Litigating Equality

Cheryl Milne, LL.B., M.S.W., is the Executive Director of the David Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights at the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto. Prior to this position she was a legal advocate for children with the legal clinic Justice for Children and Youth for 17 years. There she conducted Charter litigation at the Supreme Court of Canada including the challenge to the corporal punishment defence in the Criminal Code [Canadian Foundation for Children, Youth and the Law v. Canada (2004)], the striking down of the reverse onus sections of the Youth Criminal Justice Act for adult sentencing [R. v. D.B. (2008)], and an intervention involving the right of a capable adolescent to consent to her own medical treatment (A.C. v. Manitoba Child and Family Services ]. She has represented numerous young people in education related proceedings under the Education Act, child welfare and family law proceedings, and in youth court under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, among others. She has been Chair of the Ontario Bar Association’s Constitutional, Civil Liberties and Human Rights section, the Canadian Coalition for the Rights of Children, and Justice for Children and Youth. She is the past Chair of the CBA Children’s Law Committee and sits on the Steering Committee of the National Association of Women and the Law. She was appointed to the Council of Canadian Academies’ Expert Panel on Medical Assistance in Dying for Mature Minors and was cross-appointed to the Child and Family Services Review Board and the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario from 2018 to 2020. She teaches a clinical course in constitutional advocacy as well as child and youth law at the University of Toronto, Faculty of Law and has taught Social Work & the Law at Toronto Metropolitan University. In 2020, Cheryl was awarded the Law Society Medal by the Law Society of Ontario.

Sophia Moreau, B.Phil (Oxford); J.D. (Toronto); Ph.D. (Harvard) is Professor of Law and Philosophy at the University of Toronto. She has been HLA Hart Visiting Fellow at Oxford, Visiting Professor of Law at NYU Law, Weinstein Fellow at Berkeley Law, Chancellor Jackman Research Fellow at the Jackman Humanities Institute in the University of Toronto, Frank Knox Memorial Fellow at Harvard, and a Commonwealth Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford. She is the author of Faces of Inequality (2020; winner of the Canadian Philosophical Association Biennial Book Prize and the subject of three international Symposia); co-editor of Philosophical Foundations of Discrimination Law (2014) and Law and Morality (2007); and the author of many articles in discrimination theory. She is Associate Editor of Philosophy & Public Affairs, Book Reviews Editor of the University of Toronto Law Journal, and a Board Member of Law and Philosophy, Legal Theory, and the Danish Centre for the Experimental-Philosophical Study of Discrimination. She was called to the Ontario Bar in 2006.