In recent days, we learned of the death of the Honorable Huguette Saint-Louis, chief judge of the Court of Quebec from 1996 to 2003.
Huguette Saint-Louis leaves behind a rich legacy of commitment and determination. The first woman to take charge of a legal aid office in 1973, she became a judge at the Court of Quebec in 1984 before successively assuming the functions of associate chief judge in civil matters, then judge, from 1988. chief. She thus directly contributed to the creation and consolidation of the Court of Quebec, that is to say, to the institutionalization of contemporary justice.
She subsequently contributed to the creation of the Right to Justice Observatory (2005), then to the development of the Access to Law and Justice project, which she supported with immense consistency from 2015 to 2023. In 2018 , with other traveling companions, she participated in the creation of the Quebec Institute for the Reform of Law and Justice, to whose work she contributed until her later days.
Such a trajectory is not sufficient in itself. It only makes sense supported by a demanding project, based on access to justice and, even more, on a modern conception of law and democracy. Today we must honor the person she was, a woman of immense generosity and great lucidity. His ability to name difficult things and ask the only questions that are worth asking has marked all his actions and all his interventions. Aware of the special destiny offered to her, throughout her life she embodied the progression of women in the world of law and justice.
In recent years, his work and interventions in favor of judicial independence and further unification of first instance courts have all aimed at protecting citizens and defining justice as a public service. Aware of the demands made by the complexity of the world, she defended this very strong idea that justice is not limited to entering or leaving courthouses, but also exists in the way in which we all adapt the days our expectations and our behaviors. The idea that, in this sense, justice is also a collective project.
We must hope that the message she carried will invite us to be more ambitious in our conception of law and justice, and that these ideals will be carried by those who succeed her in the difficult fight for a more egalitarian and more just.