Doctoral candidate Étienne Cossette-Lefebvre named Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Scholar

Fifteen leading doctoral researchers from across Canada and around the world, including Faculty of Law doctoral candidate Étienne Cossette-Lefebvre, have been selected for the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation’s leadership program as 2021 Scholars.

The Scholars will embark on a three-year leadership journey, rooted in the Foundation’s leadership curriculum, Building Brave Spaces: The Path to Engaged Leadership. This will guide Scholars as they learn to translate their research into action, as they learn how to become leaders of self, leaders among others, and leaders of systems. The leadership program, designed and delivered by the Foundation’s Fellows and Mentors, is based on six key leadership concepts tailored to nurturing public intellectuals.

Cossette-Lefebvre is currently pursuing a doctorate at the University of Toronto [Faculty of Law], where he obtained an LLM in 2020. His dissertation develops a novel trans-systemic account of the concept of self-ownership to explain a person’s rights in her body, image, voice and personal information. He feels privileged to be a Junior Fellow at Massey College.

Cossette-Lefebvre earned a BCL/LLB (Hons) in the Faculty of Law at McGill University in 2014. He won numerous awards of excellence and graduated on the Dean’s Honour List. He was also awarded the First Prize in the undergraduate category of the essay competition of the Quebec Association of Comparative Law (2013-2014). Throughout his post-secondary education, Étienne has continued to pursue his study of music, training and performing as a classical pianist.

After successfully completing the Quebec Bar, earning the second-highest grade point average in the Quebec Bar School (2014-2015), Cossette-Lefebvre worked as a law clerk at the Court of Appeal of Quebec. In 2018-2019, he clerked for Justice Russell Brown at the Supreme Court of Canada.

Cossette-Lefebvre is also a course lecturer at McGill. In September 2020, he was appointed Assistant Director of the Paul-André Crépeau Centre for Private and Comparative Law.

Read more at the PETF website