Thomas Cromwell

Thomas Albert Cromwell (born May 5, 1952) is a Canadian jurist and former Puisne Justice on the Supreme Court of Canada. After eleven years on the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal, Cromwell was nominated to succeed Michel Bastarache and occupy the seat traditionally reserved for Atlantic provinces on the Supreme Court of Canada by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and assumed office on December 22, 2008. He attended Queen's University where he earned a Bachelor of Music degree in 1973 and a law degree in 1976. He then earned a Bachelor of Civil Law degree at Exeter College, Oxford in 1977. He also earned an ARCT Diploma from the Royal Conservatory of Music in 1974. In that role, Cromwell decided in favour of recognizing the claimant's Aboriginal title in R v Marshall; R v Bernard, but his reasoning was overturned by the Supreme Court. However, this process was bypassed when Cromwell was officially appointed; Prime Minister Harper had expressed concern that waiting for the committee to meet would hobble the court in executing "its vital constitutional mandate effectively." However, Parliament wound up meeting only very seldom after Cromwell's initial nomination, mainly because of a federal election called by Harper for October 14, and then the subsequent proroguing of Parliament on December 4, until its scheduled resumption on January 26, 2009.

While on the Supreme Court, Cromwell joined the rest of the court in a unanimous decision in Tsilhqot'in Nation v British Columbia to recognize the existence of Aboriginal title for the Tsilhqot'in. The decision that drew in large part from his previously rejected Nova Scotia Court of Appeal ruling in R v Marshall; R v Bernard, vindicating his earlier judgement.

Justice Cromwell retired from the Supreme Court of Canada on September 1, 2016, at the age of 64, fulfilling a personal intention to resign around age 65. Throughout his eight-year service on the Supreme Court, Cromwell authored around a hundred decisions and earned a reputation as a centrist, neither left or right, activist or deferent.

On February 12, 2019, former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada Jody Wilson-Raybould retained Cromwell to advise her in the wake of her resignation from the federal cabinet.

In December 2020, Cromwell was commissioned by the University of Toronto Faculty of Law to conduct an impartial investigation of the search process it had used to hire a new director for its International Human Rights Program. The report was commissioned after allegations that a sitting judge of the Tax Court of Canada, David Spiro, had improperly interfered with the search process. On March 15, 2021 Cromwell released his report. The Report has drawn criticism from legal scholars and academics as to its accuracy, scope, and potential conflict of interest issues. The scandal and subsequent Report has led to the Canadian Association of University Teachers censuring the University of Toronto.