From academia to the bench: Justice Sheilah Martin's path to the Supreme Court of Canada

Justice Martin’s interest in the law was rooted not in ambition but in a desire to improve a flawed system. “The justice system that we create has to be better than the people that create it,” she says. As a student at McGill University, she trained in civil and common law traditions, but it was teaching where she first found her footing. “I loved teaching. I loved being with young minds that were inquiring and questioning and were highly critical,” she says.

Her time in the classroom later intersected with the practice of law. After serving as dean at the University of Calgary Faculty of Law from 1991 to 1996, she entered private practice, not to climb the professional ladder, but to better understand her discipline. Her first case as counsel brought her directly to the Supreme Court – an intervention involving the medical treatment of a pregnant woman under state custody. “That was the first time I came to the Supreme Court,” she says.

Her legal work spanned constitutional and criminal matters, including interventions on sexual assault legislation, the federal firearms reference case, and pro bono representation of women’s rights groups. The law, she explains, always returned to the human element. “You had to pull the principles apart to create new frameworks,” she says, describing her work on the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement. “What is a just kind of package of remedies that will deal with the actual wrongs that were experienced by so many?”

A judicial appointment was not something she initially envisioned. “I got increasingly more fascinated by the judicial craft,” she says, pointing to her growing involvement in judicial education. Encouragement from a mentor led her to apply. In 2005, she joined the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench.

The shift from advocate to adjudicator was stark. “As a lawyer, I made arguments. But as a judge, I had to make decisions,” she says. “You’re trying to exercise judgment and wisdom and asking yourself with great humility all the time, what if I’m wrong?”

Her judicial experience included postings across Canada’s North – in Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. “I had a fabulous wealth of experience in terms of understanding how justice looks in very different places in the vast country that we have,” she says.

The call to join the Supreme Court of Canada was not something she expected, especially given that another judge from Alberta was already on the bench. “Statistically, it’s completely improbable that someone would end up as one of nine,” she says. But the weight of the position was immediately apparent. “I felt so deeply honoured to have been chosen, and I felt it as a great weight and responsibility,” she says.

Inside the court, collegiality and rigorous exchange were essential. “We strengthen each other. We talk about, well, there’s a gap in your thinking here, or why are you going this way?” she says. But the work was unrelenting. “Some people use the word ‘crushing’... [there are] very few easy cases that go to the Supreme Court of Canada.”

Writing decisions, she explains, is as challenging as it is central. “I love to write, and it’s so hard,” she says. “At the end of my judgment, I want people to say, that makes sense.” Her goal is clarity, always. “Sometimes people would say, 'What does this case from the Supreme Court mean?' And you like to have an answer,” she says.

That clarity extended to her expectations of advocacy. “Advocacy can be learned,” she says. “Think ahead, tell a story, understand what your decision maker needs to know before they can decide.” Before the country’s top court, arguments have to be elevated. “You’re really asking the court to say this is the better approach, normatively,” she says.

Written submissions receive painstaking scrutiny. “We read the factum many times for many different reasons,” she says. “It’s really important that great care is put into a well-structured, absolutely as clear as possible and as accurate as possible [factum].” As for oral advocacy, it is a rare opportunity to influence the bench directly. “The miracle of having heard a piece of info and seeing a really good advocate explain to me why it’s actually the key thing – that’s what a really good advocate does,” she says.

Martin applied the same precision to her views on legal education and the profession. The degree, she says, unlocked more than courtroom skills. “If you have legal training, you have a way of thinking about the world and of problems. You hear the other side, you measure pros and cons,” she says. “You’re compelled towards facts and evidence… These are unbelievably good, transferable skills.”

She is candid about the structural challenges faced by those entering the profession from underrepresented groups. But she challenges the assumption that the legal profession demands a single type of personality or background. Too often, she says, people self-select out because they underestimate how much space there is to belong. “It’s probably being too shy about yourself and not knowing the diversity in the profession. [There are] many, many people who have various different personalities who find law an enriching and sustaining kind of tradition,” she says.

Martin’s approach to judging avoids grand theorizing, though her methodology is evident in the care she takes with every word on the page. “Somebody once said, I love having written,” she says. “I try very hard to make it so that people understand exactly what I’m saying, and that hopefully at the end of my judgment, they’ll say, that makes sense.”

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