Jamie Liew is a Full Professor of law at the University of Ottawa and the Shirley Greenberg Chair for Women and the Legal Profession. She was a Fulbright Traditional Scholar and visiting scholar at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa (2024) and was Director of the Institute of Feminist & Gender Studies, University of Ottawa (2021-2023).
She is an expert in immigration, refugee and citizenship law, as well as administrative law and public law. Jamie’s current research examines the meaning of citizenship, legal barriers for stateless persons to obtain citizenship/nationality, gendered implications of Canadian law on migrants, and how Canada’s immigration and refugee system marginalizes those navigating the process.
Jamie is the author of Ghost Citizens: Decolonial Apparitions of Stateless, Foreign and Wayward Figures in Law (Fernwood Publishing, 2024). Jamie’s debut novel Dandelion (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2022) was longlisted for CBC Canada Reads 2023 and won the 2018 Asian Canadian Writers Workshop Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers Award.
Her podcast, Migration Conversations, can be found wherever you listen to podcasts and features migrants, lawyers, academics and experts.
Jamie holds degrees in law (Columbia University, University of Ottawa), international affairs (NPSIA, Carleton University), commerce and political science (University of Calgary). She was called to the Law Society of Ontario in 2006. After articling at a national full-service law firm in Toronto, Jamie clerked for Justice Douglas Campbell at the Federal Court, was a member of the Issa Sesay defence team at the Special Court for Sierra Leone and was Commission Counsel at the Cornwall Public Inquiry. In 2007, Jamie opened a feminist legal practice with a colleague and practiced in a variety of areas including administrative law. She continues to practice immigration and refugee law today as a sole practitioner.
Jamie has appeared at the Supreme Court of Canada as co-counsel representing an intervener in the following cases:
1. Canadian Council for Refugees in Auer v Auer heard April 25, 2024.
2. Canadian Association for Refugee Lawyers in Kloubakov et al v R (motion to intervene denied).
3. Canadian Council for Refugees in Kanthasamy v Canada, 2015 SCC 61;
4. Amnesty International in Canada v Chhina, 2019 SCC 29 ; and
5. Canadian Council for Refugees in Canada v Vavilov, 2019 SCC 65.
The Supreme Court of Canada has cited her work in Kanthasamy v Canada, 2015 SCC 61 and Mason v Canada, 2023 SCC 21.
She has also appeared before the Federal Court of Appeal, the Federal Court of Canada, and the Immigration and Refugee Board, among others. Jamie is a co-chair of the Legal Affairs Committee for the Canadian Council for Refugees (CCR).
Jamie teaches or has taught Immigration and Refugee Law, Advanced Refugee Law, Public Law and Legislation, Administrative Law, Torts and a seminar courses on Migrant Women and the Law. In the 2024-25 academic year, Jamie will be teaching a new seminar, "Women and the Legal Profession".
A frequent commenter in media, Jamie won the Faculty of Law, Common Law Section 2018-19 Public Engagement Award: Media Relations and also was awarded the Faculty of Law, Common Law Section 2023 Excellence in Research Award.