Canadian judge speaks on global justice

Abella said she saw the recent conflicts in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya as harbingers of an impending crisis in human rights. “I think we’re at a crossroads in so many ways, and the choices we’re going to make in certain areas will determine not only how history will judge us but what kind of world we’re going to have,” she said. She added that “the context of the moment may not be a sufficient defense in history’s court. It is time ... that judges us as being just or unjust.”

She called these recent conflicts “a Polaroid picture of international law, justice and human rights,” meaning that “with time, the picture comes into clearer focus, and, with clarity, my deepest fears are confirmed.” Her fears, she explained, are profound and apocalyptic.

“Unless we pay attention to intolerance, the world’s fastest-growth industry, we risk losing civilizing [influences] that flexed the world’s muscles after World War II. We changed the world’s institutions and laws then, because they had lost their legitimacy and integrity. We may be there again.”

The global community, she said, has an obligation to spread both human rights and civil liberties through the growth of democratic values; the former is achieved through government intervention and the latter, through its absence. She dismissed the phrase “rule of law” as “a euphemism we don’t understand,” and also dismissed the common public misconception that equates democracy with elections.

“To say democracy is only about elections is like saying you don’t need the whole building if you can have the door,” she said. “Elections tell democracy it is welcome to come in, but elections are only the entrance.”

The remainder of Abella’s speech focused on changes in global policy in the wake of World War II and harshly criticized the United Nations for its ineffectiveness.

Since the creation of the U.N., she said, “40 million people have died as a result of conflicts all over the world. Shouldn’t that make us wonder whether we’ve come to the point where we need to discuss whether the U.N. is where the League of Nations was when the U.N. took over?”

At the end of her talk, Abella broke down in tears as she spoke about the experiences of her family in concentration camps during World War II.

She received a standing ovation from the audience. Despite the applause, student response to the talk was mixed.

Joyce Lim ’14 said she was touched by the speech. “I found it very inspiring,” she said. She called it “an insight from someone who’s seen it a lot, and thought about it a lot.”

Thomas Scott GS had a different opinion and said he took issue with what he saw as the absence of constructive solutions in Abella’s speech — an absence Abella herself noted at times.

“I thought Justice Abella was rightly critical of the system that’s in place to enforce human rights norms, but she lacked any ideas about how to make programs for enforcing human rights law in the future,” he said.

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Born in a displaced persons camp in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1946, Justice Abella is the first Jewish woman to serve on the Canadian Supreme Court, a position she has held since 2004. She joined the Ontario Bar in 1972, and in 1992 was appointed to the Ontario Court of Appeal.

She holds 29 honorary degrees and has written or coedited four books.