Biography

Justice Abella was appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada in 2004. She is the first Jewish woman appointed to the Court.

She attended the University of Toronto, where she earned a B.A. in 1967 and an LL.B. in 1970. In 1964 she graduated from the Royal Conservatory of Music in classical piano. She was called to the Ontario Bar in 1972 and practised civil and criminal litigation until 1976 when she was appointed to the Ontario Family Court at the age of 29, the youngest and first pregnant person appointed to the judiciary in Canada. She was appointed to the Ontario Court of Appeal in 1992.

Abella was 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 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. She subsequently served as Chair of the  Ontario Labour Relations Board (1984 to 1989), Chair of the Ontario Law Reform Commission (1989 to 1992), and Boulton Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Law of McGill University (1988 to 1992). She also served as a commissioner on the Ontario Human Rights Commission; as a member of the Ontario Public Service Labour  Relations Tribunal; as Co-Chair of the University of Toronto Academic Discipline Tribunal; as a member of the Premier’s Advisory Committee on Confederation; and as Chair of the Study on Access to Legal Services by the Disabled.

She has written over 90 articles and written or co-edited four books. She was made a Senior Fellow of Massey College in 1989, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1997, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007 and was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2018.

She has given, among others, the Harlan Lecture at Princeton, the Ryan Lecture at Georgetown, the Winchester Lecture at Oxford, the Anderson Lecture at Yale, and she was the Bullock Chair at the Hebrew University, the Mackenzie King Distinguished Visiting Professor at Harvard, the Floersheimer Distinguished Jurist in  Residence at Cardozo, a Distinguished Visiting Faculty at the  University of Toronto Law School, and Bright International Jurist in Residence at the University of Hawaii School of Law.

Justice Abella has received numerous awards throughout the world. She has received 39 honourary degrees.

Justice Abella was born in a Displaced Person’s Camp in Stuttgart, Germany on July 1, 1946. Her family came to Canada as refugees in 1950. She is the first refugee appointed to the bench in Canada. She is married to Canadian historian Irving Abella and they have two sons, Jacob and Zachary, both lawyers.