Margaret Somerville awarded a Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, by Royal Military College of Canada

McGill Professor Margaret Somerville was awarded a Doctorate of Laws, honoris causa, on May 16, 2013, by the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario. During the College’s 94th Convocation ceremony, the College’s Chancellor, the Honourable Peter McKay, Minister of Defence, cited “her exceptional contributions to society through research, scholarly debate and personal involvement.”

Professor Somerville, who holds the Samuel Gale Chair in the Faculty of Law and is also a professor in the Faculty of Medicine, then gave the College’s Convocation Address on the theme “Trust, Courage and Hope: Putting into Practice ‘Truth, Duty, Valour,’” which was reproduced on the RMC’s e-Veritas blog: everitas.rmcclub.ca/?p=99472.

Margaret Somerville, DCL’78, is known as an international leader in the discussion of complex ethical questions surrounding both the legal and ethical aspects of medicine. She is the founding director of the McGill Center for Medicine, Ethics and Law and a widely published author. She has served as a consultant on a multitude of issues to the Canadian government, the World Health Organization, and the United Nations. She was also the first recipient of the UNESCO Avicenna Prize for Ethics in Science in 2004, and delivered the 2006 CBC Massey Lectures, which were published as a book under the title "The Ethical Imagination: Journeys of the Human Spirit" (House of Anansi Press, 2006).