Elizabeth Sheehy, University of Ottawa

Profile photo of Elizabeth Sheehy, expert at University of Ottawa

Law Professor Ottawa, Ontario esheehy@uottawa.ca Office: (613) 562-5800 ext. 3317

Bio/Research

Elizabeth Sheehy, LL.B. (Osgoode 1981), LL.M. (Columbia 1984), LL.D. –Honourary Doctorate awarded in recognition of contributions to women in the profession-- (LSUC 2005), was appointed to the Faculty of Law in 1984 as an Assistant Professor and was promoted to Full Professor in 1995. She has al...

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Bio/Research

Elizabeth Sheehy, LL.B. (Osgoode 1981), LL.M. (Columbia 1984), LL.D. –Honourary Doctorate awarded in recognition of contributions to women in the profession-- (LSUC 2005), was appointed to the Faculty of Law in 1984 as an Assistant Professor and was promoted to Full Professor in 1995. She has also taught law at the University of New South Wales in Sydney Australia and at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto as a Visiting Professor. She teaches Criminal Law and Procedure, Advanced Criminal Procedure, Sexual Assault Law, and Defending Battered Women on Trial. She was called to the Bar of Ontario in 1987 and has been a member of the School of Graduate Studies since 1990. She held the Shirley Greenberg Professorship in Women and the Legal Profession from 2002-2005.

Professor Sheehy is involved in many law reform activities around equality rights and social justice issues: she has worked in a consultative capacity with the Department of Justice on the reform of criminal law (Preliminary Inquiries, Provocation, Self-Defence, Extreme Intoxication, Disclosure of Women’s Confidential Records), with the Women's Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF) on several cases—most recently the “Niqab case” argued before the Ontario Court of Appeal in Spring 2010, wherein LEAF argued that a sexual assault complainant should not be forced to remove her niqab in order to testify, with the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies on Judge Lynn Ratushny's Self-Defence Review, through the Policy Implementation Assistance Program (CIDA), with the Social Affairs Committee of the Vietnam National Assembly on its Gender Equality Law and, currently, with the African and Canadian Women’s Human Rights Project in their effort to criminalize marital rape in four African countries. In November 2009 she testified before the Senate to oppose the new mandatory minimum sentences for drug offences, supported by the research assistance of ten of her first year Criminal Law students. Her brief, “The Discriminatory Effects of Bill C-15’s Mandatory Minimum Sentences,” can be found at (2010) 70(2) Criminal Reports (6th) 302.


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