Sophia Moreau

Sophia Moreau is Professor of Law and Philosophy at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law (cross-appointed to the Department of Philosophy. She is also a Faculty Associate at the U of T's Centre for Ethics. Prior to her appointment at the University of Toronto, she clerked for Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin at the Supreme Court of Canada; was a Frank Knox Memorial Fellow at Harvard University, where she won the Emily & Charles Carrier Dissertation Prize, and a Commonwealth Scholar at Balliol College Oxford, where she completed her B.Phil. Her research combines legal and philosophical analysis and ranges from discrimination law and tort law to problems in moral, political and legal philosophy.

Professor Moreau has worked extensively in discrimination theory (Faces of Inequality, OUP 2020, winner of the Canadian Philosophical Association’s 2022 Book Prize; Philosophical Foundations of Discrimination Law, OUP 2013, co-edited with Deborah Hellman; "What is Discrimination,” P&PA 38.2 (2010). Her work on equality has been cited by the Supreme Court of Canada in every recent equality rights decision.

Moreau is the PI for the Tort Law and Social Equality Project in Canada. It brings together academics, lawyers judges and law students to consider the impact that various rules of tort law have on marginalized social groups, and involves a publicly searchable database of over 1000 primary and secondary legal sources; a monthly online Discussion Forum featuring the work of various academics and lawyers; a webpage tracking current legal developments; and online Workshops. ,

Moreau is working, at the same time, on a parallel project in moral philosophy that aims to reshape our conception of our moral obligations as products of institutions that are imperfect and often unjust. This was the topic of her recent Kadish lecture at Berkeley.

Moreau will be the Distinguished Hart Fellow at Oxford in Hilary Term 2023, and has been the Weinstein Fellow at Berkeley and a Chancellor Jackman Research Fellow at the University of Toronto. She is an Associate Editor of Philosophy & Public Affairs, Book Reviews Editor of the University of Toronto Law Journal, and a Board Member of Law and Philosophy and of the Danish Centre for the Experimental-Philosophical Study of Discrimination. She is a member of the Ontario bar and has done consultation work both for the Canadian government (on discrimination) and for non-profit equality-rights organizations such as L.E.A.F. (The Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund).