Professor Fortin completed her LL.B. at Université Laval in Québec City (during which time she also completed part of her studies at the Université de Paris II, Panthéon-Assas) before clerking at the Supreme Court of Canada for the Honorable Morris J Fish. A recipient of the Rt Hon Paul Martin Sr Scholarship, she attended the University of Cambridge Faculty of Law, where she completed her Master's degree in International Law (LLMi) before completing her LLM at Harvard Law School as a Frank Knox Fellow. After years of practice, both with leading Canadian law firms and various levels of government as a member of the Quebec Bar, she studied at the Université de Montréal before returning to Queens' College to complete her doctorate at the University of Cambridge (PhD) as a Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Scholar under the supervision of Professor J.W.F. Allison. 

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Her interests lie in public and constitutional law, legal thinking in a historical perspective, state liability and accountability, constitutional theory, comparative public law, the private/public law divide in mixed legal systems, and water law and governance. She is the author of The King Can Do No Wrong: Constitutional Fundamentals, Common Law History, and Crown Liability, published by Oxford University Press, and she led the Water Law and Governance Forum.