Organization

Brief History

CIAJ was created in 1974 at the Osgoode Hall Law School of York University in Toronto, by then Associate Dean Stephen Borins and Dean Harry Arthurs, with the help of a $225,000 grant from the Donner Foundation. Then Professors Allen M. Linden and Sidney J. Lederman became respectively first Director and Associate Director of CIAJ. Independent, but university-housed, the non-profit organization would function as the educational, planning and research arm of the courts and administrative tribunals throughout Canada. Multi-disciplinary in scope, under the patronage of members of the judiciary, the legal profession, governments and members of the public, however free from political constraints, it would be able to undertake and to promote projects upon consideration of their respective intrinsic merits. In response to then Dean Frank D. Jones’ invitation, CIAJ’s offices moved to the Faculty of Law of the University of Alberta in Edmonton in 1978 and remained there until 1986. Then, in response to a generous initiative by the Faculty of Law of the Université de Montréal, CIAJ moved its offices to this university where it was housed until April 2019.

The year 1999 marked CIAJ’s 25^th anniversary. The Board of Directors took the opportunity of this milestone to update CIAJ’s mandate. The administration of justice is viewed as a public service. Strategically placed to identify emerging needs, and to promote research and educational endeavours likely to improve the administration of justice, the CIAJ takes a multi-disciplinary approach in identifying and addressing leading-edge issues.

In 2014, after 40 years of existence, CIAJ reviewed its statutes, renewed its visual identity, and made its first steps on social media.

* For more information, see the excerpt from D.C. McDonald, “The Role of the Canadian Institute for the Administration of Justice in the Development of Judicial Education in Canada” in W. Kaplan & D. McRae, eds., Law, Policy and International Justice, Essays in Honour of Maxwell Cohen (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992) at 455-480.