Professor Mendes is a lawyer, author, professor and has been an advisor to corporations, governments, civil society groups and the United Nations. His teaching, research and consulting interests include corporate law and governance, labour standards, diversity and ethics in the workplace, global governance, international business and trade law, constitutional law, international law (including anti-terrorism laws and policies) and human rights law and policy. He has been a Project Leader for conflict resolution, governance and justice projects in China, Thailand, Indonesia, Brazil, El Salvador, Sri Lanka and India.

Professor Mendes is a frequent speaker and media commentator on corporate governance, international trade, business and government ethics, constitutional and human rights topics across Canada and the world and has lectured on these topics in the United States, Europe, Asia and Latin America. He has been invited to present numerous briefs to the Parliament of Canada and has acted as an advisor to the government of Canada in these areas. He has also advised several of Canada’s largest corporations in the area of corporate governance, ethics and compliance.

In 2010, he was appointed Commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission to assist the new mandate of the Commission focused on combating systemic discrimination in the Province of Ontario.

Professor Mendes has also been an advisor to several of Canada's largest corporations and worked with leading private sector companies and associations to establish an International Code of Ethics for Canadian Businesses, which was endorsed by former Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy on September 15, 1997. In 1999, in recognition of his work on business ethics in Canada, the Office of the Secretary General of the United Nation invited Professor Mendes to be an advisor on the Global Compact initiative of the Secretary General. Professor Mendes assisted in the development of the Global Compact.

Professor Mendes has taught, researched, consulted and published extensively in the area of Global Governance, International Business Law and Ethics, Constitutional Law and Human Rights Law.

He is Editor-in-Chief of Canada’s leading constitutional law journal, “The National Journal of Constitutional Law”. He is the author or co-editor of five books, including the landmark constitutional law text, co-edited with Senator G. Beaudoin, The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, 3rd Edition, Carswell, 1996 and the internationally recognized texts, Towards a Fair Global Labour market: Avoiding the New Slave Trade, Routledge, New York and London, 1999, (co-authored); Democratic Policing and Accountability: Global Perspectives, Ashgate, U.K., (co-edited); Between Crime and War, Terrorism, Democracy and the Constitution, Carswell, Toronto, 2003 (co-edited); Global Governance, Economy and Law, Routledge, New York and London, 2003.

Professor Mendes lead a 16-year (1993-2009) CIDA funded project on human rights in China in partnership with Beijing University, the leading academic institution in China. The project produced three landmark books co-edited by Professor Mendes (in both English and Mandarin) on human rights that included contributions from leading Chinese and Canadian intellectuals and practitioners: Human Rights, Chinese and Canadian Perspectives (1993); Bridging the Global Divide on Human Rights, A China-Canada Dialogue (2004) and Confronting Discrimination and Inequality in China, Chinese and Canadian Perspectives (2009.)

Since 1979, Professor Mendes has taught at law faculties across the country, including the University of Alberta, Edmonton from 1979 to 1984, the University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario from 1984 to 1992 and the University of Ottawa from 1992 to present. He was a visiting Professor at the Faculty of Law, McGill University and the Université de Montréal in 1992.

He was appointed in 1995 to a two-year term as a member of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal Panel. He was re-appointed in 1997. He also has extensive experience as a Human Rights Adjudicator under the Ontario Human Rights Code.

Professor Mendes is also an experienced international commercial arbitrator and a member of the Canadian Panel of Arbitrators under the auspices of the International Chamber of Commerce’s Court of Arbitration. He has acted both as a sole International Commercial Arbitrator and as a member of International Commercial Arbitration Tribunals.
Professor Mendes was appointed by the Prime Minister of Canada as a Senior Advisor in the Privy Council Office of the Government of Canada during the academic year 2005-2006. In that position he advised the Clerk of the Privy Council on a range of issues including national security, diversity, national unity, foreign policy and corporate social responsibility.

In 2006, he was awarded the Walter S. Tarnopolsky Human Rights Award by the Canadian Section of the International Commission of Jurists and the Canadian Bar Association for his human rights work in Canada and across the world.

In 2009, he was a Visiting Professional at the International Criminal Court in the Hague, attached to the Office of the Prosecutor. In his advocacy and support of the Court, he has supported the work and advocacy of the World Federalist Movement which was one of the major global civil society groups that were key to the establishment of the first permanent global court with jurisdiction over the most serious international crimes. His book on the Court titled Peace and Justice at the International Criminal Court, A Court of Last Resort has been published in the fall of 2010, in Europe and North America by Edward Elgar Publishers Inc. The softcover version of the book was published in June of 2011.

Born in Kenya, East Africa, Professor Mendes obtained his Bachelor of Law degree from the University of Exeter, England, where he ranked first in his graduating class. He obtained his Master of Laws degree from the University of Illinois in the United States. He was called to the Bar of Ontario in 1986.

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