A justice of Australia's highest court who has been called "one of the sharpest legal minds in the country - if not the world," will present his views at the University of Alberta Faculty of Law in January during two separate appearances.
Justice James Edelman, who was elevated to the High Court of Australia in 2017, at age 43, will deliver the inaugural Hon. Mr. Justice Russell Brown Law Lecture on January 9.
The title of his address is "The Interpretation of Written Contracts."
The next day, Edelman will engage in a public conversation with the lecture series' namesake, Justice Russell Brown of the Supreme Court of Canada. Their talk, which will be moderated by the Faculty of Law's Interim Dean David Percy, QC, is titled: "The Supreme Court of Canada and the High Court of Australia: Similarities and Differences."
Edelman is internationally admired for his towering legal intellect and prodigious scholarship.
After earning three bachelor degrees simultaneously (economics, law and commerce) while attending two different universities in Perth, Australia, he became a Rhodes Scholar and completed a doctorate at the University of Oxford.
Following several years as a lawyer in Perth, Edelman returned to Oxford as a professor - at age 34 one of the youngest ever. He won the Oxford teaching medal twice, wrote six legal textbooks and more than 80 articles. In order to lecture in Roman law, he learned Latin.
In addition to teaching, he also built a busy commercial practice at One Essex Court, which is a member of "the Bar's Magic Circle," a group of the major barristers' chambers in London. Among his cases, he contributed to the successful High Court appeal of a wrongful conviction case in Australia, concerning a man who served 12 years for a murder he did not commit. Edelman prepared the case during his evenings and travelled back to Australia for hearings.
Edelman was appointed to the Supreme Court of Western Australia in 2011, and subsequently to the Federal Court in Brisbane in 2015. He was appointed to the High Court in 2017.
Both of Justice Edelman's presentations will take place in the Law Centre.
The Hon. Mr. Justice Russell Brown Law Lecture Series was established in 2016 with a financial pledge from Miller Thomson LLP to honour Justice Brown, a former member of the firm and a former faculty member of UAlberta Law who was appointed to the Supreme Court in 2015.