Lesley Jacobs is a Canadian academic,legal scholar,and senior university administrator specializing in human rights,access to justice,and data science applications in social policy. He is a professor emeritus at York University.[4]
Jacobs began his academic career as a lecturer at Magdalen College,Oxford from 1989 to 1990,followed by appointments at the University of British Columbia from 1990 to 1993 and York University from 1993 to 2019.[2] He was the Director of the Institute for Social Research,founding Director of the York Centre for Public Policy and Law,and York Research Chair in Human Rights and Access to Justice.[10]
Since 2019,Jacobs is a Vice-President of Research and Innovation at Ontario Tech University.[7] He spearheaded partnerships such as the university's role as an academic build partner for Project Arrow (Canada's first all-electric concept vehicle) and established organized research units like the Brilliant Energy Institute and the Automotive Centre of Excellence.[11]
He is a corporate director for three technology firms and contributes to IAEA initiatives on nuclear energy governance.[12]
Research
Jacobs’scholarship bridges legal theory,data science,and public policy. He developed race data collection frameworks embedded in Ontario’s Anti-Racism Act,2017,[13] and Nova Scotia's Dismantling Racism and Hate Act,2022.[14] His empirical studies on racial profiling in policing,including landmark projects with the Ottawa,Peel,and Toronto police services,have informed Canadian jurisprudence and human rights policy.[15]
He pioneered using randomized control trials (RCTs) in legal services research through collaborations with Community Legal Education Ontario (CLEO).[4]
His theoretical contributions include frameworks for balancing competing human rights claims (adopted by the Ontario Human Rights Commission) and critiques of post-liberal jurisprudence.[16] His research has been cited in Supreme Court decisions,including Ligue des Noirs du Québec v. City of Montréal (2024)[17] and Attorney General of Quebec v. Luamba (2024).[4]
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