Supreme Court of Canada Justice Sheilah Martin during her welcoming ceremony in Ottawa in 2018.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
Justice Sheilah Martin announced her retirement from the Supreme Court of Canada on Tuesday, after more than eight years on the top bench and a legal career devoted to ideals of equality, human rights and education.
Her last day is May 30. Justice Martin will retire as she turns 70, five years before mandatory retirement. The decision opens up the first opportunity for Prime Minister Mark Carney to name someone to the Supreme Court.
Before she became a judge, Justice Martin was dean of the University of Calgary law school and then worked as a criminal and constitutional litigator. She helped seek compensation for the wrongful conviction of David Milgaard and was part of a legal team that worked on the Indian Residential Schools Settlement.
On the Supreme Court, to which she was named in 2017 by then-prime minister Justin Trudeau, Justice Martin wrote a range of important judgments. Criminal law was among her specialties. She authored rulings on self defence, bail and sexual assault. Justice Martin also wrote and co-wrote key judgments on the rights of people accused or convicted of crimes.
“She’s performed beyond high expectations,” said Kathleen Mahoney, a law professor emerita at the University of Calgary and a long-time friend of Justice Martin. “She brought a humanness to the bench. She grounded herself in equality and fairness. She exuded that.”
Justice Martin is stepping down five years before mandatory exit, after serving on the court since late 2017.Jess Deeks/Supplied
By convention, Justice Martin will likely be succeeded by another judge from Western Canada. The choice in recent years has been made more complicated by a requirement that any new justice be able to hear cases in French and English. Legal experts say a previous candidate, Chief Justice Glenn Joyal of the Manitoba Court of King’s Bench, would be a top name.
On Tuesday, Justice Martin’s peers praised her work on the top court. Chief Justice Richard Wagner, in a statement, pointed to her legal scholarship, commitment to fairness and principled approach to justice.
Chief Justice of Ontario Michael Tulloch, in an interview, said: “She was an excellent jurist who will have a lasting impact on the law.”
Russell Brown, a former Supreme Court judge who worked alongside Justice Martin for about five years, said they collaborated on several of his favourite judgments. (Mr. Brown retired from the top court in 2023 after allegations of inappropriate conduct outside work.)
They co-wrote the 2019 Le decision, ruling that evidence found on a young racialized man, who was detained by police without reasonable suspicion, couldn’t be used against him in court.
“Our judicial philosophies were a study in contrasts, but somehow, it all seemed to come together,” Mr. Brown said in an interview. “She has earned her escape from Ottawa and our best wishes.”
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Justice Martin was born and raised in Montreal. She has said she grew up in a family of modest means that worked through the daily stress of trying to make ends meet. To pay for schooling, she worked jobs in fast food and retail.
She has law degrees from McGill University, the University of Alberta and the University of Toronto. She was dean at the University of Calgary law school from 1991 to 1996. Thereafter she was a lawyer and she was first named to the bench in Alberta in 2005. In 2016, she was elevated to the province’s Court of Appeal and named to the Supreme Court the next year.
In a statement on Tuesday, Justice Martin said: “I am forever thankful for the precious opportunity [the Supreme Court] provided to better understand the richness and diversity of the people in our country and the laws and institutions that allow us to live together with respect, dignity and equality.”
She didn’t say why she is retiring. Of retirements from the Supreme Court going back 15 years, about half were at or around 75 and the rest were at a range of younger ages.
Gerard Kennedy, associate law dean at the University of Alberta, who closely follows the top courts across the country, said Justice Martin took a progressive approach to the law. That fits with the living tree legal tradition, where judges keep a keen eye on an evolving Canadian society while weighing their legal judgments.
In criminal law, Justice Martin had a broad conception of the rights of the accused, Prof. Kennedy said, noting the 2019 Le ruling.
But he also pointed to the federal-provincial division of powers, where, in the 2023 Impact Assessment Act reference ruling, she was part of the 5-2 majority that sided with the provinces against Ottawa.
“She’s not from Alberta but became an Albertan,” Prof. Kennedy said.
The question of her replacement will quickly come to the fore.
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In 2023, when Justice Mary Moreau was named to the Supreme Court from Alberta, she was one of only two people recommended to Mr. Trudeau for the opening. The independent advisory board is supposed to present three to five names but it couldn’t come up with more than two qualified and bilingual candidates.
Chief Justice Joyal in Manitoba, who has previously said he applied in the 2010s, may be a front-runner if he seeks the job.
“Carney really values intellectual chops and experience,” Prof. Kennedy said. “Clearly, Glenn Joyal has that.”
Other potential candidates could include Justice Peter Edelmann of the British Columbia Court of Appeal, Justice April Grosse of the Alberta Court of Appeal, Justice Naheed Bardai of the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal and Federal Court of Appeal Justice Gerald Heckman, who was previously a law professor at the University of Manitoba. Justice Jolaine Antonio of the Alberta appeal court may also be a candidate.
The process to choose a new Supreme Court justice is expected to remain the same as it has been since the mid-2010s, with an independent board reviewing applications and presenting a short list to Mr. Carney. The Prime Minister makes the final choice.
The question of how strictly the bilingualism rule is interpreted is unclear. In 2023, the Official Languages Act was amended to state that judges on courts including the Supreme Court are able to understand legal proceedings in English or French without an interpreter.
Another factor legal experts cited of Mr. Carney’s Supreme Court pick is how the new judge views federal powers compared with those of the provinces, in this historical moment where the federal government’s goal is to build industrial projects quickly.
On Tuesday, Justice Martin declined an interview through a court spokesperson.
In a podcast interview last year with Canadian Lawyer magazine, she spoke of bringing the law to Canadians. “At the end of my judgment, I want people to say: ‘That make sense.’ ”