant professor in 2002. She has completed a doctoral degree (DPhil) and a master’s degree (BCL) at the University of Oxford.

Professor Khoury is co-founder of the McGill Research Group on Health and Law (RGHL), which serves as an important interdisciplinary bridge between researchers at McGill and the community interested in advancing health law and policy. In 2019, she was elected a titular member of the International Academy of Comparative Law, and she received the Barreau du Québec's Advocatus Emeritus (Ad E) designation.

A prolific writer, Professor Khoury’s scholarship has been cited nearly 60 times by Canadian judges – including twice by the Supreme Court. She is the author of "Uncertain Causation in Medical Liability" (Hart Publishing, Yvon Blais), which received the 2004 Prix Minerve and the 2008 Quebec Bar Foundation Prize.

Staunchly committed to sharing the knowledge stemming from her research, Lara Khoury has extensive experience providing continuing education inside and outside the university community. She has offered training to adjudicators of the Indian Residential School Compensation Program, judges of the Superior Court of Quebec and Cour du Québec, and audiences of the National Judicial Institute, among others. She serves as the sole legal expert on the Forum de consultation de la Commissaire à la santé et au bien-être du Québec, and on the Institut national de Santé du Québec’s Comité d’éthique de santé publique.

“I am delighted to see this recognition of our colleague’s status as an innovative and inspiring scholar, as well as an established leader in her field,” said Dean Robert Leckey, Ad E. “Her timely research on liability litigation has made tremendous contributions to society by informing the work of scholars, practitioners, and judges alike.”

Back to top