Reflections from Quebec on Language, Identity, and Constitutional Reform

Event Description:

This talk will provide an overview of recent efforts by Quebec to assert a distinctive conception of secularism and to protect the French language. It will situate them as examples of efforts to amend the provincial constitution. Recent events in Ontario show that sweeping use of the notwithstanding clause in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is not solely a Quebec phenomenon. Still the justifications for using it and the larger project of which it forms part are distinctive. The talk will touch on the differing narratives that prevail in English-language and French-language mainstream media.

Lunch will be served in Buchanan Penthouse at 12 pm. Dr. Robert Leckey’s lecture will start at 12:30 pm.  

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Speaker:

Robert Leckey, Ad. E., teaches and researches in family law, constitutional law, and comparative law at the Faculty of Law, McGill University, where since 2016 he has been dean and Samuel Gale Professor. He has degrees in English literature (B.A.H., Queen’s) and in law (B.C.L. & LL.B., McGill; S.J.D., Toronto). He has received, among other awards, the Prix de la Fondation du Barreau du Québec, the Canada Prize of the International Academy of Comparative Law, the John W. Durnford Award for Teaching Excellence (awarded by the McGill Law Students’ Association), the McGill Principal’s Prize for Excellence in Teaching, and the McGill Principal’s Change-maker Prize (Public Engagement through Media). A former member of the Global Young Academy, he is an associate member of the International Academy of Comparative Law and of the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists. His books include the collections After Legal Equality: Family, Sex, Kinship (Routledge, 2015) and Marital Rights (Routledge, 2017) and the monograph Bills of Rights in the Common Law (Cambridge University Press, 2015).

A former clerk for Justice Michel Bastarache at the Supreme Court of Canada, he is a member of the Law Society of Ontario and an Advocate Emeritus of the Barreau du Québec. A former president of Egale Canada, the country’s LGBT lobby group, and former chair of its Legal Issues Committee, he participates regularly in continuing education for lawyers and judges.