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Marie-Eve Sylvestre
Profile
Marie-Eve
Sylvestre
Dean on administrative leave, Full Professor
LL.B. Université de Montréal 1999
LL.M. Harvard Law School 2002
S.J.D. Harvard Law School 2007
Room
57, rue Louis-Pasteur, bureau 203
Phone
613-562-5800 poste 5902
Email
Biography
Marie-Eve Sylvestre is Dean and Full Professor at the Civil Law Section of the Faculty of Law of the University of Ottawa. She holds an LL.B. from the Université de Montréal (1999: Gold Medallist), as well as a LL.M (2002) and a S.J.D. (2007) from Harvard Law School where she was a Frank Knox Memorial Foundation fellow. In 2000-2001, she served as a law clerk to Justice Charles D. Gonthier at the Supreme Court of Canada.
Her research focuses on the criminal justice system, and, more specifically, on policing and judicial practices, as well as legal rules, that have a discriminatory impact on poor and marginalized populations. She is also interested in alternative responses to criminalization, including in the Indigenous context, as well as in the regulation of individuals who use public spaces. She has published extensively in law, criminology, and geography. Her most recent book, Red Zones: Criminal Law and the Territorial Governance of Marginalized People, co-authored with Nicholas Blomley and Céline Bellot, and published by Cambridge University Press, was awarded the 2021 W. Wesley Pue Book Prize by the Canadian Law and Society Association. In 2018-2019, she held the University of Ottawa Research Chair in Law, Criminal Policy, and the Regulation of Marginalized People.
From 2017 to 2019, Professor Sylvestre acted as the justice expert for the Public Inquiry Commission into the Relationships between Indigenous People and Certain Public Services in Quebec: listening, reconciliation, progress (CERP). She is a founding member of the Observatory on Profiling and in 2022, she testified as an expert for the plaintiff in Luamba v. A.G. Québec on racial profiling and traffic stops in Quebec.
Throughout her career, Dean Sylvestre earned several prizes and awards. In 2011, she received the Canadian Association of Law Teachers’ Scholarly Paper Award for an article entitled “Rethinking Criminal Responsibility for Poor Offenders”, published in the McGill Law Journal, as well as the Quebec Bar Foundation Award for best legal manuscript for an article on the penalization of homelessness published in the Canadian Journal Law and Society. In 2012, she was the first law professor to be granted the Young Researcher of the Year Award, for the arts, humanities, and social sciences, at the University of Ottawa. She is a member of the College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists of the Royal Society of Canada since 2018. In 2022, she was awarded the distinction of Advocatus Emeritus by the Quebec Bar and in 2023, she earned the Merit of the Barreau de l’Outaouais.
Dean Sylvestre is the co-president of the University of Ottawa Standing Committee on Academic Freedom. She is a member of the Board of Governors of the National Judicial Institute and a Board member of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
Publications and communications
- Marie-Eve Sylvestre, Nicholas Blomley and Céline Bellot, Red Zones: Criminal Law and the Territorial Governance of Marginalized People, Cambridge University Press, 2020.
- Julie Desrosiers, Margarida Garcia and Marie-Eve Sylvestre, Criminal Law Reform: Challenges and Possibilities / Réformer le droit criminel au Canada: défis et possibilités, Éditions Yvon Blais, 2018
Research Projects
1. État et cultures juridiques autochtones: un droit en quête de légitimité (CRSH Connexion - Partenariat, 2013-2018) (1 901 675$)
Co-chercheuse et co-directrice du projet "Vers un modèle de justice atikamekw" (avec Mylène Jaccoud, UdeM) (214 000$)
Chercheur principal: Ghislain Otis, Université d'Ottawa
http://www.legitimus.ca/
L’objectif ultime de ce projet est de soutenir et de renforcer la gouvernance atikamekw. Le projet porte plus spécifiquement sur les modèles étatiques et atikamekw de prise en charge des problèmes et des conflits en matières de violence conjugale et familiale et de protection des enfants dont le développement est compromis. Il vise à renforcer, développer et soutenir les modes atikamekw de résolution des conflits et à assurer leur reconnaissance tant au sein de la nation atikamekw qu’auprès de l’État québécois.
2. L'Observatoire sur les profilages social, racial et politique dans les espaces publics (CRSH Connexion, Développement de Partenariat, 2013-2016) (200 000$)
Co-chercheuse et responsable du groupe sur le profilage social
Chercheuse principale: Céline Bellot, UdeM (avec Pascale Dufour, Francis Dupuis-Déri, Paul Eid et Suzanne Bouclin, co-chercheurs)
http://profilages.info/
L’Observatoire sur les profilages est un organisme de veille et de vigilance sur différents types de profilage, visant à soutenir le débat public dans une perspective d’amélioration des pratiques et des politiques sociales. Pour ce faire, l’OPS incarne une alliance interdisciplinaire et interinstitutionnelle entre divers chercheurs (droit, sociologie, science politique, travail social et criminologie) et organismes de défense des droits (institutionnels et communautaires), qui vont produire de nouvelles données et analyses afin de fournir des connaissances scientifiques, judiciaires et médiatiques récentes sur le phénomène des profilages.
3. Court-imposed restrictions to public spaces and Marginalized People in Canada (CRSH Savoir, 2012-2016) (117 416$) (Subvention classée au 1er rang sur 81 demandes au Canada)
Chercheuse principale
Co-chercheurs: Céline Bellot, UdeM et Nicholas Blomley, SFU
This research project focuses on bail and sentencing conditions imposed in the context of criminal proceedings involving marginalized groups of people, including street-level drug users and sex workers, the homeless, and demonstrators who occupy public spaces in four Canadian cities (Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver). We are particularly interested in the use of conditions with spatial dimensions. Some of these conditions specifically rely on a geographic or spatial component (e.g. prohibiting people from being within the limits of a determined perimeter or from being in a particular place like a park or property generally accessible to the public such as a restaurant or a store), while others have spatial effects (e.g. prohibitions to demonstrate or to participate in public meetings or assemblies; curfews, no contact orders, etc). Using a multidisciplinary (law, geography and criminology) and multi-methods (both qualitative and quantitative) framework, our project analyzes the nature of these court orders, the legal context in which they are embedded, and their effects on individuals’ rights and uses of public spaces, and on the criminal justice system.
4. La judiciarisation des personnes itinérantes à Montréal et Ottawa: état des pratiques contre-productives (CRSH Subvention stratégique conjointe 2008-2009) (50,000$)
Chercheuse principale
Co-chercheuse: Céline Bellot, UdeM
5. La judiciarisation des personnes itinérantes au Canada (CRSH Subvention ordinaire 2008-2012) (141 000$)
Chercheuse principale: Céline Bellot, UdeM
6. La judiciarisation des personnes itinérantes au Canada (CRSH Subvention ordinaire 2008-2012) (141 000$)
Co-chercheuse
Chercheuse principale: Céline Bellot, UdeM
Courses Taught
- DRC 1707A - Droit pénal I (Winter 2019)
- DRC 4780 - Droit des peines (Winter 2018)
Links
Conférence «Les stratégies spatiales de surveillance des populations marginalisées», avec Céline Bellot, présentée le 17 février 2015, à l'Université de Montréal dans le cadre du Cycle de conférences du Centre International de Criminologie Comparée (CICC).
Conférence «Pratiques judiciaires et personnes marginalisées», présentée le 4 décembre 2014, par l'Université de Montréal, le Centre International de Criminologie Comparée (CICC) et L'Observatoire Sur les Profilages (OSP), dans le cadre du lancement de la saison scientifique 2014-2015 du CICC.
L'observatoire sur les profilages (OSP): http://profilages.info/
Émission Le droit de savoir, saison 4, épisode 41: Vivre dans la dignité (diffusée en septembre 2014)
Fields of interest
(in french only)
- Droit pénal et détermination de la peine
- Criminalisation de la pauvreté
- Droit pénal et personnes marginalisées (itinérance, travail du sexe, usage de drogues)
- Occupation des espaces publics
- Criminalisation de la dissidence et des manifestations
- Système de justice pénale et les autochtones