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.
2025-2026
Natasha Bakht: "Systemic Islamophobia, Law 21 and the Threat of Section 33" (January 14, 2026)
This lecture will examine the implications of Quebec’s Law 21, which prohibits public sector employees from wearing religious symbols while working. It will argue that the Quebec government’s pre-emptive invocation of section 33, commonly known as the “notwithstanding clause”, of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, to insulate the law from judicial review, serves to legitimize systemic Islamophobia. The talk will also explore how the growing use and threatened application of section 33 undermines the rights and protections of minority communities across Canada.
This event is eligible for 1 hour of Law Society of British Columbia CPD credit.
Natasha Bakht is a Full Professor of law at the University of Ottawa. She held the Shirley Greenberg Chair for Women and the Legal Profession from 2020-2024. She was called to the bar of Ontario in 2003 and served as a law clerk to Justice Louise Arbour at the Supreme Court of Canada. Natasha’s research interests are generally in law, culture and minority rights and specifically in the intersecting area of religious freedom and women’s equality. Her research on the niqab analyzes the unwarranted popular panic concerning Muslim women who cover their faces and explores systemic barriers to inclusion perpetuated by Canada’s legal and political system. Her book In Your Face: Law Justice and Niqab-Wearing Women in Canada was listed in the Hill Times 100 Best Books of 2020 and received the 2020-2021 Huguenot Society of Canada Award. She has been cited by the Supreme Court of Canada in R v NS, 2012 SCC 72, a case involving a niqab-wearing sexual assault complainant. In the area of family law, she has co-written a textbook entitled Families and the Law, 4th ed (Concord: Captus Press Inc, 2024) and has been cited by the Supreme Court of Canada in the cases of Michel v Graydon, 2020 SCC 24 and Colucci v Colucci, 2021 SCC 24, both involving claims of historic child support. Together with her friend and colleague Lynda Collins, she stretched the legal boundaries of family by becoming legal co-mothers of their son, Elaan, though they are not in a conjugal relationship. She is also an award-winning dancer and choreographer.
Previous Marlee Kline Lectures:
2024-2025
Gillian Calder: "The Importance of Creativity, Empathy and Imagination to Legal Education in Canada" (February 27, 2025)
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)
