Professor Sonia Lawrence joined Osgoode’s faculty in 2001. She graduated from the University of Toronto's joint LLB/MSW program, and went on to serve as law clerk to Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin of the Supreme Court of Canada. With the help of Fulbright and SSHRC Fellowships, she then attended Yale Law School where she focused on constitutional equality issues and welfare administration. A past member of the Board of Parkdale Community Legal Services, Professor Lawrence has also provided expertise to the African Canadian Legal Clinic, the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF), and the Court Challenges Program. She is a member of the Executive of the Canadian Association of Law Teachers and the case comments editor of the Canadian Journal of Women and the Law. She is widely published and has spoken at numerous conferences and roundtables. Her work centers on questions of equality and includes examinations of the Supreme Court of Canada’s equality jurisprudence, the influence of feminism in Canadian law, sentencing regimes for 'drug mules', diversity on the bench, and section 28 of the Charter. She has served as Assistant Dean, First Year, and worked on Admissions and Curriculum Reform at Osgoode. She is the Director of the Institute for Feminist Legal Studies (http://ifls.osgoode.yorku.ca) and the chair of the Academic Policy Committee. She teaches first year State and Citizen (constitutional and public law) as well as upper year seminars including Law, Gender, Equality.

Areas of interest: Public Law