Whether making arguments to the Supreme Court, helping found the Queen’s Prison Law Clinic, or cultivating the next generation of lawyers, Professor Emeritus Allan Manson was constantly striving to make change.
Professor Manson, a criminal law professor who worked at Queen’s for 39 years, recently passed away on Aug. 19 at the age of 75 in his home after a five-year battle with lung cancer.
During his tenure at Queen’s, he made prison law and sentencing key components of the law school curriculum. Manson also led the Correctional Law Project—now known as the Queen’s Prison Law Clinic—from 1979 to 1981 and was involved in litigating several significant cases in this area.
In an interview with The Journal, Lisa Kerr, an associate professor of criminal law and former mentee of Manson, spoke about his accomplishments.
Kerr explained Manson was not only an educator, but had plenty experience in the real legal world, giving arguments to powerful judicial bodies opposing solitary confinement laws and advocating for prisoners right to vote.
“He testified before legislative committees about what the new legislation that would abolish and replace solitary confinement should look like. His voice was really important in that process and really helped to improve the final legislation that was passed. He was also an intervener in the case before the Supreme Court of Canada that established the right that prisoners have to vote,” Kerr said.
Kerr stressed this experience made Manson unique, as he had detailed knowledge in theoretical principles along with vast real-world experience—an advantage many law professors don’t have.
“Most law professors are either very academic or they have a lot of experience in practice and that informs their teaching,” Kerr said. “Allan was a rare law professor in that he was both very academic and theoretically sophisticated, but also was an in the trenches, real lawyer, who had incredible kinds of stories from his years in practice.”
Aside from his efforts in the courtroom, Manson was one of the founders of the Queen’s Prison Law Clinic, a program which allows upper-year Queen’s Law students the opportunity to represent incarcerated people in various legal issues including parole applications, litigation strategies, and more.
Even with all Manson’s career accomplishments, Kerr believes his biggest success was his students, adding that many students described him as the best law professor they had.
“His biggest contribution was just in the hundreds of young lawyers that he trained. Even if they didn’t wind up practicing criminal defense or prison law, I think he made generations of lawyers much more cognizant of the rights and interests of incarcerated people in this country,” Kerr said.
Dean of the Faculty of Law, Colleen Flood, reflected on Manson’s profound impact on both Queen’s Law and the broader world in an interview with the Queen’s Gazette.
“Allan was more than a brilliant legal mind; he was a force for justice, equity, and compassion in every facet of his life,” Flood said.
Manson’s obituary can be found here.
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