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UBC Constitutional Lecture
September 11 at 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Join the Honourable Justice Mary Moreau of the Supreme Court of Canada for the annual UBC Constitutional Lecture.
Justice Moreau will be lecturing on Canadian Federalism: Balancing Unity and Diversity and will explore the history and nature of federalism under Canada’s constitution, including the role the Supreme Court has played in interpreting Canada’s constitutional division of powers.
About the Speaker
The Honourable Mary T. Moreau was born in Edmonton, Alberta. Prior to entering law school, she studied at the Faculté Saint-Jean at the University of Alberta. She completed her Bachelor of Laws from the University of Alberta in 1979 while taking part in the common law/civil law exchange program at the Université de Sherbrooke in 1977. In 2019, she was granted an honorary Doctorate from the University of Alberta, and in November 2023, she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Women in Law Leadership.
Justice Moreau was called to the Alberta Bar in 1980. As a lawyer, she practised primarily in criminal law, constitutional law, and civil litigation. She litigated several landmark cases involving minority language rights and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. She is a co-founder of the Association des juristes d’expression française de l’Alberta.
She was appointed as a justice of the Court of King’s Bench of Alberta in 1994. She was also appointed as a deputy judge of the Supreme Court of Yukon in 1996, and of the Supreme Court of the Northwest Territories in 2005. In 2017, she was appointed Chief Justice of the Court of King’s Bench of Alberta.
Throughout her judicial career, Justice Moreau has been actively involved in judicial education, administration, and ethics, and has actively participated in international judicial education and support projects in Mexico, Morocco, Haiti, Ukraine and Mongolia. She was a member of the National Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics from 2014 to 2017. She was president of the Canadian Superior Courts Judges Association from 2011 to 2012.
Justice Moreau was a member of the Canadian Judicial Council from 2017 to 2023 and was appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada on November 6, 2023.
