Professor
Louise Viau
Faculty of Law at the University of Montreal
Member of the Society Board of Directors
Prof. Louise Viau is a specialist in Criminal Law.
She also takes an interest in other fields of Law such as Administrative law as
applied to police, and university members. She is the author or co-author of
numerous books and papers on various aspects of law, mainly criminal law. From
1991 to 1995, she was the chairperson of the Sûreté du Québec's Committee for studying complaints, a body
responsible for screening complaints against members of the Quebec provincial
police force.
From 1992 to 1994 she has worked as general counsel for the Criminal Law
Policy Section of the Department of Justice of Canada as part of the Canada
Exchange Program. In November 1996, she was appointed as one of three commissioners
of the Poitras Commission, the Public Inquiry
Commission appointed to inquire into the Sûreté du Québec, whose report (Toward a police at the service of
integrity and justice) had been presented to the Government of Quebec in
December 1998.
During the Spring of 1999, she worked with Jacques Bellemare, Q.C., who was appointed as the Independent
Counsel for the Inquiry Committee of the Canadian Judiciary Council, an inquiry
into the conduct of Justice Robert Flahiff, a
Superior Court judge convicted of money laundering.
She studied law at University of Montreal where she obtained an LL.L.degree in 1974 and an LL.M degree in 1977.
She has been a member of the Quebec Bar since 1976. She started her career as
a junior Law professor in 1976 at the Faculty of Law of University of Montreal
where she is still teaching. She is Full Professor since 1988. She is a
Visiting Professor at the University of Paris II - Assas
since 1999. Professor Viau also acts as a consultant
for government agencies and lawyers in private practice.