The Honourable L.S. Tony Mandamin, IPC, is a retired Judge of the Federal Court, Trial Division. Tony has extensive experience in Indigenous law and Aboriginal issues. He was called to the Bar in 1983 and established the first Indigenous law firm in Alberta in 1985, representing First Nations, Indigenous organizations, and Treaty and Metis individuals.

Before being appointed to the Bench, Tony was lead counsel in numerous significant Indigenous Law cases, including at the Supreme Court of Canada. He was appointed a Provincial Court Judge in 1999, sitting in the Calgary and area criminal courts. He was then appointed to the Federal Court in 2007, and sat on numerous landmark decisions, and also chaired a committee of judges, Indigenous lawyers, CBA Aboriginal law practitioners and Department of Justice lawyers in developing the Federal Court Aboriginal Law Practice Guidelines to assist practitioners who had Aboriginal issues before the Court.

Amongst his many other achievements Tony was awarded a Doctor of Laws Honoris Causa by the Law Society of Ontario in 2017. He was also awarded the designation of Indigenous Peoples’ Counsel (IPC) by the Indigenous Bar Association in 2019.

Adebayo Majekolagbe is an Assistant Professor at the University of Alberta, Faculty of Law. He has over a decade of post-call legal experience, and has appeared at all levels of the Nigerian judicial system. He holds Master of Laws degrees from the University of Lagos, Nigeria and Dalhousie University, Canada. He also holds a PhD from the Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University. Adebayo is a fellow of the Marine and Environmental Law Institute, Dalhousie University and a member of the International Association for Impact Assessment, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the Global Network for Human Rights and the Environment, and the Environmental Planning and Assessment Caucus of the Canadian Environmental Network. He has won several awards including SSHRC’s Vanier Award, Killam Trust’s Killam Award and others. His work on Just Transition and Impact Assessment was recognized at SSHRC’s “Real Insight. Real Impact. Real Purpose” showcase on Parliament Hill in 2023. Adebayo has researched and published on numerous topics relating to just transition, impact assessment, sustainability and climate change law and human rights. He also teaches courses at the University of Alberta, Faculty of Law including climate change law, environmental law, and constitutional law.

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Jessica Eisen is an Associate Professor at the University of Alberta Faculty of Law. Her research interests include animals and the law, constitutional and comparative constitutional law, equality and antidiscrimination law, feminist legal theory, intergenerational justice, and law and social movements. Professor Eisen’s research has been published in the Journal of Law and Equality, Animal Law Review, Canadian Journal of Poverty Law, Transnational Legal Theory, Queen’s Law Journal, ICON: International Journal of Constitutional Law, University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform, University of Toronto Law Journal, and elsewhere. She has studied at Barnard College, Columbia University (BA, Political Science and Human Rights Studies, 2004); The University of Toronto Faculty of Law (JD, 2009); Osgoode Hall Law School (LLM, 2014); and Harvard Law School (SJD, 2019); and has worked at WeirFoulds LLP, the Ontario Ministry of Labour, and the Constitutional Law Branch of the Ministry of the Attorney General for Ontario.

Gerard Kennedy joined U of A Law in July 2023, having previously been a faculty member at the University of Manitoba's Faculty of Law for over three years. He researches the role of courts in society, specifically how different actors and institutions within or adjacent to the legal profession uphold the rule of law and facilitate access to justice. He principally does this through analyzing civil justice and procedure and administrative law and procedure, frequently with a comparative lens. He has authored over thirty journal articles on these topics, and five books, including The Charter of Rights in Litigation: Direction from the Supreme Court of Canada; The Civil Litigation Process, 9th edition; Public Law, 5th edition, and Boundaries of Judicial Review: The Law of Justiciability in Canada, 3rd edition.

Professor Kennedy received his Juris Doctor at Queen’s University, where he was the sole recipient of the Dean’s Key in his graduating class. He then clerked at the Ontario Superior Court of Justice before earning a Masters of Law at Harvard Law School as a Frank Knox Memorial Fellow. His doctoral studies at Osgoode Hall Law School were supported by a Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Scholarship and a SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier CGS Doctoral Scholarship. As a doctoral student, he held scholarship-supported visiting positions at NYU School of Law and the Max Planck Institute Luxembourg for Procedural Law.

Professor Kennedy’s interests in the role of courts in society, and specifically civil and administrative justice, were largely inspired by his four years as a litigator at Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP. He has remained an active member of the legal profession, as a member of the bars of Ontario, Manitoba, and Alberta. He serves on the Alberta Judicial Council, the Federal Courts Rules Committee, and the (advisory) boards of Advocates for the Rule of Law, the Centre for Constitutional Studies, and the Edmonton Bar Association. He has given numerous continuing professional development presentations for organizations as diverse as The Advocates' Society, American College of Trial Lawyers (Manitoba chapter), and the Manitoba Council of Administrative Tribunals, among many others. He has been a frequent volunteer at pro bono legal clinics, even after leaving full-time practice. His commitment to pro bono work was recognized by the 2016 Young Advocates’ Society Commitment to Pro Bono Award.