Mahmud Jamal

Mahmud Jamal (born July 20, 1967) is a Canadian jurist serving as a puisne justice of the Supreme Court of Canada since 2021. Jamal worked as a partner at Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt and taught law at McGill University and Osgoode Hall Law School before he was appointed to the Court of Appeal for Ontario in 2019. He was nominated to the Supreme Court on June 17, 2021, taking office on July 1 to succeed Rosalie Abella. Jamal was born in Kenya to a family of Indian origin, making him the first person from a visible minority group to serve as a justice of the Supreme Court.

Early life and education Mahmud Jamal was born on July 20, 1967 in Nairobi, Kenya, to an Isma'ili family which had originally immigrated in the 19th century from Gujarat, British India, to East Africa during a railway construction boom. His family moved to England in 1969.

In 1981, his family moved again, immigrating to Canada, settling in Edmonton, Alberta, where he graduated from Ross Sheppard High School. In 1984, Jamal studied at the London School of Economics for a year and earned a bachelor of arts (B.A.) in economics from Trinity College at the University of Toronto in 1989.

After his undergraduate education, Jamal attended the McGill University Faculty of Law, graduating with a bachelor of laws (LL.B.) and bachelor of civil law (B.C.L.) in 1993.

Legal career Jamal completed a clerkship at Quebec Court of Appeal working for Justice Melvin Rothman and another at the Supreme Court of Canada, working for Justice Charles Gonthier. Before his appointment to the bench in 2019, Jamal was on the partnership board at Osler, and was chair of its pro bono program. He has appeared in 35 appeals before the Supreme Court, in addition to appearances to lower courts and tribunals. Jamal represented KPMG, which was then in court over its offshore tax avoidance scheme for high-net-worth individuals involving shell corporations in the Isle of Man. In 2016, because of ongoing litigation, Jamal wrote a letter to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance, requesting that specifics of the case not be discussed so that it would not prejudice the ongoing case. In response, chair Wayne Easter imposed a gag order, and expert witnesses were not allowed to talk about KPMG in the next committee session.

Jamal also taught as professor of constitutional law at McGill University and administrative law at Osgoode Hall Law School. He has served stints as a director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the Advocates' Society, and the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History. He is the first person from a visible minority group and the first Bahá’í to sit on the country's top court. with whom he has two children.