For their global reputation as a leading scholar of anti-discrimination law, Sophia Moreau, a professor in the Faculty of Law and the department of philosophy in the Faculty of Arts & Science, has received the Ludwik and Estelle Jus Memorial Human Rights Prize (Influential Leader).
The honour is one of the Awards of Excellence presented by the University of Toronto Alumni Association in collaboration with the university. The prestigious program dates back to 1921 and recognizes outstanding faculty, staff and students.
An expert in moral, political and legal philosophy, Moreau is the author of Faces of Inequality: A Theory of Wrongful Discrimination (Oxford University Press, 2020), which received the Canadian Philosophical Association (CPA) Biennial Book Prize in 2022. Her writings on wrongful discrimination have been cited not only by her academic peers, but by the judiciary, including Canada’s highest court, as well as European Court of Human Rights.
Moreau and law colleagues from across Canada, lead the Tort Law and Social Equality Project. The Project aims to bring awareness of the many inadvertent ways in which legal rules within tort law reinforce and perpetuate systemic social inequalities, contributing to the marginalization of groups including racial minorities, Indigenous Peoples, LGBTQ2S+, women, and persons with disabilities.
Her commissioned government report calling for the prohibition of gender identity discrimination under the Canadian Human Rights Act, was published in 2005, more than a decade before its adoption in 2017.
“Sophia Moreau’s expertise has given scholars and courts alike a deeper understanding of the complexity of discrimination and why it is important to treat all persons as equals,” said University Professor Jutta Brunnée, Dean of Law and James Marshall Tory Dean’s Chair. “It is wonderful the UTAA has chosen to recognize Sophia with this honour.”
Moreau has recently held appointments as a Visiting Professor at NYU Law School, a Weinstein Fellowship at University of California, Berkeley Law, and currently holds the H.L.A Hart Visiting Fellowship at University College, Oxford.
