Canadian Anthology on Mental Health and the Law

Anita Szigeti, LL.B., is the founding lawyer of Anita Szigeti Advocates, a Toronto firm focusing on mental health and the law. Ms. Szigeti graduated from the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law in 1990. She was called to the bar in Ontario in 1992 and in Nunavut in 2014. She is currently co-director (with Dr. Ruby Dhand) of the Mental Health Law course within the Health Law LLM at Osgoode Professional Development, where she obtained a Certificate in Tribunal Adjudication in 2018. Ms. Szigeti has published widely in this area, including as co-author of five textbooks on mental health law across Canada. These include the LexisNexis publications: Canadian Anthology on Mental Health and the Law (2024), Law and Mental Health in Canada: Cases and Materials (2023), Halsbury’s on Mental Health Law (2023), A Guide to Consent and Capacity Law in Ontario (2024), and A Guide to Mental Disorder Law in Canadian Criminal Justice (2020). She is a recognized expert in the area of mental disorder in both civil and criminal law contexts. She has been retained as an expert witness in mental health justice matters.

Ms. Szigeti has been a leader in the field for 30 years at the Ontario bar. She has been representing clients in Nunavut since 2014 as a member of the Nunavut Law Society. Ms. Szigeti was the Chair of the Mental Health Legal Committee (MHLC) for a decade and the founding first Chair of Legal Aid Ontario's Mental Health Law & Policy Advisory Group. For six years, she served as an elected Toronto Director of the Criminal Lawyers' Association (CLA) and the Association's Chair of its Mental Disorder Portfolio. She also served as the CLA’s Women’s Director through COVID in 2020-2021. Ms. Szigeti is the founder and President of the Law And Mental Disorder Association (LAMDA), a national umbrella advocacy organization of 200 lawyers practising mental health law. She is the founder and Secretary of Women in Canadian Criminal Defence (WiCCD), a national advocacy organization for women and gender non-conforming criminal defence lawyers in Canada. Ms. Szigeti’s community involvement extends to membership on the governing body of several other organizations, including as the sole Canadian (now Emeritus) representative on the Board of Directors of the National Association of Rights Protection and Advocacy (NARPA), an American advocacy organization based in Colorado, and Pilot Place Society, a not for profit 24/7 supervised housing service provider in Toronto.

Ms. Szigeti’s litigation career spans thousands of tribunal level cases, hundreds of cases argued in appellate Courts including fifteen in the Supreme Court of Canada. Ms. Szigeti has also been involved in more than a dozen death inquiries focusing on police use of force in interactions with persons in crisis and just as many high profile Inquests concerning other mental health related and institutional deaths. In 2016, she joined the prestigious Trial Advocacy faculty at the University of Toronto law school. She is a frequent guest lecturer in many mental health law courses at law schools across the country, including at the University of Toronto, Lincoln Alexander School of Law, Western Faculty of Law and Osgoode Hall Law School. Ms. Szigeti is passionate about teaching advocacy as well as the substantive law of mental disorder. She has provided education and training throughout her career to Crowns, Coroners, adjudicators, psychiatrists, defence lawyers, clients, their families and anyone else who asked. She has particular expertise in training tribunal, board and agency adjudicators on how to address mental health matters culturally competently. Ms. Szigeti has mentored hundreds of new lawyers and law students and loves coaching advocacy at trial and appellate levels, including coaching mooting teams at law schools. When she's not mentoring new generations of lawyers and law students, she is in a courtroom litigating, nearly every day. She is grateful for three decades of opportunities to advocate on behalf of vulnerable people, giving a voice to those who otherwise may not be heard at all.

Ruby Dhand, B.A. (Western Ontario), M.A. (Carleton), LL.B. (Ottawa), LL.M. (Toronto), Ph.D. (Osgoode), is a Full Professor in the Faculty of Law at Thompson Rivers University (TRU). She was called to the Bar in Ontario in 2008. Dr. Dhand joined the TRU Faculty of Law in 2012. She was awarded the TRU Law Teaching Excellence Prize by the Student Law Society in 2019, 2021 and 2022 and the Recognition of Excellence Award by the TRU Board of Governors in 2021. Dr. Dhand has been awarded a number of Tri-Agency research grants including the SSHRC Insight Development Grant, the SSHRC Partnership Development Grant, the CIHR Fellowship in Health Law and Policy, the SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship, and multiple Law Foundation of BC Grants. Her major areas of research are mental health law, human rights law, health law and policy, disability law, access to justice, the impact of race, culture, ethnicity and other intersectional factors upon the law, clinical legal education and science and law. Dr. Dhand has published extensively in refereed journals including the International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, the Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice, the Canadian Journal of Comparative and Contemporary Law, the Manitoba Law Journal (Criminal Law Edition) and the Canadian Journal of Disability Studies. She is a co-author of the Canadian Anthology on Mental Health and the Law (2024) and Law and Mental Health in Canada: Cases and Materials (2023). She has also co-authored multiple editions of the Halsbury’s Laws of Canada: Mental Health, and a co-author of the books Law and Mental Health in Canada Cases and Materials (LexisNexis Canada, 2023) and the book Law and Disability in Canada: Cases and Materials (LexisNexis Canada, 2021). Dr. Dhand is currently the Principal Investigator for a number of SSHRC-funded qualitative legal research projects. Her research has been used for law reform initiatives to increase access to justice across Canada.

Dr. Dhand has appeared in the Supreme Court of Canada as part of legal teams led by Anita Szigeti on behalf of the Empowerment Council in British Columbia (AG) v. CCD and Ontario (AG) v. G. Prior to joining the TRU Faculty of Law, Dr. Dhand worked as Anita Szigeti’s first legal intern and at ARCH Disability Law Centre in disability rights law. At TRU, Dr. Dhand led the development and establishment of the TRU Community Legal Clinic, the faculty’s first clinical law program. At TRU Law, Dr. Dhand teaches in the areas of Mental Health Law and Policy in Canada, Human Rights Law, Health Law, Community Lawyering and Clinical Legal Education. She is also currently co-director (with Anita Szigeti) of the Mental Health Law course within the Health Law LLM at Osgoode Professional Development.

Dena Bonnet, L.L.B (Osgoode Hall), B.A., Law, Human Rights and Women's Studies (Carleton) has been crown counsel with the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General's Crown Law Office – Criminal for more than 15 years.

Dena is an experienced appellate advocate, appearing primarily before the Court of Appeal but also before the Supreme Court of Canada. Her practice includes NCR appeals, high-risk accused designations, fitness issues, and a high volume of Ontario Review Board appeals. Dena works extensively on criminal law policy matters within the Ontario government and is an Adjunct Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School where she teaches the seminar titled Criminal Law: Mental Illness. Outside of work, Dena also sits on the Board of Directors for the Period Purse, an organisation dedicated to menstrual equity.

Jill R. Presser is a judge of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in Toronto. Before her appointment in July 2021, her law practice focused on appellate criminal defence and mental health for almost 25 years. She appeared as co-counsel on a number of interventions in the Supreme Court of Canada in cases dealing with important mental health issues. Justice Presser was an adjunct Professor at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law from 2011 to 2016. She was a senior lawyer member of the Consent and Capacity Board of Ontario from 2006 to 2014, adjudicating civil mental health issues. Justice Presser has published and spoken extensively at legal and judicial education programs on criminal law, evidence, mental health law, artificial intelligence and the law, privacy and surveillance, and women in the law. She is co-author of A Guide to Mental Disorder Law in Canadian Criminal Justice (LexisNexis, 2020); as well as co-editor and contributing author to Litigating Artificial Intelligence (Emond, 2021). She co-authored a law reform report, AI Case Study: Probabilistic Genotyping DNA Tools in Canadian Criminal Courts (Law Commission of Ontario, 2021). Justice Presser has also written numerous articles and book chapters, including “Mom’s Rea: Motherhood, Criminal Defence, and Guilt” in Women in Criminal Justice (Durville Publications, 2018), and co-authored with Anita Szigeti, ““…Even and Especially the Most Reviled and Despised”: Justice Marc Rosenberg’s Commitment to Access to Justice and Procedural Fairness for the Mentally Disordered” in To Ensure that Justice is Done (Thomson Reuters, 2017).