Adelle Blackett

Adelle Blackett, F.R.S.C., Ad. E., is Professor of Law and the Canada Research Chair in Transnational Labour Law at the Faculty of Law, McGill University.   

Her extensive publications focus on building emancipatory approaches to labour law. Her research on slavery and the law, conducted initially for a general rapporteurship for the International Academy of Comparative Law (IACL), reconsiders the founding framing of the 1926 Slavery Convention, and rethinks the relevance of Atlantic slavery for contemporary understandings of labour exploitation.  Her research on trade and labour standards theorizes social regionalism and distributive justice alternative.  

She is on the roster of experts for the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) Chapter 23 (Trade and Labour) and the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement Annex 31-B Lists of Rapid Response mechanism. Her 2019 book manuscript entitled Everyday Transgressions: Domestic Workers’ Transnational Challenge to International Labor Law (Cornell University Press) garnered the Canadian Council on International Law’s (CCIL) 2020 Scholarly Book Award. The founding director of the Labour Law and Development Research Laboratory, her emerging research and teaching is on social justice for peace-making through alternative dispute resolution.  

Professor Blackett has significant human rights, labour rights and equity leadership experience.  Internationally, this includes serving as the lead ILO expert in a treaty-making process on decent work for domestic workers, and preparing a draft Haitian labour code in a deeply collaborative, tripartite-plus law reform process.  In Canada, she was unanimously appointed by the National Assembly of Québec to the Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse.  She also chaired the federal Human Rights Experts Panel. 

She was appointed by the federal Minister of Labour to chair Canada’s Employment Equity Act Review Task Force, whose report, A Transformative Framework to Achieve and Sustain Employment Equity, was publicly released in time for international human rights day in December 2023.  She is also the principal drafter of the Scarborough Charter on Anti-Black Racism and Black Inclusion in Canadian Higher Education.

An elected fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, she has been awarded the Bora Laskin National Human Rights Fellowship & the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Fellowship.  An innovative pedagogue, she has received the McGill Principal’s Prize for Excellence in Teaching (Full Professor category), the Canadian Association of Law Teachers’ Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Award, and the inaugural McGill Graduate Law Student Association’s Excellence in Supervision and Mentorship Award.  

Professor Blackett’s contributions have also been recognized by the Barreau du Québec’s Christine Tourigny Award of Merit and the status of Advocate Emeritus, the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal, and the Canadian Association of Black Lawyers’ Pathfinder Award. She has been awarded honorary doctorates in law from Queen’s University, Université Catholique de Louvain, and Simon Fraser University. The Labour Law Research Network awarded her its Bob Hepple Award for Lifetime Achievement in Labour Law.

Education

JSD Columbia University
LLM Columbia University
BCL & LLB McGill University
BA Queen's University