CLAIHR’s work is supported by distinguished experts from a variety of fields who comprise the Advisory Council. CLAIHR’s Advisory Council Members are drawn from various backgrounds including lawyers, professors, and international human rights supporters.
Hon. Ian Binnie, C.C., Q.C.
One of Canada’s most respected lawyers, the Honourable Ian Binnie served for nearly 14 years as a Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada. When he retired in 2011 he was described by The Globe and Mail as “arguably the country’s premier judge” and by La Presse as “peut-être le juge le plus influent au Canada dans la dernière décennie.” During his time on the country’s top court Ian authored more than 170 opinions on many aspects of law.
Over the course of three decades as a litigator, he argued cases in most of the common law provinces and appeared regularly before the Supreme Court of Canada on a range of constitutional, civil, and criminal matters.
In the early 1980s he served for four years as Canada’s Associate Deputy Minister of Justice. He was later appointed Special Parliamentary Counsel to the Joint Committee of the Senate and the House of Commons on the Amendment of the Constitution. He is an elected member of the International Commission of Jurists and has appeared as counsel on behalf of Canada before the International Court of Justice and various international tribunals.
Audrey Macklin
Professor Audrey Macklin (BSc. (Alberta), LLB (Toronto), LLM (Yale) is Director of the Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies and Chair in International Human Rights Law at the University of Toronto. She teaches, researches and writes in the area of migration and citizenship law, business and human rights, and administrative law. She has published widely in domestic, international, and interdisciplinary journals and edited collections.
Prof. Macklin is a frequent commentator in Canadian and international print, radio and television media. Her op-eds have appeared in the New York Times, The Guardian, the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, and the Washington Post.
From 1994-96, Professor Macklin was a Member of the Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board, where she adjudicated refugee claims. She was involved in the case of Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen detained for almost a decade by the United States at Guantànamo Bay. She was an observer for Human Rights Watch at the Military Commission proceedings against Mr. Khadr in Guantànamo Bay, and represented Human Rights Watch as intervener before the Supreme Court of Canada in two Khadr appeals. Professor Macklin has also acted as pro bono intervener counsel or academic legal advisor in several public interest human rights cases, including legal challenges to security certificates, withdrawal of health care for refugees, citizenship revocation, deportation of long-term permanent residents, and the ban on niqabs at citizenship ceremonies.
Prof. Macklin was named a Trudeau Fellow in 2017, and awarded the Ludwik and Estelle Jus Human Rights Award in 2019 and the Carolyn Tuohy Public Policy Impact Award in 2020.
Kathleen E. Mahoney
Kathleen E. Mahoney is a Professor of Law at The University of Calgary. She has law degrees from The University of British Columbia, Cambridge University and a Diploma from The Institute of Comparative Human Rights Law in Strasbourg. She has held many international lectureships and fellowships including the Sir Allan Sewell Visiting Fellowship at the Faculty of Law, Griffiths University, Brisbane, the Distinguished Visiting Scholar Fellowship at The University of Adelaide and Visiting Fellowships at The Australian National University, Canberra and The University of Western Australia in Perth. She was a Visiting Professor at The University of Chicago 1994, and was a Visiting Fellow at Harvard Law School in 1998. Professor Mahoney has published extensively on human rights, constitutional law and women’s rights, as well as on judicial education and the social context. She lectures nationally and internationally, and has successfully appeared as counsel in the Supreme Court of Canada in a number of cases, most notably in the two leading Canadian cases for the legal regulation of hate propaganda and pornography. She has organized and participates in a variety of collaborative human rights projects in Canada, Geneva, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Spain, Israel, China and the United Nations. She regularly attends the Council of Europe as an Independent Expert and North American representative. From July 1993–95, she was counsel and advocate on a team of international lawyers representing Bosnia and Herzegovina in the International Court of Justice, focusing particularly on the issue of systematic rape as a crime of genocide. She is the 1997 recipient of the Law Society of Alberta and Canadian Bar Association Distinguished Service Award for Legal Scholarship and the Soroptomist Club of Canada Woman of Distinction Award. In 1997, she was elected to the Royal Society of Canada for her academic achievements, one of Canada’s highest academic honours, and in 1998 was selected as a Fulbright Scholar to pursue her comparative human rights work at Harvard University. In 1998 she was appointed by the Foreign Affairs Minister to Chair the Board of Directors of the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, in Montreal. In 2000, the Canadian Bar Association presented her with the Bertha Wilson Touchstone Award in recognition of her outstanding accomplishments in the promotion of equality.
Alex Neve, OC
Alex Neve is a visiting and adjunct professor in international human rights law at the University of Ottawa and Dalhousie University, and a Senior Fellow with the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. He presently serves as a Member of the UN Human Rights Council’s Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela. He was Secretary General of Amnesty International Canada from 2000 – 2020. He took part in over forty human rights research and advocacy delegations throughout Africa, Asia, Latin America, Guantánamo Bay and, closer to home, First Nations communities in Canada. He has an LLB from Dalhousie University and a Master’s Degree in International Human Rights Law from the University of Essex. He has served as a member of the Immigration and Refugee Board, taught at Osgoode Hall Law School, been affiliated with York University’s Centre for Refugee Studies, and worked as a refugee lawyer in private practice and in a community legal aid clinic. Alex has been named an Officer of the Order of Canada and served as a Trudeau Foundation Mentor. He is a recipient of a Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal. He has received three honorary Doctorate of Laws degrees. Alex was the 2025 CBC Massey Lecturer, addressing the theme of Universal: Renewing Human Rights in a Fractured World.
Sukanya Pillay
Sukanya Pillay (B.A., LL.B. (Windsor)), LL.M. in International Legal Studies (NYU)) is a Canadian lawyer and human rights advocate with substantial global field experience in international human rights and constitutional litigation and advocacy. She is a Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Law University of Windsor teaching Constitutional Law, Access to Justice, & Civil Liberties. She previously served as the Executive Director, General Counsel and National Security Director at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association; as program director and co-ordinator of WITNESS at Human Rights First in New York; and program director Law and Human Rights program at TVE International (London) from New York. She has worked with local advocates as a consultant on numerous foreign and regional cases concerning international and constitutional rights. Her private sector experience in law includes a leading Canadian law firm and a leading Asian multinational corporation.
Sukanya’s research continues to focus on global security, constitutionalism, governance and equality with a focus on the rights of people living in poverty, with disabilities and Indigenous peoples. Sukanya has been the recipient of several awards for her legal contributions including from the South Asian Bar Association (Presidents Award), the Ontario Bar Association, the American Association of Legal Studies in Business, the Mrudunga Institute, and the University of Windsor.
Sukanya is a regular contributor to the media, and uses film and photography to advance understanding of human rights issues, for example an award-winning BBC documentary on the impact of NAFTA on Oaxacan indigenous corn farmers. In July 2020 she launched her podcast JUST PLANET: Laws, Life and Global Crises which delves into global human rights issues and has attained a worldwide audience.
Craig Scott
Craig Scott is Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School at York University. Professor Scott’s teaching and research have been primarily in the fields of public international law and private international law, with a focus on the place of international human rights law in both of these fields. His most recent work draws on all three of these fields, including in the areas of human rights torts across borders, transnational corporate accountability and transitional justice.
Professor Scott has been closely involved in advising equality-seeking, notably anti-poverty, groups on Canadian Charter of Rights litigation and on preparing interventions before various UN human rights bodies on Canada’s record of treaty compliance. He has been involved in appeals or interventions in the Supreme Court of Canada in major cases which have dealt with the interface of international law and Canadian law. Professor Scott was also closely involved in the development of key aspects of the current South African constitution, beginning with his role advising the African National Congress on these matters while the ANC was still in exile. In 1993-1994, he served as co-counsel for the government of Bosnia in a case before the International Court of Justice, with responsibility for developing arguments on the limits of the powers of the UN Security Council. He has given academic opinions on international law to various governments and international organizations on issues related to such matters as the law of the sea, territorial claims and adjudicative procedures. More recently, he was heavily involved with the London-based Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice and with the civil-society truth commission in Honduras known as the Comisión de Verdad, on which he served as a Commissioner.
Prior to starting his academic career, Professor Scott served as law clerk to the former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, Brian Dickson. He attended the Universities of Oxford and London on a Rhodes Scholarship. From March 2012 to October 2015, he served as Member of Parliament for Toronto-Danforth in Canada’s House of Commons, and was the New Democratic Party’s Official Opposition Critic for Democratic and Parliamentary Reform. Currently, Professor Scott serves on the Panel of Senior Advisors to the Auditor General of Canada.
Penelope Simons
Penelope is an associate professor and a vice-dean for research at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law and the Gordon F. Henderson Chair in Human Rights. A global leader in the field of business and human rights, Penelope’s research focuses on understanding and examining the international and domestic legal structures and power dynamics that protect and facilitate business activity. In 2014 Penelope co-authored with Audrey Macklin the book The Governance Gap: Extractive Industries, Human Rights, and the Home State Advantage. She was co-counsel for Amnesty International Canada in the Choc v Hudbay and Garcia v Tahoe cases, and for Amnesty International Canada and the International Commission of Jurists in the Nevsun v Araya case. In 2018 Penelope was awarded the Walter S. Tarnopolsky Award in recognition of her “significant contribution to human rights.”
