The Marlee Kline Social Justice Lecture honours the memory of Marlee Gayle Kline. This lectureship not only recognizes Marlee's rich contribution to the law school community but also reflects her belief in the central role social justice concerns must play in legal education and law.
Professor Kline died in 2001 after a lengthy and determined struggle with leukemia. Her work on feminist legal theory, critical race theory, child welfare law and policy, law's continued colonialism, and the restructuring of the social welfare state is internationally acclaimed.
The Centre for Feminist Legal Studies is pleased to present the annual Marlee Kline Lecture in Social Justice each Fall and to award the Marlee Kline Essay Prize to a deserving student (or students) each academic year. Marlee's library, which contains many volumes on the intersection of class, race and gender in the legal arena, is housed at the Centre.
2024-2025
Gillian Calder: "The Importance of Creativity, Empathy and Imagination to Legal Education in Canada" (February 27, 2025)
Over the past 40 years legal education in Canada has undergone moments of sustained critical review. Much of this scholarship is focused on a perceived divide in legal education between those who see the work of law schools as akin to trade school aimed at developing the “practice ready lawyer” and those who see the role of legal education as that of graduating students with strong critical legal and social science skills, legal advocates who could, but who might not ever practice law. This presentation works to bridge these important and intersecting questions about the role and the value of legal education, not as oppositional, but as two pillars amongst many in the work of access to justice.
This paper, honouring the legacy of Marlee Kline, examines the role that embodied learning plays in the lived work of legal advocates. I will argue that the skills of 21st century legal practice, particularly with respect to equity, diversity, inclusion, anti-racism and decolonization are best developed in classrooms that are dynamic, problem-based, experiential and that draw on arts-based practice. I aim to leave our audience rethinking the role that critical pedagogies should play in the development of humane professionals and the impact that will have on the evolution of law itself.
This event is eligible for 1 hour of Law Society of British Columbia CPD credit.
Gillian Calder is a Professor, and former Associate Dean, at the University of Victoria’s Faculty of Law where she has been teaching Constitutional Law, Family Law and related seminars from feminist, queer and anti-colonialist perspectives since July 2004. Gillian’s research has focused on questions of legal imagination, theories of constitutional law, law's impact on our understanding of the family and family formation, performativity and storytelling. In particular, she is keenly interested in critical legal pedagogy and the role creativity, ethical imagination and empathy should play in a legal education. Her recent work has focused on law and emotion, where she is weaving connections between teaching, embodiment and social location. Gillian was Marlee’s student (UBC Law 1995-1997) and she is grateful for the opportunity to connect the learning she did in Marlee’s classrooms to her research and teaching today.
Previous Marlee Kline Lectures:
2023-2024
Adelle Blackett: "The Fierce Urgency of Now: Transforming Employment Equity for Us All" (March 18, 2024)
2022-2023
Sylvia McAdam: "Skirting Around Colonialism" (March 6, 2023)
2021-2022
Brenda Cossmann: "The New Sex Wars: Sexual Harm in the #MeToo Era" (March 10, 2022)
2020-2021
Dean Donna Young: "Say Her Name: Law and Activism at the Intersection of Race and Gender" (February 8, 2021)
2019-2020
Honourable Lynn Smith, Q.C.: “Real Hate in a Virtual World: Misogyny in Cyberspace” (January 28, 2020)
2018-2019
Sonia Lawrence: “What we talk about when we talk about rights: infinite loops and uncertain futures for feminist legal strategies” (January 15, 2019)
2017-2018
Jacinta Ruru: “Honouring Our Ancestors in Law: Legal Personality and Indigenous Governance of Lands and Waters” (January 31, 2018)
2016-2017
Constance Backhouse: “Canada’s First Lesbian Sexual Assault Trial” (November 9, 2016)
2015-2016
Kim Pate: “The Terrible Truth about Canadian Crime: No Justice for Indigenous Women” (October 29, 2015)
2014-2015
Colleen Flood: “The Poverty of Health Human Rights in Canada” (March 26, 2015)
2013-2014
Bonnie Sherr Klein: “I Am Who You Are” (January 30, 2014)
2012-2013
Jean Teillet: “The Métis of the Northwest: Finding Justice for Invisible People” (January 17, 2013)
2011-2012
Hester Lessard: “Jurisdictional Justice and the ‘Dream of Democracy’: Missing Voices in the Struggle for Insite” (January 26, 2012)
2010-2011
Ruthann Robson: “UnSettled” – this presentation explored the links and dissonances amongst five colonial/post-colonial societies (March 3, 2011)
2009-2010
Tracey Lindberg: “DE(CON)STRUCTION: Canadian Law and Indigenous Women” (March 25, 2010)
2008-2009
Camille Nelson: “Racializing Disability, Disabling Race: Policing the Intersection of Race and Mental Disability” (October 16, 2008)
2007-2008
Carol Smart: “Memory, Law and Family Secrets” (November 1, 2007)
2006-2007
Lucie White: “Rights-Based Development” (October 19, 2006)
2005-2006
Didi Herman: “An ‘Unfortunate Coincidence’: Jews and Jewishness in English Courts” (October 24, 2005)
2004-2005
Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond: “Women in Leadership and Advocacy for Children” (October 14, 2004)
