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Through The Eyes Of Jurors: The Use Of Schemas In The Application Of 'Plain-Language' Jury Instructions, Sara Gordon Apr 2013

Through The Eyes Of Jurors: The Use Of Schemas In The Application Of 'Plain-Language' Jury Instructions, Sara Gordon

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“Through the Eyes of Jurors” is the first law journal article to consider all of the major cognitive psychology studies that examine how “schemas,” or the preexisting notions jurors have about the law, shape jurors’ use of jury instructions, even when those jurors are given “plain-language” instructions. This Article examines the social science research on schema theory in order to advance our understanding of how schemas continue to influence jurors’ use of jury instructions, even when those jurors are given “plain language” instructions. A significant body of legal literature has examined jurors’ use and understanding of jury instructions, and many …


Migrant Smuggling: Canada's Response To A Global Criminal Enterprise, Benjamin Perrin Jan 2013

Migrant Smuggling: Canada's Response To A Global Criminal Enterprise, Benjamin Perrin

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Migrant smuggling is a dangerous, sometimes deadly, criminal activity. Failing to respond effectively to migrant smuggling and deter it will risk emboldening those who engage in this illicit enterprise, which generates proceeds for organized crime and criminal networks, funds terrorism and facilitates clandestine terrorist travel, endangers the lives and safety of smuggled migrants, undermines border security, and undermines the integrity and fairness of immigration systems. Introduced in the Canadian House of Commons in June 2011, the Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada’s Immigration System Act (Bill C-4) includes proposed amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act that would enhance …


Embodied Conflict Resolution: Resurrecting Roleplay-Based Curricula Through Dance, Nadja Alexander, Michelle Lebaron Jan 2013

Embodied Conflict Resolution: Resurrecting Roleplay-Based Curricula Through Dance, Nadja Alexander, Michelle Lebaron

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Moving on from the authors’ seminal 2009 critique of the overuse of role-plays in negotiation teaching, "Death of the Role-Play" (chapter 13 in Rethinking Negotiation Teaching), Alexander and LeBaron have taken the rapidly increasing enthusiasm for experiential learning in a new direction: multiple intelligences. Their particular interest is in a use of experiential learning that focuses on kinesthetic intelligence, employing actual physical movement, particularly dance, to unlock creativity in other mental domains, as well as to encourage authentic participation by people whose skills are not primarily verbal or mathematical. Those who may be inclined to be skeptical should note that …


Innovation-Framing Regulation, Cristie Ford Jan 2013

Innovation-Framing Regulation, Cristie Ford

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This paper aims to provide insights into the effective regulation of private sector innovation. It coins a term – “innovation-framing regulation” – to describe a particular quality of the regulation that characterized much of financial regulation in the recent era. After briefly sketching a particular financial innovation (securitization and the marketing of securitized assets on the derivatives markets) it describes three regulatory interactions with that innovation: the Basel II Capital Accords, the Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Crisis in Canada, and the ongoing notice-and-comment rulemaking process surrounding the Volcker Rule in the United States. While each case study is different, in each …


The Movement Of U.S. Criminal And Administrative Law: Processes Of Transplanting And Translating, Toby S. Goldbach, Benjamin Brake, Peter J. Katzenstein Jan 2013

The Movement Of U.S. Criminal And Administrative Law: Processes Of Transplanting And Translating, Toby S. Goldbach, Benjamin Brake, Peter J. Katzenstein

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This article examines the transplanting and translating of law in the domains of criminal procedure and administrative law. The transnational movement of law is full of unexpected twists and turns that belie the notion of the United States as a legal behemoth. Furthermore, the movement of legal procedures which occurs both within and across countries with common and civil law legal traditions challenges preconceived notions of an orderly divide between legal families. While the spread of elements of the U.S. jury system and methods of plea bargaining reveals the powerful influence of U.S. legal ideas, the ways that these procedures …


Untold Stories Or Miraculous Mirrors? The Possibilities Of A Text-Based Understanding Of Socio-Legal Transcript Research, Emma Cunliffe Jan 2013

Untold Stories Or Miraculous Mirrors? The Possibilities Of A Text-Based Understanding Of Socio-Legal Transcript Research, Emma Cunliffe

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Austin Sarat has described legal understandings of the transcript as “the verbatim record of a present soon to become past, a mirror/a record/a voice machine in which the “author” exercises no authorial presence.” In this paper I argue that when seeing a transcript as an authorless mirror of court proceedings, lawyers and socio-legal scholars risk overlooking the ways in which the technology of transcripts influences the record that is produced. Paying attention to the laws and practices governing transcript production allows those who engage in transcript research to appreciate how the transcript is defined in relation to the spoken proceedings …


Bordering On Failure: Canada-U.S. Border Policy And The Politics Of Refugee Exclusion, Efrat Arbel, Alletta Brenner Jan 2013

Bordering On Failure: Canada-U.S. Border Policy And The Politics Of Refugee Exclusion, Efrat Arbel, Alletta Brenner

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In June 2012, the Canadian government ushered in sweeping reforms to Canada’s refugee system. These reforms brought debates about Canadian refugee protection to the forefront of legal and political discourse. In advancing these reforms, the Canadian government has asserted that Canada’s refugee system is among the most generous and compassionate in the world. Canada’s doors, the Canadian government has stated, remain open to legitimate refugees. This report evaluates these claims by examining the U.S.-Canada Safe Third Country Agreement and border measures implemented under the rubric of the Multiple Borders Strategy, and analyzing their effects on asylum seekers. A detailed examination …


The Culture Of Rights Protection In Canadian Refugee Law: Examining The Domestic Violence Cases, Efrat Arbel Jan 2013

The Culture Of Rights Protection In Canadian Refugee Law: Examining The Domestic Violence Cases, Efrat Arbel

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This article examines Canadian refugee law cases involving domestic violence, analyzed through a comparison with cases involving forced sterilization and genital cutting. Surveying 645 reported decisions, it suggests that Canadian adjudicators generally adopted different methods of analysis in refugee cases involving domestic violence, as compared with these other claims. The article argues that Canadian adjudicators rarely recognized domestic violence as a rights violation in itself but, instead, demonstrated a general predisposition toward finding domestic violence persecution in cultural difference. That is, adjudicators tended to recognize domestic violence claimants not as victims of persecutory practices but rather as victims of persecutory …


Shifting Borders And The Boundaries Of Rights: Examining The Safe Third Country Agreement Between Canada And The United States, Efrat Arbel Jan 2013

Shifting Borders And The Boundaries Of Rights: Examining The Safe Third Country Agreement Between Canada And The United States, Efrat Arbel

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This article analyzes the Canadian Federal Court and Federal Court of Appeal decisions assessing the Safe Third Country Agreement between Canada and the United States (STCA). It examines how each court’s treatment of the location and operation of the Canada-US border influences the results obtained. The article suggests that both in its treatment of the STCA and in its constitutional analysis, the Federal Court decision conceives of the border as a moving barrier capable of shifting outside Canada’s formal territorial boundaries. The effect of this decision is to bring refugee claimants outside state soil within the fold of Canadian constitutional …


A Situational Approach To Incapacity And Mental Disability In Sexual Assault Law, Janine Benedet, Isabel Grant Jan 2013

A Situational Approach To Incapacity And Mental Disability In Sexual Assault Law, Janine Benedet, Isabel Grant

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Prosecutions for sexual assault most often focus on whether the Crown has proven that the complainant did not consent to the sexual activity in issue, based on her subjective state of mind at the time of the offence. However, Canadian criminal law also provides that no consent is obtained where the complainant is incapable of consenting. In cases where the complainant has a mental disability affecting cognition or decisionmaking, prosecutors in Canada have been reluctant to argue that the complainant was incapable of consenting. In this article, the authors agree that claims of incapacity should be used sparingly, but contend …


Evolving Capacities: The B.C. Representative For Children And Youth As A Hybrid Model Of Oversight, Mary Liston Jan 2013

Evolving Capacities: The B.C. Representative For Children And Youth As A Hybrid Model Of Oversight, Mary Liston

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This paper explores hybrid models of oversight through an examination of a new institutional creation: British Columbia’s Representative for Children and Youth (BC RCY). The paper argues that societal changes in the conception of children’s worth have significantly affected approaches to child welfare and have also stimulated institutional innovation. The paper begins with a historical overview of the legal and moral status of children, focusing on the child as the subject of government protection, and then considers the evolution of children’s rights in the twentieth century. This conceptual shift from children as passive objects of paternal state care to (near) …


Ten Reasons For Adopting A Universal Concept Of Participation In Atrocity, James G. Stewart Jan 2013

Ten Reasons For Adopting A Universal Concept Of Participation In Atrocity, James G. Stewart

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The legal doctrine that assign blame for international crimes are numerous, unclear, ever-changing and often conceptually problematic. In this Essay, I question the prudence of retaining the radical doctrinal heterogeneity that, in large part, produces this state of disarray. Instead of tolerating different standards of participation across customary international law, the ICC statute and national systems of criminal law, I argue for a universal concept of participation that would apply whenever an international crime is charged, regardless of the jurisdiction hearing the case. Although I have argued elsewhere that a unitary theory of perpetration should serve this role, I here …


The Next Stage Of Csr For Canada: Transformational Corporate Governance, Hybrid Legal Structures, And The Growth Of Social Enterprise, Carol Liao Jan 2013

The Next Stage Of Csr For Canada: Transformational Corporate Governance, Hybrid Legal Structures, And The Growth Of Social Enterprise, Carol Liao

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The period when corporate social responsibility (CSR) only referred to corporate philanthropic donations has passed. Present day CSR is intimately intertwined with sustainable development, and its growth in the last several decades has been evident in Canada. The recent appearance of “hybrid” corporate legal structures on the international stage marks a growing trend toward enabling the dual pursuit of economic and social mandates for businesses. It suggests that the next significant stage in the CSR movement will be in the reformation and creation of corporate legal models that not only enable, but require, CSR concepts to be embodied within corporate …


The Inefficiencies Of Legislative Centralization: Evidence From Provincial Tax Rate-Setting, Wei Cui, Zhiyuan Wang Jan 2013

The Inefficiencies Of Legislative Centralization: Evidence From Provincial Tax Rate-Setting, Wei Cui, Zhiyuan Wang

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Legislative power in China is centralized to an unusual degree. This arrangement is both positively and normatively significant, but has received little attention in prior scholarship. We devise a novel method for analyzing the consequence of centralization by examining provincial rate setting for the vehicle and vessel tax (VVT). Because all provinces have assigned VVT revenue and VVT administration to sub-provincial governments, provincial rate-setting represents centralized, not decentralized, decision-making. Using spatio-econometric analyses, we find that provincial tax rate choices fail to reflect local economic and demographic conditions and display traces of tax mimicking. Both support the hypothesis that provincial officials …


‘Don't Read The Comments!’: Reflections On Writing And Publishing Feminist Socio-Legal Research As A Young Scholar, Emma Cunliffe Jan 2013

‘Don't Read The Comments!’: Reflections On Writing And Publishing Feminist Socio-Legal Research As A Young Scholar, Emma Cunliffe

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This article responds to reviews written by Eve Darian-Smith and Mehera San Roque and published in Feminists@Law. Darian-Smith and San Roque's reviews focus on the contributions made by my 2011 book, Murder, Medicine and Motherhood. In this response, I have taken the opportunity to reflect a little on the experience of writing Murder, Medicine and Motherhood, and on its reception. In the first section, I trace the choices and unanticipated challenges that structured my research for Murder, Medicine and Motherhood. Both Darian-Smith and San Roque have commented on this methodology, and I have noticed that after publication, the scope and …


How The Charter Has Failed Non-Citizens In Canada – Reviewing Thirty Years Of Supreme Court Of Canada Jurisprudence, Catherine Dauvergne Jan 2013

How The Charter Has Failed Non-Citizens In Canada – Reviewing Thirty Years Of Supreme Court Of Canada Jurisprudence, Catherine Dauvergne

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This paper presents a study of all of the Supreme Court of Canada’s Charter-era jurisprudence addressing the rights of non-citizens. It traces the jurisprudential evolution from early decisions strongly supportive of non-citizens’ rights claims, to more recent rulings where non-citizens’ rights claims are rejected, sidelined or even ignored. Patterns in decision making are discernible and the decline in protections for non-citizens follows logically enough from a series of interpretive stances made relatively early on. There is evidence here of what I have termed ‘Charter hubris.’ This is a leading factor in explaining the current state of affairs, which works alongside …


Tax Treatment Of Charitable Contributions In A Personal Income Tax: Lessons From Theory And Canadian Experience, David G. Duff Jan 2013

Tax Treatment Of Charitable Contributions In A Personal Income Tax: Lessons From Theory And Canadian Experience, David G. Duff

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A hundred years after tax concessions for charitable contributions were introduced as part of the personal income taxes that many countries enacted during the First World War, these countries continue to debate the appropriate level and structure of tax concessions for charitable gifts. This chapter considers the tax treatment of charitable contributions in a personal income tax, reviewing and evaluating alternative rationales for tax recognition of charitable gifts as well as the implications of these rationales for the form that tax recognition should take, and examining recent Canadian experience in light of these rationales.


Cloudy Weather, With Occasional Sunshine: Consumer Loans, The Legislature, And The Supreme Court Of Japan, Shigenori Matsui Jan 2013

Cloudy Weather, With Occasional Sunshine: Consumer Loans, The Legislature, And The Supreme Court Of Japan, Shigenori Matsui

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The Supreme Court of Japan, despite its well-known passive and conservative stance towards constitutional adjudication, occasionally shows quite a creative and liberal attitude. Recently, the Supreme Court of Japan has shown this attitude in its development of pro-consumer jurisprudence involving consumer loan cases. This development is still more noteworthy because the Supreme Court of Japan ignored the legislature's intent to overturn its previous judgments and practically wiped out a statutory provision enacted by the legislature. As a result of this development, millions of consumers could demand refunds from consumer loan companies, and consumer loan companies went into serious financial troubles, …


Social Justice And The Charter: Comparison And Choice, Margot Young Jan 2013

Social Justice And The Charter: Comparison And Choice, Margot Young

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At a time of radical inequality, the changes sought by social justice advocacy are urgently needed. Yet repeatedly, courts fail to respond adequately to this challenge. A core issue plagues social justice jurisprudence under sections 7 and 15: the difficulty inevitable in the contemplation and expression of the social and political forms in which oppression and social injustice occur. This problem manifests doctrinally in ways specific to the rights at issue. In section 15 cases, the casting of comparator groups has been deeply problematic, and in both section 15 and section 7 cases, the courts fail to deliver a nuanced …


Book Review: Theory And Practice Of Harmonisation, Mads Andenæs & Camilla B. Andersen (Eds), Toby S. Goldbach Jan 2013

Book Review: Theory And Practice Of Harmonisation, Mads Andenæs & Camilla B. Andersen (Eds), Toby S. Goldbach

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"Theory and Practice of Harmonisation" is an edited symposium publication which tackles the ambitious topic of legal harmonisation. Some common themes can be identified. First, several papers deal with the background to or reasons for harmonisation and consider whether harmonisation goals are being met.Second, several papers examine language-textual issues or problems with defining concepts. A third centralizing theme is the role of legal institutions, in particular courts, in facilitating harmonisation. Finally, a fourth theme is evident in those papers that look at the instruments, mechanisms or legal techniques that are used to implement harmonisation. As a whole, the text seems …


La Culture De La Protection Des Droits Fondamentaux En Droit Canadien Des Réfugiés: Un Examen Des Affaires De Violence Familiale, Efrat Arbel Jan 2013

La Culture De La Protection Des Droits Fondamentaux En Droit Canadien Des Réfugiés: Un Examen Des Affaires De Violence Familiale, Efrat Arbel

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Cet article examine les cas canadiens de droit des réfugiés impliquant de la violence familiale, analysés par le biais d’une comparaison avec les cas de stérilisation forcée et de mutilations génitales. Parcourant 645 décisions publiées, il suggère que les arbitres canadiens ont en général adopté différentes méthodes d’analyse dans le cas des réfugiés de violence familiale, par rapport aux autres affaires. L’article soutient que les arbitres canadiens reconnaissent rarement la violence domestique comme une violation des droits en soi, mais au contraire, ont montré une prédisposition générale à reconnaître des situations violence domestique dans la différence culturelle. Autrement dit, les …