Robert Leckey

From 2002 to 2003, Justice Leckey served as law clerk for Justice Michel Bastarache of the Supreme Court of Canada. From 2003 to 2006, he undertook doctoral studies in law at the University of Toronto as a Trudeau scholar. His dissertation, which received the Alan Marks Medal for best graduate thesis in 2006, was published as Contextual Subjects: Family, State, and Relational Theory, by University of Toronto Press in 2008.

He became a member of the Law Society of Ontario in 2003 and an advocate of the Barreau du Québec in 2020. In 2010-2011, he served as director of research for the Inquiry Commission on the Process for Appointing Judges (the Bastarache Commission). From 2011 to 2015, he was the president of Egale Canada. From 2011 to 2016, he chaired its Legal Issues Committee. From 2020 to 2022, he served as president of the Council of Canadian Law Deans.

Justice Leckey has received the Prix de la Fondation du Barreau du Québec (2007); the Canadian Association of Law Teachers’ Scholarly Paper Prize (2009); the McGill Law Students’ Association’s John W. Durnford Teaching Excellence Award (2009); the Canada Prize of the International Academy of Comparative Law (2010); the Principal's Prize for Excellence in Teaching (2010); the Principal’s Change-Maker Prize for his public engagement through media (2020); and the Hero Award of the Canadian Bar Association’s Sexual and Gender Diversity Alliance Section (SAGDA) (2024).

In 2014, he was selected for membership in the Global Young Academy. In 2017, he was elected an associate member of the International Academy of Comparative Law. In 2020, he was elected a member of the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists. In 2021, he received the Barreau du Québec’s Advocatus Emeritus (Ad. E.) distinction.