Person Centred Justice Initiative

The Person-Centred Justice Initiative reimagines justice through a human-focused lens, emphasizing dignity, agency, and relational accountability in law, institutions, and process. Anchored in a growing scholarly movement, the initiative engages with national and international partners to examine how justice systems can be more responsive to individual lived experience.

To date, ACE has co hosted three Person-Centred Justice Workshop Conferences, the most recent having taken place on in May of 2025 at UBC Robson Square in Vancouver. This initiative has also yielded significant scholarly output. A special issue of the Canadian Journal of Law and Society (Vol. 39, Issue 3) was co-edited by ACE’s Michelle Lawrence and Andrew Pilliar and features nine articles addressing theory, methodology, programming, and policy innovation in person-centred justice.

Contact: Andrew Pilliar

Funding: Law Foundation of BC, SSHRC

Partners: McGill Law, TRU Law, CREATE Justice, USask Law, Canadian Forum for Civil Justice

Publication: Canadian Journal of Law and Society, vol 39 no 3, 2024.