Marie-Hélène Lyonnais
Inaugural Recipient of the GCDC PhD Studentship
marie-helene.lyonnais.25@ucl.ac.uk
Bio:
Marie-Hélène is a PhD student at UCL Laws, and one of the two inaugural recipients of the Global Centre for Democratic Constitutionalism’s Studentships. Marie-Hélène’s research interests lie primarily in constitutional law and theory, with a particular focus on the theory of judicial review, human rights litigation and the protection of minority rights in multinational federal systems. Prior to joining UCL, Marie-Hélène practiced as a litigator in Montréal, representing clients in both French and English across diverse areas of law, including constitutional, administrative and animal law. She also served as a law clerk to Justice Nicholas Kasirer at the Supreme Court of Canada in 2021-2022.
Marie-Hélène earned both her common law and civil law degrees from McGill University as a Loran scholar (2016-2020), and completed her masters at the University of Oxford as a MacCall MacBain scholar (2022-2023). Upon graduating from Oxford, she received the Clifford Chance Prize for best overall performance in the MJur programme and the Ralph Chiles Prize for best performance in the Comparative Human Rights paper.
Representative publications:
Marie-Hélène Lyonnais, “Performing Reasonableness Review in the Digital Age: Challenges and Ways Forward” (2024) 37 Can. J. Admin. L. & Prac. 31.
Marie-Hélène Lyonnais, “La représentation du Québec à la Chambre des communes: le dilemme de demain” (2020) 13 J. Parliamentary & Pol. L. 277.