For over thirty years, Vince Calderhead worked with Nova Scotia Legal Aid on a wide range of poverty-related issues such as tenants’ rights and housing issues, criminal fine defaults, refugee needs, and social assistance/EI and Canada Pension problems. During most of that time, he taught Poverty Law and Human Rights at Dalhousie’s Schulich School of Law. Since 1995, he has frequently appeared before  United Nations Human Rights treaty bodies advocating for the better protection of social and economic rights in Canada. Between 2009 and 2011, Vince took leave from legal aid and acted as County Director for the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists in Nepal during that country’s negotiating of its new constitution in the wake of a 10-year civil war. He currently is a lawyer at Pink Larkin in Halifax where he works pro bono on cases that seek to advance the rights of people living in poverty.

Professor Nathalie Chalifour, FRSC, joined the French Common Law Program of the U of Ottawa in 2003. She was a founding Director of the Centre for Environmental Law and Global Sustainability at the Faculty of Law, and is cross-appointed to the Institute of the Environment and, as its Associate Director from 2011-2015, helped establish its Masters of Environmental Sustainability degree. She is a member of the Advisory Committee to the uOttawa Ecojustice Clinic and helped found the Secretariat for the IUCN Academy of International Law, which was housed at the University of Ottawa from 2006 to 2016. Her research lies at the intersection of environment law, economics and social justice, with a focus on climate change. Her publications address climate change, carbon pricing, environmental justice, constitutional law, environmental human rights, the green economy and sustainable food and agriculture. She is currently co-leading a multi-year SSHRC-funded project Environmental Justice in Canadian Law and Policy. Professor Chalifour recently served as pro-bono co-counsel to Canada’s Ecofiscal Commission at the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal, and the United Chiefs and Council of the Mnidoo Mnising at the Ontario Court of Appeal (with Westaway Law), in the constitutional challenges to the federal carbon price.  She served as pro-bono co-counsel to the National Association of Women and the Law and Friends of the Earth Canada in the appeals of these decisions to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Y.Y. Brandon Chen (SJD, MSW, JD) is an Associate Professor at the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law, Common Law Section, with expertise in constitutional law, health law, and immigration and refugee law. A lawyer and social worker by training, his research leverages socio-legal and action research methodologies to identify and examine injustices that surface at the intersection of international migration and health. His published work has touched on such topics as migrants’ health and rights, social determinants of health, border control of infectious diseases, and medical tourism. He is currently the Vice Chair of the HIV Legal Network and he previously served as the Co-Chair of the Community Alliance for Accessible Treatment. He has also acted as a co-counsel, along with Professors Martha Jackman and Vanessa Gruben, for a coalition of interveners in Toussaint v Canada (AG).

Aimée Craft is an award-winning teacher and researcher, recognized internationally as a leader in the area of Indigenous laws, treaties and water.  She holds a University Research Chair Nibi miinawaa aki inaakonigewin: Indigenous governance in relationship with land and water. An Associate Professor at the Faculty of Common law, University of Ottawa and an Indigenous (Anishinaabe-Métis) lawyer from Treaty 1 territory in Manitoba, she is the former Director of Research at the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and the founding Director of Research at the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. She practiced at the Public Interest Law Centre for over a decade and in 2016 she was voted one of the top 25 most influential lawyers in Canada.  In 2021 she was awarded the prestigious Canadian Bar Association President’s Award and was named the Early Career Researcher of the Year Award at the University of Ottawa. Prof. Craft prioritizes Indigenous-lead and interdisciplinary research, including through visual arts and film, co-leads a series of major research grants on Decolonizing Water Governance and works with many Indigenous nations and communities on Indigenous relationships with and responsibilities to nibi (water).  She plays an active role in international collaborations relating to transformative memory in colonial contexts and relating to the reclamation of Indigenous birthing practices as expressions of territorial sovereignty.

For many years Professor Currie taught courses in public international law, tort law, the law governing the use of armed force by states, international humanitarian law, constitutional law, and techniques of legal research and writing. The recipient of several teaching awards (including the Faculty of Law’s 2020 Excellence in Teaching Award), he also designed and delivered courses on the theory and practice of international law for a number of organizations outside the University, including the Canadian Foreign Service Institute and Queen's University's Bader International Studies Centre in the United Kingdom. His research and writing interests have included various aspects of public international law, with a particular emphasis on its interaction with domestic legal systems. He has authored or co-authored several books over the course of his career, including Public International Law, 2nd edition (Irwin Law, 2008) and International Law: Doctrine, Practice and Theory, 3rd edition (Irwin Law, 2022). He is a member of the Bar of Ontario and currently serves as a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague.

Erin is currently completing her PhD in environmental law at the University of Ottawa. She holds a BSc in Neuroscience from McGill University and a JD from Dalhousie's Schulich School of Law with a specialization in health law and policy. After practising health law and professional regulation in Toronto for half a decade, she returned to academia and obtained an LLM in Global Sustainability and Environmental Law from the University of Ottawa. As a PhD candidate, she is engaged in research and community initiatives related to environmental rights, climate justice, and public and planetary health. Most recently, she represented Friends of the Earth Canada as an intervener in the first human rights-based climate change lawsuit in Canada to have a hearing on the merits and supported a United Nations’ consultation on children’s rights and the environment as a member of the Global Network for Human Rights and the Environment. During the 2023-2024 academic year, she is teaching torts and a health law & policy seminar at the Schulich School of Law as a Schulich Fellow.

Mary Eberts, OC, is one of Canada’s leading constitutional equality rights litigators. She has been counsel in many challenges to the Indian Act’s sex discrimination, and in ground-breaking Charter equality cases before the Supreme Court of Canada and other appellate courts in Canada. She was involved in framing the language of s. 15 and was a co-founder of the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF). She is a Senior Fellow of Massey College at the University of Toronto.

Sarah (she/her) graduated from the Programme de droit canadien in 2023. Passionate about social justice and active in her community, Sarah founded the Social Justice Society (SJS), a student club dedicated to promoting social justice issues and progressive causes. She also worked at the Equality Law Clinic and volunteered at the National Association of Women and the Law (NAWL). Additionally, Sarah worked as a research assistant to Professor Anne Levesque on various projects and was Professor Martha Jackman’s teaching assistant in the Charter course. She is now articling at Goldblatt Partners LLP in Ottawa.

Fay Faraday held positions as a sessional instructor, a Visiting Professor and Visiting Clinical Fellow in the law school and as a Visiting Chair in Social Justice in the Politics Department at York University, before being hired full-time at Osgoode Hall Law School in 2018. She teaches in the areas of: social and economic justice, including labour and employment law, labour migration, human rights, appellate advocacy, ethical lawyering, clinical legal education and social justice and political activism. She has published extensively in the areas of Charter rights, human rights and labour law. She holds an Innovation Fellowship from the Metcalf Foundation and is engaged in legal and community-based research on the rights of migrant workers. Fay is also a social justice lawyer at Faraday Law where she represents unions, community organizations and coalitions in constitutional, human rights, labour and pay equity and administrative law cases. She also provides community groups and coalitions with strategic and policy advice on a wide range of constitutional and human rights issues. Since 2017, she has served as Discrimination and Harassment Counsel for the Law Society of Ontario.

Professor Flynn is an Associate Professor at the Peter A. Allard School of Law at UBC. Her teaching and research focus on municipal law and governance, administrative law and property law, particularly in relation to precariously housed people. She has published widely on how cities are understood in law and how they govern, including the overlapping geographies and governance of city spaces, and the formal and informal bodies that represent residents. She is currently leading CMHC and SSHRC-funded projects focused on Canada’s housing crisis. Prior to entering academia, she practised banking and securities law in New York, where she was the recipient of several legal aid awards. She also practised Aboriginal Law at Ratcliff & Company in Vancouver, and worked in a senior policy role focused on intergovernmental relations at the City of Toronto. She has a long history of volunteer work in the areas of homelessness and access to justice.

Kerri Froc is an Associate Professor of law  at the UNB Faculty of Law where she teaches Advanced Constitutional Law, Administrative Law, and Feminist Legal Theory. Her research brings a feminist analysis to Charter of Rights and federalism jurisprudence. Prior to completing her doctorate, she practised law as a civil litigator in Regina, a staff lawyer for the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund and a staff lawyer in the areas of law reform and equality at the CBA. She is preparing a book manuscript tentatively entitled “The Gendered Constitution”.

Vanessa Gruben is a professor in the Common Law Section of the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law. A recognized expert in Canadian health law and policy, her scholarship probes the law and ethics of assisted reproduction, harm reduction, organ donation and transplantation, and health care professional self-regulation. She is the co-editor of the 5th edition of Canada’s leading health law text, Canadian Health Law and Policy (LexisNexis, 2017), and co-author of Families and the Law in Canada: Cases and Commentary (Captus, 2019). She has been a member of the Health Professions Appeal and Review Board and the Health Services Appeal and Review Board. She currently serves as board member of the Canadian Health Coalition and of AMS Healthcare. She has appeared on behalf of Amnesty International Canada before the Supreme Court of Canada in Charkaoui v. Canada, [2007] 1 S.C.R. 350; Charkaoui v. Canada, [2008] 2 S.C.R. 326; Khadr v. Canada, [2010] SCC 3; and the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. Professor Gruben is a graduate of the University of Ottawa’s Common Law program. She clerked for Chief Justice Richard of the Federal Court of Appeal and then Justice Bastarache of the Supreme Court of Canada. She was called to the bar in Ontario in 2003, after which she practiced as an associate in the litigation group of a national law firm. She joined the Faculty of Law after graduating as a James Kent Scholar from Columbia University’s Master of Laws program.

Lucie Lamarche is a professor in the Faculty of Political Science and Law at UQAM. She has been a member of the Quebec Bar since 1978 and is a director of the Ligue des droits et libertés du Québec. Lamarche is a Jean Monnet Fellow of the European University Institute (1998); holder of the Mérite Christine Tourigny (social justice) of the Quebec Bar (2002); holder of the Prix Pierre Dansereau for the social commitment of a researcher - Association canadienne française pour l'avancement des savoirs (ACFAS) (2016) and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (2014). Since 2018, she has served as a member of the Court Challenges Program of Canada's Expert Panel on Human Rights. From 2008 to 2013, she directed the Human Rights Research and Education Centre at the University of Ottawa, where she held the Gordon F. Henderson Chair in Human Rights Law. Lamarche teaches social and labour law and international economic and social human rights law.

Professor Levesque joined the Programme de common law français at the University of Ottawa after working in private practice as a human rights lawyer, and in a community legal clinic. Her research and publications focus on human rights and public interest litigation. She has argued before several administrative tribunals and all levels of court, including the Supreme Court of Canada. She was one of the lawyers who secured equality of funding for Indigenous children in the historic 2016 First Nations and Family Caring Society case. She was the founding Director of the Programme de pratique du droit at the U of O which improves students’ practical competencies and involves them in their communities to promote access to justice in French. She is associated with the Broadbent Institute, is co-chair of the National Assn. of Women and the Law, and is Chair of the Human Rights Committee of the Council of Canadians with Disabilties. Anne is a member of the U of O Honour Society and of l’Ordre du merité de l’Association de jurists d’expression française de l’Ontario. She is a recipient of the Ontario Bar Association President’s Award, and the 150th Commemorative Medal of the Senate of Canada.

Vanessa MacDonnell is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law (Common Law Section) and Co-Director of the uOttawa Public Law Centre. Vanessa’s research examines the constitutional functions of the executive branch, inter-institutional relationships, unwritten constitutional norms and principles, and the relationship between Canada’s legal and political constitutions. She also writes about police powers and the jury. She is currently completing a SSHRC-funded research project on quasi-constitutional legislation. She is also the Canadian Principal Investigator on a $1.7 million interdisciplinary, international research project on unwritten constitutional norms and principles. Vanessa is a graduate of the University of Toronto Faculty of Law (J.D.) and Harvard Law School (LL.M.). She is currently pursuing doctoral studies at McGill University. Between 2007 and 2008 she served as a law clerk to Justice Louise Charron at the Supreme Court of Canada.

Robyn-Lee has recently completed the combined French Juris Doctor and Political Science program at the University of Ottawa. She has a particular interest in constitutional law, administrative law, and national security law. That being said, she holds a strong belief in the advancement of social justice through the law. In fact, furthering the recognition and integration of Indigenous Laws within the canadian legal system is a topic that Robyn-Lee has written many class papers on.  Robyn-Lee lives in the National Capital region along with her dogs Ruth and Muffin. In early August, she will begin her articling as a clerk for the Federal Court.

Bruce Porter is the Director of the Social Rights Advocacy Centre and has published many articles and book chapters on social rights in both Canadian and international law. With Martha Jackman he co-directed a major ten-year research project on social rights in Canada and has been retained as a consultant by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. He sat on the Ontario Human Rights Commission from 2016-2019. Bruce has co-ordinated thirteen interventions by the Charter Committee on Poverty Issues at the Supreme Court of Canada and represented the claimant at the UN in Nell Toussaint v Canada, a precedent-setting case on the right to life and access to health care. He co-ordinated the successful Charter challenge to establish the rights of charities to advocate for changes to law and policy in Canada Without Poverty v Canada. He was instrumental in developing federal legislation to entrench the right to housing in the National Housing Strategy Act (NHSA) (2019) and works actively with the National Right to Housing Network to ensure its implementation. Bruce was a founding member of ESCR-Net and sits on the Steering Committee of its Strategic Litigation Working Group. He represented NGOs in negotiating the historic complaints procedure for violations of ESC rights adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2008.

David Robitaille is a full professor in the Civil Law Section at the University of Ottawa. He has been teaching and conducting research in constitutional and administrative law, municipal law, environmental law and rights and freedoms since 2005. His recent research and publications have focused on the division of federal-provincial-municipal powers in the areas of land use planning, the environment, transportation and human rights and freedoms. His doctoral thesis was awarded the Gold Medal of the Governor General of Canada in 2008, the Prix d'excellence of the Association québécoise des professeurs de droit, and the Médaille du Barreau de Paris. Some of his publications have been cited with approval by the courts, including the Supreme Court of Canada, the Quebec Court of Appeal, the Superior Court of Quebec, the Court of Quebec and the Quebec Human Rights Tribunal.

David Schneiderman is Professor of Law and Political Science (courtesy) at the University of Toronto where he teaches courses on Canadian and US constitutional law, comparative constitutional law, and international investment law. He is the author of over 80 articles and book chapters and, in addition, the author or editor of over a dozen books, including Resisting Economic Globalization: Critical Theory and International Investment Law (2013), Red, White and Kind of Blue? The Conservatives and the Americanization of Canadian Constitutional Culture (2015) and Investment Law’s Alibis: Colonialism, Imperialism, Debt and Development (2022).

Colleen Sheppard is a Professor at McGill University, Faculty of Law, and former Director of the McGill Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism. Her teaching and research focus on human rights law, equality, discrimination law, comparative constitutional law and feminist legal theory. Selective publications include Discrimination Stories: Law, Exclusion and Everyday Life (2021); « Contester la discrimination systémique au Canada: Droit et changement organisationnel » (2018); Mapping anti-discrimination law onto inequality at work: Expanding the meaning of equality in international labour law (2012); and Inclusive Equality: The Relational Dimensions of Systemic Discrimination in Canada (2010). Colleen Sheppard served as a Commissioner on the Quebec Human Rights and Youth Rights Commission from 1991-1996. She was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada's Academy of Social Sciences in September 2016.

Dr. Kim Stanton is a lawyer, former legal director of LEAF, and a Senior Fellow of Massey College at the University of Toronto. Her legal practice has focused on equality, constitutional and Aboriginal law, and gender-based violence. Her book, Reconciling Truths: Reimagining Public Inquiries in Canada (UBC Press, 2022) was short-listed for the Writers’ Trust Balsillie Prize for Public Policy. She was a Commissioner on the Mass Casualty Commission, the joint federal/provincial inquiry into the April 2020 Nova Scotia mass casualty), which issued its final report in March 2023.

Clémence graduated from the University of Ottawa combined political science and French Common Law program in 2023. They are passionate about advocacy work and have spent several years working with social justice and equality-oriented initiatives including LEAF, the Equality Law Clinic, the Capital Rainbow Refuge, the ID Project and the University of Ottawa Community Legal Clinic. Clémence is also a published poet, lover of literature, and former teaching assistant for legal writing and research. Their academic writing, whether published or in the context of research roles, mobilizes queer theory to explore the intersections between queer/trans knowledge and legal studies.

Christine Vézina researches socioeconomic and health injustices. She uses socio-legal theory and empirical methodology to investigate the law in action—as it is or is not mobilized by social actors. She seeks to better understand the legal culture of human rights that (re)produces the marginalization of social and cultural economic rights such as health rights, housing, food, and standard of living in Quebec and Canada. She seeks to position economic and social rights in the practices, representations and values of actors working within and on the periphery of the judicial system.

Margot Young is Professor in the Allard School of Law at the U.B.C. where her research focuses on equality law and theory, women’s economic equality, urban theory, and local housing politics and rights. She is also working on the intersections between environmental justice, social justice, feminism, and human rights. Professor Young co-edited Poverty: Rights, Social Citizenship and Legal Activism and was Co-Principal Investigator of the Housing Justice Project (HousingJustice.ca). She is widely published in a variety of journals and edited books. She was Director of the Social Justice Specialization at the law school and has organized the Law and Society Speakers Series for close to a decade. She served three terms as Chair of the Faculty Association Status of Women Committee. She is a research associate with Green College, the Peter Wall Institute of Advanced Studies, and the Centre for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice at UBC. Professor Young sits on the boards for Justice for Girls and the David Suzuki Foundation; is a Research Associate with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives-BC Office, works with the BC CEDAW Group and the Feminist Alliance for International Action and collaborates with provincial and national women’s equality groups during United Nation committees’ periodic reviews of Canada’s human rights record.