Margot Young

Professional biography

Margot Young is Professor in the Allard School of Law at the University of British Columbia. After studying at the University of British Columbia, the University of Toronto, and the University of California, Berkeley, Professor Young began her teaching career at the Faculty of Law at the University of Victoria. In 2002, she moved to the University of British Columbia at what is now the Allard School of Law.

Professor Young teaches in the areas of constitutional and social justice law. She was the Director of the Social Justice Specialization at the law school and has organized the Law and Society Speakers Series for close to a decade. Professor Young served three terms as Chair of the university-wide Faculty Association Status of Women Committee. She is a research associate with Green College, the Peter Wall Institute of Advanced Studies, and the Centre for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice at UBC.

Professor Young’s research interests focus on equality law and theory, women’s economic equality, urban theory, and local housing politics and rights. She is also working on the intersections between environmental justice, social justice, feminism, and human rights. Professor Young was co-editor of the collection Poverty: Rights, Social Citizenship and Legal Activism and was Co-Principal Investigator of the Housing Justice Project (HousingJustice.ca). She is widely published in a variety of journals and edited books.

Professor Young is a member of the editorial boards of the Canadian Journal of Women and Law, the Review of Constitutional Studies, Studies in Housing Law and is on the advisory board of the Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice. From 2016-2019, she was co-editor of the Law and Society Review.

Professor Young is active in a variety of professional and community organizations. She sits on the board of Justice for Girls and is Chair of the Board of Directors of the David Suzuki Foundation, a prominent national environmental organization. She is Research Associate with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives-BC Office. Professor Young has worked with provincial and national women’s equality groups during United Nation committees’ periodic reviews of Canada’s human rights record, travelling as an NGO representative to these meetings in New York and Geneva. More specifically, she works with the BC CEDAW Group and the Feminist Alliance for International Action.

Professor Young is a frequent commentator in the media on a variety of issues to do with social justice and socio-economic rights issues. Interviews include local, national, and international print, television, and radio coverage of key constitutional, equality, and civil liberties issues. She has testified before Parliamentary committees and is active with a number of civil society groups advocating, both politically and legally, for social justice.