因亲身遭遇不公正而追求正义

A series focused on the personal side of Harvard research and teaching.

Rosalie Abella was 4 years old when she learned that her father hadn’t been allowed to practice law in Canada.

“I had no idea what that even meant,” said Abella, the first Jewish woman on the Supreme Court of Canada. “But it galvanized me and committed me to the idea that I would be what he couldn’t be.”

An émigré and child of death camp survivors, Abella faced daunting challenges in becoming one of Canada’s most influential jurists. Now the Samuel and Judith Pisar Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, she lifted barriers for others through her work in labor and disability rights, constitutional law, and human rights jurisprudence.

Abella’s father, Jacob Silberman, was born in Sienno, Poland, and entered Krakow’s Jagiellonian law school in 1930 as one of the few Jewish students in the program.

By the time he graduated, practicing in his home country was no longer an option. The Nazis had taken over, and he and his wife were sent to concentration camps. They both survived, but Silberman’s parents, three younger brothers, and first-born son — Abella’s brother — were killed.

Abella was born in 1946 in a displaced person’s camp in Stuttgart, Germany. Her father taught himself English and was briefly able to practice law alongside American lawyers, helping to develop a system of legal services for displaced people.

The family got the chance to move to Canada in 1950. Silberman assumed he’d be able to practice there, too. He brought letters of reference from the American judges and lawyers he’d worked with, who wrote glowingly about his abilities.

Their endorsements proved meaningless.

“He came home and said, ‘I can’t do it because I’m not a citizen,’” Abella said. The process to get citizenship would take half a decade, and Silberman had a family to support. He became an insurance agent instead.

Her time on the Family Court, and her own upbringing, guided her.