Rosalie Silberman Abella

Rosalie Silberman Abella, born in 1946, is a Canadian jurist who served as a Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada from 2004 to 2021, becoming the first Jewish woman and the first refugee to sit on the court. Called to the Ontario bar in 1972, she served as a judge of the Ontario Family Court from 1976 to 1992 and of the Ontario Court of Appeal from 1992 to 2004. She is credited with coining the term and concept of employment equity through her work chairing the Royal Commission on Equality in Employment, a strategy for addressing employment barriers facing marginalized groups that went on to influence Canadian and international legal frameworks, and her opinions on constitutional and human rights law are widely cited by courts in other common law countries.