Criminal Law

Kent Roach, CM, FRSC, is a professor of law at the University of Toronto, where he holds the Prichard-Wilson Chair in Law and Public Policy. In 2002, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada by his fellow academics and in 2015 was appointed a member of the Order of Canada. In 2013, he was awarded a Trudeau Fellowship and in 2017 the Canada Council awarded him the Molson Prize for his contributions. He has taught criminal law since 1989 and been editor-in-chief of the Criminal Law Quarterly since 1998. He is the co-editor of Cases and Materials on Criminal Law and Procedure, numerous collections of essays and thirteen books, including Constitutional Remedies in Canada (winner of the 1997 Walter Owen Book Prize); Due Process and Victims’ Rights: The New Law and Politics of Criminal Justice (shortlisted for the 1999 Donner Prize); The Supreme Court on Trial: Judicial Activism or Democratic Dialogue (shortlisted for the 2001 Donner Prize); (with Robert J. Sharpe) Brian Dickson: A Judge’s Journey (winner of the 2003 Defoe Prize); The 9/11 Effect: Comparative Counter-Terrorism (co-winner of the 2012 Mundell Medal); and (with Craig Forcese) False Security: The Radicalization of Canadian Anti-Terrorism (winner of the 2016 Canadian Law and Society book prize). Professor Roach has served as research director of the Commission of Inquiry into the Bombing of Air India and the Goudge Inquiry into Forensic Pathology and was volume lead on the Truth and Reconciliation’s Commission volume of the legacy of Residential Schools for Indigenous children. Acting pro bono, he has represented civil liberties and Indigenous groups in interventions before the Supreme Court, including in Golden and Ward on strip searches; Khawaja on terrorism; Latimer on mandatory sentencing; Gladue, Ipeelee, and Anderson on sentencing Indigenous offenders; and Sauve on prisoner voting rights.