Joshua Sealy-Harrington
Counsel
Joshua is an Associate Professor and the Chair of Equality Law at the University of Windsor, Faculty of Law, where he teaches about constitutional law, equality rights, and critical legal theory. He is also a doctoral student at Columbia Law School, where his research explores the promise and limitations of “identity” in socio-legal discourse. His academic work infuses his legal practice, which marries complex legal theory with practical advocacy. In 2019, he received a Canadian Law Blog Award for his online advocacy on behalf of race, gender, and sexual minorities. In 2021, he received a Part-time Professor Award for Excellence in Teaching from the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law, where he taught “Race, Racism and the Law”. And in 2024—when he was an Assistant Professor at the Lincoln Alexander School of Law at Toronto Metropolitan University—he was awarded Professor of the Year by the Lincoln Alexander School of Law Students’ Society and Person of the Year by the Toronto Metropolitan Faculty Association.
Joshua has completed three judicial clerkships, two at the Supreme Court of Canada (for Justice Clément Gascon) and one at the Federal Court (for Justice Donald J. Rennie, now of the Federal Court of Appeal). He also worked for two years as a litigator in commercial law, intellectual property law, and constitutional law at Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP. His core expertise relates to public, constitutional, and criminal law. And his practice centres on appellate advocacy, including consulting on all aspects of advocacy before the Supreme Court of Canada.
Joshua is also an avid writer and presenter. He has authored several peer-reviewed publications as well as articles for The Globe and Mail, Newsweek, and The Walrus. His scholarship has been cited by the Federal Court, Federal Court of Appeal, and Supreme Court of Canada. Further, Joshua is a frequent media commentator, whose analysis has been featured on CBC News and CTV News. He often presents to government, academic, and private institutions on critical race theory and racial justice, including the Department of Justice, the National Judicial Institute, the Ministry of the Attorney General, the Criminal Lawyers’ Association, and The Advocates’ Society. He is most passionate, though, about speaking with equity-seeking groups, including the Black Law Students’ Association of Canada, the Indigenous Bar Association, and the Federation of Asian Canadian Lawyers. For his volunteer support of Black law students across Canada, he has received one Dedication Award (2022) and two Appreciation Awards (2023 and 2024) from the Black Law Students’ Association of Canada, as well as Honorary Membership in the Lincoln Alexander School of Law Black Law Students’ Association (2024).
Joshua is functionally bilingual, and works in both English and French. He continues to study and improve his French.
Round Table with Experts on Substantive Equality and Employment Equity in Canada, Employment Equity Act Review Task Force, March 22, 2022
Consultation on the Criminal Case Review Commission for Canada, Secretariat for the establishment of an independent Criminal Case Review Commission, August 12, 2021
Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights – House of Commons (JUST), “Impact of COVID-19 on the Judicial System”, April 29, 2021
“Silly Anecdotes”: From White Baselines to White Juries in R. v. Chouhan (Supreme Court Law Review; February 2023)
Embodying Equality: Stigma, Safety, and Clément Gascon’s Disability Justice Legacy (Supreme Court Law Review; December 2021)
Was justice served in the Ahmaud Arbery case? Not even close (The Globe and Mail; November 2021; co-authored with Reakash Walters)
The Alchemy of Equality Rights (Constitutional Forum; May 2021)
New ruling is the first step in helping mothers collect much needed child support (The Globe and Mail; September 2020; co-authored with Raji Mangat and Jennifer Klinck)
Untelling the Story of Race (The Walrus; July 2020)
Body cameras are not an answer to systemic police violence – they undermine the push for defunding (The Globe and Mail; June 2020)
Twelve Angry (White) Men: The Constitutionality of the Statement of Principles (Ottawa Law Review; March 2020)
Colour as a Discrete Ground of Discrimination (Canadian Journal of Human Rights; June 2018; co-authored with Professor Jonnette Watson Hamilton)
The Inventive Concept in Patent Law: Not So Obvious (Intellectual Property Journal; September 2015)
Tied Hands? A Doctrinal and Policy Argument for the Validity of Advance Consent (Canadian Criminal Law Review; March 2014)
Assessing Analogous Grounds: The Doctrinal and Normative Superiority of a Multi-Variable Approach (University of Toronto Journal of Law & Equality; May 2013)
Organizing for Abolition: Derecka Purnell in conversation with Joshua Sealy-Harrington & Sima Atri (Lincoln Alexander School of Law; March 25, 2024)
“Cogenerating Identity” (Osgoode Hall Law School Nathanson Centre Work-in-Progress Research Workshop; April 4, 2023)
Journeys to the Bench: A Virtual Conversation with Federal Court Justices Favel, Sadrehashemi, and Go (Indigenous Bar Association, Canadian Association of Black Lawyers, and Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers; January 19, 2023)
Carceral Systems and Racial Justice in Canada: A Conversation on Reform and Abolition (Lincoln Alexander School of Law Racial Justice Initiative and McGill Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism; March 14, 2022)
Reading Race in Law: Critical Race Theory, Education and Adjudication (Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench and University of Alberta Faculty of Law Joint Judicial Symposium; January 25, 2022)
Movement Lawyering, Intersectionality, and Self-Determination (University of Toronto Law Union; March 29, 2021)
Interrupting Bias: How Systemic Racism, Discrimination & Distorted Thinking Lead to Wrongful Convictions (Public Prosecution Service of Canada and Courthouse Libraries BC; December 10, 2020)
Putting Speech and Equality in Conversation, not Opposition (Canadian Association of Law Libraries Annual Conference; May 6, 2020)
Gordillo v Canada, 2022 FCA 23 (international law, how international obligations and the Charter inform the proper interpretation of “wrongdoing” under the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act)
R v Chouhan, 2021 SCC 26 (constitutional law, Charter challenge to Canada’s abolition of peremptory challenges in jury selection (Bill C-75), including on the basis that it infringes the right to an impartial tribunal under s. 11(d))
Hak c Procureur général du Québec, 2021 QCCS 1466 (constitutional law, Charter challenge to Quebec’s Laicity Act (Bill 21), including on the basis that it infringes sex equality (s. 28) and minority language rights (s. 23))
Colucci v Colucci, 2021 SCC 24 (family law, child support, framework governing applications by payor parents to rescind or retroactively decrease child support)
Michel v Graydon, 2020 SCC 24 (family law, child support, whether the court has jurisdiction to vary a child support order after the order has expired and after the child support beneficiary has ceased to be a child)
Conseil scolaire francophone de la Colombie‑Britannique v British Columbia, 2020 SCC 13 (Charter right to official language education – existence, nature and quality of schools across the province, scope of permissible s. 1 justifications, Charter damages)
A.B. v C.D., 2019 BCCA 297 (family law and healthcare law; capacity of mature transgender minor to provide informed consent to gender-affirming treatment including hormone therapy; availability of protection orders under BC’s family law legislation to stop misgendering, deadnaming, and coercion of transgender minor; scope of freedom of expression and parental liberty rights of parent opposed to the medical treatment and protection order)
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