Rosalie Abella
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The Honourable Madam Justice Rosalie Abella |
Rosalie Silberman Abella, FRSC (born
July 1,
1946 in
Stuttgart, Germany) is a
Canadian jurist. She was appointed in
2004 to the
Supreme Court of Canada, becoming the first
Jewish woman to sit on the Canadian Supreme Court bench.
Abella was born in a
displaced persons camp in Germany, and came to Canada with her family in
1950. She graduated from the
University of Toronto Law School in 1970, and practised civil and family law litigation until
1976, when she was appointed to the
Ontario Family Court, becoming the youngest and first pregnant judge in Canadian history. She was then appointed to the
Ontario Court of Appeal in
1992.
Abella, who is considered one of Canada's foremost experts in
human rights law, has also been a chair of the
Ontario Labour Relations Board and the
Ontario Law Reform Commission, and a board member of the
Ontario Human Rights Commission. She was also a member of the judicial inquiry on the
Donald Marshall case. She chaired the Ontario Study into Access to Legal Services by the Disabled.
Abella was the sole commissioner of the
1984 federal Royal Commission on Equality in Employment, in which she coined the term
employment equity, a strategy for reducing barriers in employment faced by women, non-whites, people with disabilities, and
Aboriginal peoples in Canada.
While also chair of the
Law Reform Commission, she taught law at
McGill University in Montreal.
Abella has also been active in Canadian cultural life. She has been a judge of the
Giller Prize, and is a graduate of classical piano from the
Royal Conservatory of Music.
She is married to Canadian historian
Irving Abella and has two sons, lawyers Jacob and Zachary. She is the recipient of
23 Honorary degrees and is a fellow of the
Royal Society of Canada.
She has been accused by some of being an
activist judge with regards to an questionable interpretation legislation in the cause of feminism, and also radically diverging from common law precedents. She was paraphrased in a 1976 article by Margaret Mironowicz in the
Globe and Mail, saying that being a judge was like playing God.
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Madam Justice Rosalie Abella
