The Provincial Court of Nova Scotia will host a robing ceremony in Dartmouth on Friday, January 10, 2025, to officially welcome the Hon. Judge James Van Wart to the Bench.

Judge Van Wart was appointed to the Provincial Court on September 6, 2024.

The robing ceremony will take place at the Dartmouth Provincial Court, 277 Pleasant Street, Dartmouth, starting at 3:00 p.m. on January 10.

Please note that seating in the courtroom is very limited, so the event will also be livestreamed on the Courts of Nova Scotia website. The public and media can watch online at https://www.courts.ns.ca/operations/webcasts. Archived video of the ceremony will be posted online following the event.

As per the Nova Scotia Courts’ copyright policy, webcasts of court proceedings and special events may not be broadcast or re-broadcast by embedding them in another website or by any other means. However, portions of the webcasts (audio and video) may be re-broadcast as part of conventional news coverage. Hyperlinks to the live webcast page and the page of archived videos on the Courts website are permitted.

The Hon. Judge James Van Wart

Judge Van Wart is a graduate of Dalhousie University’s Schulich School of Law and was called to the Bars of British Columbia in 2002, Yukon in 2003, and Nova Scotia in 2009. Prior to law school, he attended Trent University in Ontario where he earned a bachelor of arts degree, majoring in political science and environmental studies.

With 20 years of criminal law experience, Judge Van Wart served as a staff lawyer with the Yukon Legal Services Society and as a youth justice prosecutor with the Nova Scotia Public Prosecution Service. He was also a seasonal instructor at Yukon College and taught youth criminal justice part-time at the Schulich School of Law. He has also frequently presented at conferences on topics related to youth law and other legal matters.

Prior to his appointment to the Bench, Judge Van Wart served as commission counsel for the Mass Casualty Commission, a joint public inquiry created to examine the April 18-19, 2020, mass casualty in Nova Scotia and to provide meaningful recommendations to help make communities safer.

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Media Contact:
Andrew Preeper
Communications Director
Nova Scotia Judiciary
902-222-0266
Andrew.Preeper@courts.ns.ca