Below searched today, March 29, 2026:
Rosalie Silberman Abella by Harvard Law School Faculty
Samuel LLM ’55, SJD ’59 and Judith Pisar Visiting Professor of Law
2025-2026
Justice Abella was appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada in 2004. She is the first Jewish woman appointed to the Court.
In 2025, she was appointed a Companion of the Order of Canada. She was elected to the Royal Society of Canada in 1997, to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007, and to the American Philosophical Society in 2018. In 2020, she was awarded the Knight Commander‘s Cross of the Order of Merit by the President of Germany.
She attended the University of Toronto, where she earned a B.A. in 1967 and an LL.B. in 1970. In 1964 she graduated from the Royal Conservatory of Music in classical piano. She was called to the Ontario Bar in 1972 and practised civil and criminal litigation until 1976 when she was appointed to the Ontario Family Court at the age of 29, the first pregnant person appointed to the judiciary in Canada. She was appointed to the Ontario Court of Appeal in 1992.
She was Chair and author of the Ontario Study on Access to Legal Services by the Disabled in 1983 and the sole Commissioner of the 1984 federal Royal Commission on Equality in Employment, creating the term and concept of “employment equity”. The theories of “equality” and “discrimination” she developed in her Royal Commission Report were adopted by the Supreme Court of Canada in its first decision dealing with equality rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1989. The report has been implemented by the governments of Canada, New Zealand, Northern Ireland and South Africa.
She subsequently served as Chair of the Ontario Labour Relations Board (1984 to 1989), Chair of the Ontario Law Reform Commission (1989 to 1992), and Boulton Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Law of McGill University (1988 to 1992). She also served as a commissioner on the Ontario Human Rights Commission; as a member of the Ontario Public Service Labour Relations Tribunal; as Co-Chair of the University of Toronto Academic Discipline Tribunal; and as a member of the Premier’s Advisory Committee on Confederation.
She has written over 90 articles and written or co-edited four books. She was made a Senior Fellow of Massey College in 1989, has given, among others, the Harlan Lecture at Princeton, the Ryan Lecture at Georgetown, the Winchester Lecture at Oxford, the Anderson Lecture at Yale, the Robert L. Levine Distinguished Lecture at Fordham Law School, the Diane Markowicz Memorial Lecture at Brandeis University, and the David J. Bederman Lecture in International Law at Emory University School of Law. She was the first Bullock Chair at the Hebrew University, the Mackenzie King Distinguished Visiting Professor at Harvard, the Floersheimer Distinguished Jurist in Residence at Cardozo Law School, a Distinguished Visiting Faculty at the University of Toronto Law School, and Bright International Jurist in Residence at the University of Hawaii School of Law.
She was a judge of the Giller Literary Prize; Chair of the Rhodes Selection Committee for Ontario; director of the Institute for Research on Public Policy; moderator of the English Language Leaders’ Debate in 1988; a member of the Canadian Judicial Council’s Inquiry on Donald Marshall, Jr.; Program Chair of the Governor General’s Canadian Study Conference; Chief Rapporteur in Halifax and Co-Chair in Vancouver of the 1992 Renewal of Canada Conferences; Trustee of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada; Governor of the International Board of Governors of the Hebrew University; and Vice-Chair of the Board of Governors of the National Judicial Institute.
Justice Abella has been active in Canadian judicial education, organizing the first judicial seminar in which all levels of the judiciary participated, the first judicial seminar in which persons outside the legal profession were invited to participate, the first national education program for administrative tribunals, and the first national conference for Canada’s female judges.
She has 42 honourary degrees. She was also awarded the Distinguished Alumnus Award of the University of Toronto Faculty of Law; the Alumni of Influence Award from University College; the Distinguished Service Award of the Canadian Bar Association (Ontario); the International Justice Prize of the Peter Gruber Foundation; the Human Relations Award of the Canadian Council of Christians and Jews; the Honourable Walter S. Tarnopolsky Human Rights Award; the Bora Laskin Award for Distinguished Service in Labour Law; the Global Jurist of the Year from Northwestern Pritzker School of Law; the Ethical Leadership Award from the Faculty of Management at Dalhousie University; the Calgary Peace Prize; the Women in Law Lifetime Achievement Award; the Goler T. Butcher Medal for International Human Rights from the American Society of International Law; the Gunther Plaut Humanitarian Award; the Rose Wolfe Distinguished Alumni Award; an Honourary Bencher of Middle Temple; a Harvard Law School Honoree on International Women’s Day; the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Award, World Jurists Association; the Council of Canadian Administrative Tribunals Medal; the Canadian Freedom of Association Award; the Canadian Institute for the Administration of Justice 2023 Justice Medal; the President’s Medal, Canadian Bar Association; and was inducted into Canada’s Walk of Fame, receiving the Humanitarianism Award.
Upon retirement from the Court, she became Samuel and Judith Pisar Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. She is also a Senior Research Scholar at Yale Law School and Distinguished Visiting Jurist at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. In the Spring of 2026, she was a Distinguished Judicial Fellow at NYU School of Law.
Justice Abella was born in a Displaced Person’s Camp in Stuttgart, Germany on July 1, 1946. Her family came to Canada as Jewish refugees in 1950. She is the first refugee appointed to the bench in Canada. In 1968, she married Canadian historian Irving Abella (1940-2022) and they have two sons, Jacob and Zachary, both lawyers.
Targeting the bench? Harvard Law experts discuss recent U.S. sanctions against International Criminal Court officials by Scott Joung, Mar 25, 2026, Harvard Law Today
Since the International Criminal Court opened in 2002, its relationship with the United States has been, at best, complicated. According to international law experts, however, a recent swath of official sanctions against ICC judges by the Trump administration represents a significant intensification of preexisting tension.
“We shouldn’t think the U.S. has been wholly supportive of the court. The U.S. has never signed up for the court and has been, in the past, extremely hostile to the court,” said Harvard Law Professor of Practice Alex Whiting. “But this is an escalation, and it’s a dramatic one.”
With Executive Order 14203 in February 2025, the U.S. officially imposed sanctions on ICC officials involved in investigating U.S. or Israeli nationals. The sanctions, which include asset freezes, travel bans, and restrictions on services from U.S. companies, mirror sanctions attempted by the first Trump administration against ICC officials investigating alleged war crimes in Afghanistan.
Since the issuance of last year’s executive order, the second Trump administration has expanded its scope to institute sanctions on at least 11 ICC officials, including nine judges and the chief prosecutor.
At a recent lunchtime discussion, “Targeting the Bench: U.S. Sanctions Against the International Criminal Court,” Whiting joined fellow panelists Professor of Practice Naz Modirzadeh ‘02, founding director of the Program on International Law and Armed Conflict at Harvard Law, and Foley Hoag partner Andrew Loewenstein to field questions from J. Sinclair Armstrong Professor of International, Foreign, and Comparative Law Gerald Neuman ’80 about the administration’s recent actions.
ICC jurisdiction at risk?
Whiting, the ICC’s former deputy specialist prosecutor at the Kosovo Specialist Prosecutor’s Office, began by explaining the nature of recent administrative actions against ICC personnel.
“The president issued an executive order finding that certain individuals at the court posed a national security threat to the United States on the theory that the court was exercising jurisdiction … potentially over the United States, and certainly Israel, an ally of the United States without having proper jurisdiction,” he said.
As Whiting explained, the administration contends the ICC has no jurisdiction over the U.S. because the U.S. is not a party to the Rome Statute, an international treaty with more than 100 participating countries that established the ICC. According to Whiting, though, the administration’s argument is neither novel nor compelling.
If USA is not a party to it, then why the hell is Trump sticking his kid-raping nose into the ICC and placing such vicious sanctions on people there?
“The court doesn’t get the kind of financial, political, or diplomatic support from the world that it should and the response to the sanctions, in some ways, exemplifies that.”Alex Whiting
“The argument that the court is unlawfully exercising jurisdiction is an argument the U.S. has been running for a long time; however, until last year, the government had had kind of abandoned that position,” explained Whiting. “There was a consensus on both sides, Democrats and Republicans, that that argument really was not a winner.”
Whiting also pointed out that support for the ICC has been waning throughout the international community as a whole.
“There is a big problem of the world moving away from international law and certainly away from supporting the court,” Ya, thanks to genocidal maniacs USA and Israel, and those rogue nations supporting them, like Canada, UK, Germany, Australia, and rogue judges supporting them, like Abella etc said Whiting. “The court doesn’t get the kind of financial, political, or diplomatic support from the world that it should and the response to the sanctions, in some ways, exemplifies that.”
Learning from constitutional victories
Loewenstein, who frequently represents sovereign states in civil litigation before the International Court of Justice, examined the limitations imposed on ICC officials by the recent executive order.
“Essentially, if you are designated for sanctions under the executive order, then U.S. persons are blocked from engaging in those types of interactions with designated persons — and that blocking is incredibly broad,” said Loewenstein.
By its terms, the executive order prohibits individuals from providing designated ICC officials “funds, goods, or services.” As a result, recent sanctions will impact court proceedings and, Loewenstein argues, violate fundamental rights.Precisely what USA and Israel do best, violate rights
“Providing advice or services to designated individuals includes things like evidence or submission of amicus briefs,” said Loewenstein. “So, one of the things that we’ve been very heavily involved with over the last five years, starting with the first iteration of the sanctions regime under the first Trump administration, was to challenge the application of that sanctions regime on constitutional grounds.”
During the first Trump administration, human rights organizations and international law professors who Loewenstein and others represented successfully obtained preliminary injunctions that restored their ability to interact with ICC officials. The injunction later became moot when the sanctions were revoked by the Biden administration.
According to Loewenstein, the February 2025 executive order “essentially re-instituted” the sanctions attempted under the first Trump administration. He successfully challenged the enforcement of sanctions against his clients by obtaining, this time, a permanent injunction.
“In April last year, we brought another constitutional challenge, largely on the First Amendment grounds, on behalf of two international criminal law professors,” recalled Loewenstein. “That case was brought in Southern District of New York. What we argued, and what the court ultimately agreed with, was that the application of the sanctions regime to U.S. persons violated the First Amendment.”
Although Loewenstein and others have successfully challenged the enforcement of the sanctions specifically against their clients, the sanctions overall remain in effect against the ICC officials and others.
Revisiting power dynamics in international law
Modirzadeh, who also serves on the board of trustees of the International Crisis Group, suggested that those concerned with the recent sanctions against ICC officials should consider revisiting the domestic and international legal bases said to underpin these and many other U.S. sanctions.
She explained that there is only one existing mechanism that all states recognize as a legally valid way to impose globally binding sanctions: a United Nations Security Council decision. The Council has not adopted — and, she said, is extremely unlikely to adopt — a resolution mandating sanctions on ICC officials.
Instead, according to Modirzadeh, in imposing sanctions on ICC officials as well as on many other people and entities in numerous other contexts, the U.S. relies on an extensive domestic architecture through which it asserts the power to exercise extraterritorial criminal and civil jurisdiction where U.S. national-security interests are perceived to be implicated.
When questioned by Neuman whether other countries have sought to claim similar unilateral sanction powers, the panelists agreed that in practice the U.S. is differently positioned than other countries in part due to the ubiquity of American currency and corresponding concerns about access to U.S. financial markets and related legal liability.Pedo Trump is fast destroying and bankrupting the USA, the dollar might soon be replaced
“Countries have hacked the court. They have tried to take information, they’ve intimidated witness, they’ve wiretapped the court. There’s a level of routine obstruction behavior that countries engage in with respect to the court,” said Whiting, “But I’m not familiar with any other [sanctions].”
“Here, you have a sanctions regime that is targeting the personal financial interests of judges and prosecutors as a means to try to get them to make decisions that are at odds with what they would otherwise do based on the facts and the law that’s before them,” said Loewenstein. “And if that’s not antithetical to the rule of law, I don’t know what it is.”
The event was co-hosted by several groups including the Program on Law and Society in the Muslim World, the HLS Advocates for Human Rights, the Harvard Human Rights Journal, the Harvard International Law Journal, and the Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights at the Harvard Kennedy School.So where is Abella?
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