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www.canadianlawyermag.com 31 need, and when we get a refusal, it feels very personal. Q: You're pushing on two very different fronts right now, an individual asylum case and a systemic policy campaign. Which kind of work do you think changes the system faster? A: I tell my clients there are two courts we're fighting in, the judicial court and the court of public opinion. You don't have to win in both, and winning one makes it easier to win the other. With Hannah's case, by the time we reach the actual hearing, I want the adjudi- cator to already have a real understanding of what transgender Americans are experi- encing, because the news has been full of it. With the Gaza file, we introduced the initial measures through advocacy alone, the press, the petition, but it took my colleagues going to court to actually get the program moving. I'm not afraid to use those other levers. A legal case matters, but there are other tools in society that can accom- plish the change you're after. HUMAN RIGHTS, ADVOCACY, AND CRIMINAL Elizabeth Bowker DEFENDING THE LINE BETWEEN FAIRNESS AND OVERREACH Partner, Stieber Berlach LLP, Toronto, ON Elizabeth Bowker is partner at Stieber Berlach LLP in Toronto, named one of Canadian Lawyer's Top 25 Most Influential Lawyers in Canada for 2026 in the Human Rights, Advocacy, and Criminal category. She represents 49 Children's Aid Societies in a proposed class action challenging the use of birth alerts. In G.G. v. Ontario, the motions judge declined to certify claims against the Children's Aid Societies alleging Charter breaches, privacy torts, and conspiracy, reaffirming the Ragoonanan principle that a representative plaintiff must have a viable cause of action against each defendant. The plaintiffs' appeal challenging the Ragoonanan principle has since drawn multiple intervenors and was argued before a five-judge panel of the Ontario Court of Appeal, the first time this court has been asked to revisit the principle in 24 years, since it was first set out in Hughes v. Sunbeam. While declining to comment further while the appeal decision is under reserve, Bowker notes that this appeal was also the first time the Court of Appeal has been asked to consider whether the Ragoonanan principle remains good law in Ontario following the Supreme Court's decision in Marcotte, a case dealing with Quebec's Civil Code. Fairness on both sides of the file Bowker also defends institutional clients in sensi- tive class actions, including claims arising from seclusion and restraint in a forensic mental health setting and mass tort claims against long-term care homes tied to the COVID-19 pandemic. She's direct about what procedural fairness means to her in these matters: not shielding the plaintiff from the realities of litigation, but thinking carefully about how the existing rules get carried out with care on both sides. She also raises a less commonly discussed side of fairness, the evidentiary difficulty defendants face in historical abuse claims filed decades after the fact, when witnesses have died and records no longer exist. What trauma-informed litigation means to her Bowker doesn't describe trauma-informed practice as a change in strategy so much as a standing commitment. She extends that thinking further than most conversations on the topic tend to go, to the institutional clients she represents, many of whom, she notes, went into their field hoping to make the world better and now face allegations against their own staff or volunteers, and to everyone else in the room, court reporters, judges, mediators, and her own students and clerks, who absorb these stories daily and are at risk of vicarious trauma. Her firm gives anyone the ability "I like to think that throughout my career, I've always aimed to treat people with respect and kindness. From a defence counsel's perspective, I view it as being able to defend my clients on the facts, on the law, on the damages, while still treating the person opposite from me with kindness and respect" Elizabeth Bowker, Stieber Berlach LLP