Mahmud Jamal was born on July 20,1967 and is a Canadian jurist serving as a puisne justice of the Supreme Court of Canada since 2021.
16 Facts About Mahmud Jamal
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Mahmud Jamal was nominated to the Supreme Court on June 17,2021, taking office on July 1 to succeed Rosalie Abella.
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Mahmud Jamal was born in Kenya to a family of Indian origin, making him the first person from a visible minority group to serve as a justice of the Supreme Court.
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Mahmud Jamal was born on July 20,1967 in Nairobi, Kenya, to an Isma'ili family which had originally immigrated in the 19th century from Gujarat, British India, to East Africa during a railway construction boom.
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Mahmud Jamal completed a clerkship at Quebec Court of Appeal working for Justice Melvin Rothman and another at the Supreme Court of Canada, working for Justice Charles Gonthier.
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Mahmud Jamal had appeared in 35 appeals before the Supreme Court, in addition to appearances to lower courts and tribunals.
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In 2009, Mahmud Jamal represented Imperial Oil in a Financial Services Tribunal case fighting a Financial Services Commission of Ontario order for the company to restructure its pension fund in a manner that would cost CA$16.5 million to set up and $65 million to back.
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Mahmud Jamal represented KPMG, which was then in court over its offshore tax avoidance scheme for high-net-worth individuals involving shell corporations in the Isle of Man.
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In 2016, because of ongoing litigation, Mahmud Jamal wrote a letter to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance, requesting that specifics of the case not be discussed so that it would not prejudice the ongoing case.
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Mahmud Jamal taught as professor of constitutional law at McGill University and administrative law at Osgoode Hall Law School.
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Mahmud Jamal has served stints as a director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the Advocates' Society, and the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History.
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Mahmud Jamal has been a member of the Supreme Court Advocacy Institute and has served as a trustee for the Canadian Business Law Journal.
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On June 24,2019, Mahmud Jamal was appointed to the Court of Appeal for Ontario on the advice of Justin Trudeau to replace Justice Gladys Pardu, who became a supernumerary judge.
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On that day, Mahmud Jamal was sworn in as a puisne justice of the Supreme Court by Chief Justice Richard Wagner who was acting as the administrator of the Government of Canada.
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Mahmud Jamal is the first person from a visible minority group and the first Baha'i to sit on the country's top court.
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Mahmud Jamal married his wife, Goleta, with whom he has two children.