Fonds F0663 - Michael Mandel fonds

Michael Mandel (1948-2013), lawyer, professor, writer and activist, was born in Toronto on 6 May 1948 to Max and Hilda Mandel. He attended Vaughan Road Collegiate, and, in 1969, he enrolled in Osgoode Hall Law School at York University. While a student at Osgoode, Mandel was a silver medallist and a recipient of the Chancellor Van Koughnet Scholarship, the Christopher Robinson Memorial Scholarship, and the Thomas Cowper Robinette Memorial Prize. He received his LL.B. degree in 1972. After being awarded a Laidlaw Foundation Academic Fellowship for 1972-73, Mandel obtained a B.C.L. from Oxford University in 1973. He was called to the Bar of Ontario in 1976.

In 1974, Mandel was hired as an assistant professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, where he would spend the majority of his teaching career, with additional periods as a visiting professor at the University of Bologna, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the University of Torino, McMaster University, the University of Toronto, and the Native Law Centre at the University of Saskatchewan. He taught courses on criminal law, constitutional law, Marxism and the law, and the law of war, and he was an administrator of the York University-Bologna University exchange program.

As a writer and activist, Mandel was a critic of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and an advocate for prison reform and the anti-war movement. He was a co-founder of Lawyers against the War with Gail Davidson, a member of the Canadian-Palestine Solidarity Committee, and an active opponent of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia and of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Mandel authored two books, The Charter of Rights and the Legalization of Politics in Canada (1989) and How America Gets Away with Murder: Illegal Wars, Collateral Damage and Crimes against Humanity (2004).

In the 1990s, with fellow lawyer Harry Glasbeek, Mandel contributed to the radio program “A taste of justice”, which aired weekly on CKLN-FM Toronto.

A music lover and amateur singer, Mandel also performed opera and Yiddish music.