Fireside Chat with Justice Rosalie Abella, the first Jewish woman appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada

Justice Abella was appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada in 2004. She is the first Jewish woman appointed to the Court. After she was born in a Displaced Person’s Camp in Stuttgart, Germany on July 1, 1946, Justice Abella’s family came to Canada as Jewish refugees in 1950. She is the first refugee appointed to the bench in Canada.

In 2025, Justice Abella was appointed a Companion of the Order of Canada. She was elected to the Royal Society of Canada in 1997, to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007, and to the American Philosophical Society in 2018. In 2020, she was awarded the Knight Commander‘s Cross of the Order of Merit by the President of Germany.

Amongst her many achievements, Justice Abella was Chair and author of the Ontario Study on Access to Legal Services by the Disabled in 1983 and the sole Commissioner of the 1984 federal Royal Commission on Equality in Employment, creating the term and concept of “employment equity”. The theories of “equality” and “discrimination” she developed in her Royal Commission Report were adopted by the Supreme Court of Canada in its first decision dealing with equality rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1989. The report has been implemented by the governments of Canada, New Zealand, Northern Ireland and South Africa.

Her full bio is here: https://hls.harvard.edu/faculty/rosalie-silberman-abella/

Kosher food will be served.