Michael Code is 74 years old. He was born and raised in Western Canada and came to Toronto in 1969 for his university education. He received three degrees from the University of Toronto: a B.A. in 1972; an LLB in 1976; and an LLM in 1991.
His legal career was initially devoted to criminal and constitutional litigation and later expanded to include other areas of public law. He has worked as defence counsel, Crown counsel and Assistant Deputy Attorney-General, law professor and writer, and counsel to various public entities such as the B.C., Ontario, Manitoba and federal Ministries of the Attorney-General and the Ontario Court Judges’ Association.
He was in private practice from 1981-1991 and from 1996 to 2005. Although he had an active trial practice, he is probably best known as an appellate lawyer, arguing many leading evidence, procedure and criminal law cases in the Supreme Court of Canada and the Court of Appeal for Ontario. He left private practice in 2005 and was appointed Assistant Professor of Law, teaching evidence law, criminal law, criminal procedure and professional ethics at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, while engaged in various research and writing projects.
In early 2008, he was appointed by the Attorney-General for Ontario to conduct a policy review, together with former Chief Justice Patrick LeSage, Q.C., of the problems associated with overly long and complex criminal trials, and was asked to make recommendations for change. The resulting Report of the Review of Long and Complex Criminal Case Procedures proposed various ways to make the criminal trial process more effective and efficient, placing emphasis on the need for high standards of ethics and professionalism amongst lawyers. Since his appointment in 2009, he has been a judge sitting in Toronto on the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.
