Professor Backhouse holds the position of Distinguished University Professor at the University of Ottawa. She teaches in the areas of legal history, human rights, critical race studies, and feminist issues in law.
Professor Backhouse's most recent book is Reckoning with Racism: Police, Judges, and the RDS Case (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2022), an analysis of how the racial neutrality of the predominantly white judiciary was shattered by a single case. Ironically, the RDS case, decided in 1997 by the Supreme Court of Canada, struggled with a claim of racial bias against Canada’s first African Canadian female judge.
Royally Wronged: The Royal Society of Canada and the Marginalization of Indigenous Knowledge (Montreal: McGill Queen’s University Press, 2021), which she co-edited with Margaret Kovach, Cynthia E. Milton, and Adele Perry, was named to the list of Best Books in Canada for 2021 by the Hill Times (2022).
She previously published Two Firsts: Bertha Wilson and Claire L’Heureux-Dubé at the Supreme Court of Canada (Toronto: Second Story Press, 2019), republished in French as Deux grandes dames: Bertha Wilson et Claire L’Heureux-Dubé à la Cour suprême du Canada, (Ottawa: Les Presses de l’Université d’Ottawa, 2021). The French edition was long-listed for the Writers Trust of Canada, Shaugnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing in 2022. Her Claire L’Heureux-Dubé: A Life (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2017) was the recipient of the W. Wesley Pue Book Prize 2017 and the Shirley Greenberg Prize in Feminist Research 2019. It was also shortlisted for the City of Ottawa Book Award 2018, and listed as a finalist for the Canada Prize in the Humanities and Social Sciences, 2019.
Her Carnal Crimes: Sexual Assault Law in Canada, 1900-1975 (Toronto: Irwin Law, 2008) was the recipient of the Canadian Law & Society Association Book Prize 2009, as well as short-listed for the Harold Adams Innis Prize, presented each year to the best English-language ASPP-supported book in the social sciences. She is the co-author, along with her sister, the Hon. Justice Nancy L. Backhouse, of The Heiress versus the Establishment: Mrs. Campbell’s Campaign for Legal Justice (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2004), which was named by the Literary Review of Canada as one of the five “books most likely to become classics of their kind” for the year 2004. It was also selected by The Beaver magazine as a “Book Club Title” 2005, and short-listed for the Toronto Book Award 2005. She is the author of Colour-Coded: A Legal History of Racism in Canada,1900-1950 (Toronto: U of T Press, 1999), which was awarded the 2002 Joseph Brant Award as the “best book in multicultural history published within the past three years” by the Ontario Historical Society. It was republished in French as De la couleur des lois : Histoire juridique du racisme au Canada, 1900-1950 (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2010). Her book, Petticoats and Prejudice: Women and the Law in Nineteenth-Century Canada (Toronto: Women’s Press, 1991), was awarded the 1992 Willard Hurst Prize in American Legal History by the Law and Society Association. Another of her books, Challenging Times: The Women’s Movement in Canada and the United States (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s U. Press, 1992), co-edited with David H. Flaherty, was named the 1993 “Outstanding Book on the Subject of Human Rights in the United States” by the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights in the U.S. She is the co-author with Leah Cohen of two books on sexual harassment: Sexual Harassment on the Job (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1981) and The Secret Oppression: Sexual Harassment of Working Women (Toronto: Macmillan, 1979). The latter was the first book published in Canada on the topic, and the second in North America.
Professor Backhouse has received a series of research grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Law Foundation of Ontario, the Osgoode Society, and the Department of Justice. In 1998, she received the Law Society Medal. In 1999, she received the Bora Laskin Human Rights Fellowship. In 2001, she was awarded the President’s Award by the Women and the Law Association of Ontario. She was honoured with two teaching awards at the University of Ottawa in 2001-02 and 2002-03. She was named a University Research Chair, University of Ottawa, in 2003. From 2003-2011, she served as an elected Bencher of the Law Society. In 2004, she was named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. In 2006, she was selected by the University of Ottawa for its "Award for Excellence in Research," awarded the Ramon John Hnatyshyn Award for Law, awarded the Jules and Gabrielle Léger Fellowship, and became a Trudeau Fellow. In 2008, she was a member of the delegation accompanying Her Excellency the Right Honourable Michaelle Jean, Governor General of Canada, on her State Visit to Central Europe. That year she also received the Killam Prize in Social Sciences. In 2010, she was elected President of the American Society for Legal History, becoming the first non-US scholar to hold that position. In 2011, she received the David W. Mundell Medal and the Social Science & Humanities Research Council of Canada Gold Medal. In 2013, she was awarded the Governor General of Canada Person’s Medal. She was awarded the Molson Prize in Social Sciences in 2015. She was elected as President of the Academy of Social Sciences of the Royal Society of Canada in 2015. She received the Osgoode Hall Law School Alumni Gold Key for Achievement in 2016. She was named to the Order of Canada in 2008, and the Order of Ontario in 2010.
In 2009, she co-founded the Feminist History Society : www.feministhistories.ca. This is an organization dedicated to compiling and publishing books about the history of Second Wave Canadian feminism.
Professor Backhouse has served for many years as a mediator and adjudicator of human rights complaints. She served as an adjudicator for the compensation claims arising from the physical, sexual and psychological abuse of the former inmates of the Grandview Training School for Girls, for the former students at Indian residential schools, and for members of the Canadian Armed Forces and Department of National Defence who experienced sexual misconduct. She has served as an expert witness and consultant on various aspects of sexual abuse and violence against women and children.
She was a founding member of the Women's Education and Research Foundation of Ontario, Inc. and served as the President of its Board of Directors from 1982 to 2023. In 1981, she was awarded the Augusta Stowe-Gullen Affirmative Action Medal by the Southwestern Ontario Association for the Advancement of Learning Opportunities for Women.