Bernard Dickens is Professor Emeritus of Health Law and Policy in the Faculty of Law, Faculty of Medicine and the Joint Centre for Bioethics at the University of Toronto. He was born in England, and graduated at King’s College in the University of London, holding the degrees of Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.), Master of Laws (LL.M.), and Doctor of Philosophy in Laws, and earned a Higher Doctorate in Laws (LL.D.) at the University of London in Medical Jurisprudence. He qualified professionally in England as a barrister, and is similarly qualified in Ontario. He has over 450 publications, including books, chapters in books and encyclopaedias, journal articles and reports, mainly in medical and health law and medical ethics, and has been and remains on editorial boards of journals in Canada, the United States and internationally. His first book,

He has over 450 publications, including books, chapters in books and encyclopedias, journal articles and reports, mainly in medical and health law and medical ethics, and has been and remains on editorial boards of journals in Canada, the United States and internationally. His first book, Abortion and the Law, was published in 1966: his most recent, co-edited and authored with Rebecca Cook and Joanna Erdman, Abortion Law in Transnational Perspective: Cases and Controversies, was published in 2014, and translated into Spanish in 2016.” 

He has been a consultant to the World Health Organization and Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences, and an elected member of the Board of Governors of the American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics, being the Society’s first Canadian President. He has chaired the Research Ethics Boards of the University of Toronto and of the National Science Council of Canada, and was the founding Chair of the Research Ethics Boards of both Health Canada and then the Public Health Agency of Canada. He still serves on the latter, and is a member and immediate past-Chair of the ethics committee of the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics. Bernard is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and an Officer of the Order of Canada.