McGill University honours Minister of Justice
Irwin Cotler to receive the F.R. Scott Medal of Distinguished Service on January 18
The Honourable Irwin Cotler's dedication to the cause of human rights is being celebrated tonight. Canada's Minister of Justice and Attorney General will be the recipient of the inaugural F.R. Scott Medal of Distinguished Service. The new award was created by McGill University's Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Law Advisory Board to recognize law graduates who have provided exceptional service and leadership to society. Media are welcome to attend a special reception.
When: 6 pm, January 18, 2005
Where: Imperial Room, Fairmont Royal York, 100 Front St. W., Toronto
Keynote Address: The Honourable Irwin Cotler
More on Irwin Cotler
Irwin Cotler, a McGill graduate (BA'61, BCL'64), is Member of Parliament for Mount Royal. He was appointed Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada in December 2003. Minister Cotler is currently on leave as a law professor at McGill University, where he is director of the Human Rights Programme and Chair of InterAmicus, the McGill-based International Human Rights Advocacy Centre. Minister Cotler is an international human rights lawyer who has served as counsel to former prisoners of conscience in the Soviet Union (Andrei Sakharov), South Africa (Nelson Mandela), Latin America (Jacobo Timmerman) and Asia (Muchtar Pakpahan). He recently served as international legal counsel to imprisoned Russian environmentalist Aleksandr Nikitin, Nigerian playwright and Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, the Chilean-Canadian group Vérité et justice in the Pinochet case, Chinese-Canadian political prisoner KunLun Zhang and, most recently, Saad Edin Ibrahim, the leading democracy advocate in the Arab world. A leader in the struggle against impunity and the development of international humanitarian law, Irwin Cotler served as counsel to the Deschênes Commission of Inquiry in the matter of bringing Nazi war criminals to justice, filed amicus briefs before the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and testified before the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs regarding humanitarian intervention and the application of humanitarian law in Kosovo. A constitutional and comparative law scholar, he has litigated every section of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, including landmark cases in free speech, freedom of religion, women's rights, minority rights, international justice, prisoners' rights and peace law. He is the recipient of five honorary doctorates and is an Officer of the Order of Canada.
More on F.R. Scott
The late Francis Reginald Scott, a McGill graduate (1926), taught at McGill from 1928 to 1968 and was dean of law from 1961 to 1964. In 1952, he was technical-aid representative for the United Nations in Burma. From 1963 to 1971, he was a member of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism. Scott was elected to the Royal Society of Canada in 1947, was awarded the Lorne Pierce Medal for distinguished service to Canadian literature in 1962, and received a Molson Prize for outstanding achievements in the arts, the humanities and the social sciences in 1967. His career as an interpreter of Quebec poetry culminated with a Canada Council Translation Prize for Poems of French Canada (1977), while his work as a social philosopher was recognized with a Governor General's Award for Essays on the Constitution: Aspects of Canadian Law and Politics (1977), and his life as a poet with a Governor General's Award for The Collected Poems of F.R. Scott (1981). F.R. Scott died on January 31, 1985.
