The Hon. Justice Michael Code

Hon. Justice Michael Code is a judge of the Superior Court of Justice of Ontario since 2009. His legal career was initially devoted to criminal and constitutional litigation, and later expanded to include other areas of public law. He was in private practice from 1981 to 2005, arguing many leading evidence, procedure, and criminal law cases in the Court of Appeal of Ontario and the Supreme Court of Canada, as well as numerous other courts in Canada. He also engaged in policy work for the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney-General, and served for a time as Assistant Deputy Attorney General (Criminal Law) of Ontario. Justice Code also was a law professor at University of Toronto and at Osgoode Hall Law School, contributing to several legal publications, at various times over the last three decades. After leaving private practice in 2005, he was appointed Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, publishing papers on several important legal matters in Canada. In 2008, Justice Code was appointed by the Attorney-General for Ontario to conduct a policy review, together with former Chief Justice P. LeSage, of the problems associated with long and complex trial procedure, and to prepare recommendations for change. The resulting Report of the Review of Long and Complex Criminal Case Procedures (2008 Queen's Printer for Ontario) proposed various ways to make the criminal trial process more effective and efficient. He holds a BA, University of Toronto, 1972; LLB, University of Toronto, 1976, and LLM, University of Toronto, 1991.