Stuart Russell is co-chair of the Monitoring Committee on Attacks on Lawyers of the International Association of People’s Lawyers (IAPL) who has closely monitored attacks on lawyers around the world for the past a decade. Prior to retirement he was a human rights lawyer in Canada in the 1980s, as well as a senior lecturer in the School of Law at Macquarie University in Sydney and an administrative judge for refugee appeals in Australia in the 1990s. He has conducted research, given lectures on and published widely on attacks against lawyers around the world, as well as theoretical criminology, legal theory and human rights. He is recognized as a leading international authority on the persecution of lawyers. He holds degrees in Arts, Civil Law and Common Law from McGill University in Montréal (BA, BCL, LLB) as well as a Master of Laws from the University of Ottawa (LLM).
– Hello, dear Mr. Russell! Thanks for taking the time to answer a few questions. I want to speak with you about the about an international mechanism for the protection of lawyers’ professional rights and the role of International Association of People’s Lawyers Monitoring Committee on Attacks on Lawyers in this mechanism.
But first of all, I ask you our traditional question. Please tell me when and for what reason you had entered the legal profession and what circumstances explain the development of your professional career.
– I grew up in Vancouver in Canada and in the late 1960s I was active in the early environmental movement, then in the 1970s I was a student activist during my first degree in sociology. In 1975 I moved to Montréal and at the time Québec was a very exciting and vibrant province. Basically I wanted to study law and become a lawyer in order to help movements for social change.
After graduating from McGill Law School in 1982 I worked for a couple of years in an office in Montréal where I articled, mainly doing landlord-tenant cases representing tenants. Then I opened my own office in a community centre in the heart of Montréal with Stephen Foster, a fellow McGill law graduate who subsequently became a justice of the Ontario Supreme Court. We were very alternative, we had no secretary in a humble office, and did all of our cases on legal aid, mostly refugees. A couple of years later I moved to another office and practised with two other McGill law graduates.
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