The Honourable Lynn Smith

"The Quest for a Charter Equality Test: Has the
Longest Way Round Been the Shortest Way Home?"

4:00 – 5:30 p.m.

February 27, 2013

Rowell Room, Flavelle House, Faculty of Law

A reception will follow in the Faculty Lounge.

Watch the webcast of this lecture

Lynn Smith, B.A. (University of Calgary), LL.B. (University of British Columbia), LL.D. (Hon.) (Simon Fraser University) was appointed to the Supreme Court of British Columbia in 1998. She served as a Justice of that Court until her retirement in September 2012. Prior to her appointment as a judge, she practised law at Shrum, Liddle and Hebenton (now McCarthy Tetrault), specializing in civil litigation. She taught law at the University of British Columbia 1981-97 in areas including Constitutional Law, Evidence, Civil Litigation, and Real Property. She has published books and articles in the fields of Charter equality rights, civil litigation and evidence, human rights, administrative law, and women's equality. She was Dean of the U.B.C. Law Faculty 1991-97. In 2005-06, Lynn Smith was Executive Director of the National Judicial Institute, on secondment from the Court. She is a Judicial Associate of the National Judicial Institute and serves on the faculty of the Charter and Evidence Workshops as well as the New Federally-Appointed Judges Program. She has been involved in international judicial education exchanges with China, Scotland, Ghana and Viet Nam. During a Judicial Study Leave in 2009-10, she researched credibility assessment, examining the psychological and social science literature as well as the law. She published a paper on that topic, and prepared a program on credibility assessment used in National Judicial Institute seminars. Lynn Smith was the Chair of the B.C. Supreme Court Law Clerks Committee and of the Committee on Communications Technology, whose report was adopted by the Court in May, 2012. Commencing in January, 2013, she is teaching a seminar on Constitutional Litigation at the U.B.C. Faculty of Law. She is married to Jon Sigurdson, who is a Justice of the Supreme Court of British Columbia. They have two daughters, Elin Sigurdson and Krista Sigurdson.

This lecture is co-sponsored by the
JOHN AND MARY YAREMKO FUND FOR MULTICULTURALISM AND HUMAN RIGHTS