Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella Named Touro's 2009 Distinguished Jurist in Residence

Touro Law Center has named Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella of the Canadian Supreme Court as our 2009 Distinguished Jurist in Residence. On Tuesday, September 22, Justice Abella will meet with student leaders, guest lecture in classes and interact with students and faculty. In addition, there will be a lecture and reception to honor Justice Abella at the Law Center at 5:00 p.m., which is free and open to the public with advanced RSVP.

Rosalie Silberman Abella was appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada in 2004 after 12 years as a justice on the Ontario Court of Appeal. She is the first Jewish woman to be appointed to the Supreme Court. 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 (and first pregnant) person to be appointed to the Bench.

She was sole Commissioner and author of the 1984 federal Royal Commission on Equality in Employment, in which she created the term and concept of “employment equity,” a new strategy for reducing barriers in employment faced by women, aboriginal people, non-whites, and persons with disabilities.

She has written over 90 articles and written or co-edited four books on a variety of legal topics. She has given several hundred lectures and speeches extensively in Canada and internationally. As the Boulton Visiting Professor at the McGill Law School for four years, she taught advanced courses in constitutional law, administrative law, human rights and civil liberties, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and jurisprudence, and was a Distinguished Visiting Faculty lecturer at the University of Toronto Law School for three years, teaching courses on the judicial role in a democracy, human rights and 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.

For more information about this program, or to RSVP to the community lecture and reception, please contact Aimee Pearlman at (631) 761-7064 or apearlman@tourolaw.edu.