Farewell and best wishes to an esteemed colleague

With mixed feelings of pride and sadness, the Faculty of Law heartily congratulates Professor Geneviève Saumier on her appointment as dean of the Faculté de droit, Université de Montréal. She will begin a five-year term on 1 August 2024.

A 1991 graduate of McGill Law’s national programme, Professor Geneviève Saumier clerked for the late Justice John Sopinka at the Supreme Court of Canada in 1995-1996, before obtaining a PhD from the University of Cambridge Faculty of Law in 1997. She joined the McGill Faculty of Law as an assistant professor in 1996. She became an associate professor in 2003, and was promoted to full professor in 2014. In 2016, she was named to the Peter M. Laing, Q.C., Chair, an appointment that was renewed in 2023. She served as associate dean (academic) from 2005 to 2008.

Professor Saumier is a foremost authority on consumer law, international dispute resolution, and cross-border class actions. Her papers on private international law and on consumer arbitration have been cited many times by the Supreme Court of Canada. A titular member of the International Academy of Comparative Law and of the American Association of Private International Law, she has been a member of the board of the Office de la protection du consommateur since 2012. She was appointed co-rapporteur for the judgments convention project at the Hague Conference on Private International Law. In 2016, she received the Canadian Bar Association’s Paul-André-Crépeau Medal.

“While our dear colleague will be sorely missed on this side of the mountain, we are tremendously proud to see her assume this important leadership role, in which she will make significant contributions to the Quebec legal community,” said Dean Robert Leckey, Ad. E. “We are grateful for her decades of service to McGill Law, and we wish her continued success as she takes on this exciting challenge.”