Digital Commons Network^™

Achieving A (Copy)Right To Repair For The Eu’S Green Economy, Anthony D. Rosborough, Leanne Wiseman, Taina Pihlajarinne

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

• The Right to Repair is a global movement in favour of rebalancing the relationship between manufacturers and end users of products and devices. As part of the European Union (EU) Green Deal and the Circular Economy Action Plan, EU legislators have made the Right to Repair a key policy aim. To date, however, the EU’s Right to Repair policy focus has been predominantly consumer law–oriented.

• This article sheds light on another key dimension of the Right to Repair—IP (and principally copyright law). It canvasses the ways in which copyright can inhibit repair activities, including curtailing access to repair information and …

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Legislative Options To Address Institutional Objections To Voluntary Assisted Dying In Australia, Ben P. White, Lindy Willmott, Eliana Close, Jocelyn Downie

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Voluntary assisted dying is being considered by parliaments and law reform bodies across Australia. Although individual conscientious objection is routinely considered in these deliberations, an institution’s desire to object to providing voluntary assisted dying has received very little attention. After briefly considering the concept of institutional objection in voluntary assisted dying, this article examines the available (albeit limited) Australian evidence on this practice. Institutional objection is happening in Victoria (where voluntary assisted dying is lawful) and is likely to occur in other Australian states. The article proposes that regulation is needed and presents three models for parliaments and law reformers …

The Forms And Limits Of Judicial Inquiry: Judges As Inquiry Commissioners In Canada And Australia, Grant R. Hoole

Dalhousie Law Journal

In both Canada and Australia the conduct ofpublic inquiries draws heavily from the expertise of the legal profession, with judges frequently serving as commissioners and inquiry hearings often reproducing the popular imagery of a courtroom. Despite this affinity between public inquiries and the legal profession, however, jurisprudential and academic authorities repeatedly stress that public inquiries are non-adjudicative. Indeed, the received wisdom is that the investigative focus of public inquiries justifies their divergence from the procedural and substantive commitments of adjudication. This paper challenges that assumption. It argues that the service of judges as inquiry commissioners should be premised on their …

The Payoffs And Pitfalls Of Laws That Encourage Shared Parenting: Lessons From The Australian Experience, Patrick Parkinson

Dalhousie Law Journal

A fierce argument is raging in various jurisdictions around the world about whether legislation should encourage shared parenting when mothers and fathers live apart. Much attention has been paid to changes to the law in Australia in 2006; however, there are many myths about the impact of those legislative changes. This article explains the changes and places them in the context of developments across the western world in the law of parenting after separation. It then reviews the research evidence on the effects of the 2006 reforms, particularly in terms of the encouragement of shared care. The article concludes by …

Warrant Canaries Beyond The First Amendment: A Comment, Jonathon Penney

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Warrant canaries have emerged as an intriguing tool for Internet companies to provide some measure of transparency for users while also complying with national security laws. Though there is at least a reasonable argument for the legality of warrant canaries in the U.S. based primarily on First Amendment "compelled speech" doctrine, the same cannot be said for the use of warrant canaries in other "Five Eyes” intelligence agency countries — United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia — where the legality of warrant canaries has yet to be examined in either cases or scholarship. This comment, which provides an overview …

Are Climate Change Policies Fair To Vulnerable Communities? The Impact Of British Columbia's Carbon Tax And Australia's Carbon Pricing Policy On Indigenous Communities, Karen Bubna-Litic, Nathalie J. Chalifour

Dalhousie Law Journal

This paper compares carbon pricing policies in British Columbia and Australia in order to identify differences between carbon taxes and emissions trading schemes (ETS) from a fairness perspective. We examine how taxes and trading systems impact indigenous communities in both jurisdictions. While the regressivity of carbon pricing is a critical part of any fairness assessment, we argue that socioeconomic and cultural factors must also be taken into consideration. We discuss the importance of accompanying carbon pricing with policies that mitigate not only distributional impacts, but also additional impacts. These may be funded by the revenue generated by the policy or …

Access To Justice And The Ethics And Politics Of Alternative Business Structures, Richard Devlin, Ora Morison

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Despite ongoing concern about access to justice in Canada, the problem persists. Meanwhile, the basic model for legal practice in Canada is the same as when the profession first emerged centuries ago in England. Only lawyers can own and control legal practices. This is not the case in other common law jurisdictions where rules have evolved to allow nonlawyers to own the companies that provide legal services. Based on a comparative analysis of the development of these alternative business structures (ABSs) in Australia and the United Kingdom, and the nondevelopment of ABSs in the United States, the authors argue that …

Ontario’S Administrative Tribunal Clusters: A Glass Half-Full Or Half-Empty For Administrative Justice?, Lorne Sossin, Jamie Baxter

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Claimants who come to administrative tribunals in Canada, as elsewhere, expecting a convenient forum to resolve their problems may discover that institutional resources and expertise, their own knowledge of the system, and their statutory entitlements and legal rights are fragmented between agencies with diverse norms and mandates. The provincial government of Ontario in Canada has recently enacted a novel strategy called tribunal clustering to confront these challenges. This paper explores the structure and rationales behind Ontario’s new tribunal clusters and compares these with reform models in Australia and the United Kingdom. The authors argue that tribunal clusters offer a flexible …

Defining Civil Disputes: Lessons From Two Jurisdictions, Camille Cameron, Elizabeth Thornburg

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Court systems have adopted a variety of mechanisms to narrow the issues in dispute and expedite litigation. This article analyses the largely unsuccessful attempts in two jurisdictions - the United States and Australia - to achieve early and efficient issue identification in civil disputes. Procedures that rely on pleadings to provide focus have failed for centuries, from the common (English) origins of these two systems to their divergent modern paths. Case management practices that are developing in the United States and Australia offer greater promise in the continuing quest for early, efficient dispute definition. Based on a historical and contemporary …

Defining Civil Disputes: Lessons From Two Jurisdictions, Elizabeth Thornburg, Camille Cameron

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Court systems have adopted a variety of mechanisms to narrow the issues in dispute and expedite litigation. This article analyses the largely unsuccessful attempts in two jurisdictions - the United States and Australia - to achieve early and efficient issue identification in civil disputes. Procedures that rely on pleadings to provide focus have failed for centuries, from the common (English) origins of these two systems to their divergent modern paths. Case management practices that are developing in the United States and Australia offer greater promise in the continuing quest for early, efficient dispute definition. Based on a historical and contemporary …

The Price Of Access To The Civil Courts In Australia: Old Problems And New Solutions - A Commercial Litigation Funding Case Study, Camille Cameron

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In the past decade litigation funding companies have assumed an increasingly prominent role in commercial litigation and class actions in Australia. The growth of commercial litigation funding is a predictable response to various features of Australia’s costs and fee allocation rules and practices, including the “loser pays” rule, the prohibition on lawyer’s charging contingency fees, the hourly billing practices of lawyers, and the open-ended and unpredictable nature of much civil litigation. This chapter explores the growth of commercial litigation funding in Australia and uses it as a window through which to view how Australia’s costs and fee allocation rules operate …

A.R.Buck, The Making Ofaustralian Property Law, Margaret Mccallum

Dalhousie Law Journal

Students in first year law in English-speaking common law schools in Canada follow a fairly standard curficulum, heavily weighted in favour of private law subjects such as torts, contracts and property, with criminal law, constitutional law, and perhaps a methods, theories or skills course rounding out their required courses. Most students find the content to be as they expected in courses in torts, contracts, criminal and constitutional law. These areas of law, after all, provide the law-related stories that are an increasing part ofnational and even international news. But many students find first year property a puzzle. They expect the …

Towards Principled Oceans Governance: Australian And Canadian Approaches And Challenges, Donald R. Rothwell, David Vanderzwaag

Books

Australia and Canada have been at the forefront of efforts to operationalize integrated oceans and coastal management. Throughout the 1990s both countries devoted considerable effort to developing strategies to give effect to international ocean management obligations.

This key book focuses on principles of marine environmental conservation and management, maritime regulation and enforcement, and regional maritime planning and implementation. With contributions from respected scholars, this informative book collectively assesses the obligations, compliance, implementation and trends in international ocean law, particularly in giving effect to an Oceans Policy, regional maritime planning, international oceans governance, and maritime security. This book will be of …

Access To Justice And The Evolution Of Class Action Litigation In Australia, Bernard Murphy, Camille Cameron

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The federal and Victorian class action regimes are intended to facilitate aggregation of multiple claims. Aggregation can improve efficiency by combining similar claims and can enhance access to justice by providing a mechanism to litigate small claims. This article considers whether these efficiency and access aims are being achieved. The authors argue that whilst some developments in class action jurisprudence have been consistent with these legislative aims, other have not. Several features of Australian class action jurisprudence and practice have hampered the healthy development of the legislative regimes, including adverse costs orders, unclear threshold requirements, evasive posturing and unresolved class …

Access To Justice And The Evolution Of Class Action Litigation In Australia, Bernard Murphy, Camille Cameron

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The federal and Victorian class action regimes are intended to facilitate aggregation of multiple claims. Aggregation can improve efficiency by combining similar claims and can enhance access to justice by providing a mechanism to litigate small claims. This article considers whether these efficiency and access aims are being achieved. The authors argue that whilst some developments in class action jurisprudence have been consistent with these legislative aims, other have not. Several features of Australian class action jurisprudence and practice have hampered the healthy development of the legislative regimes, including adverse costs orders, unclear threshold requirements, evasive posturing and unresolved class …

Access To Justice And The Evolution Of Class Action Litigation In Australia, Camille Cameron, Bernard Murphy

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The federal and Victorian class action regimes are intended to facilitate aggregation of multiple claims. Aggregation can improve efficiency by combining similar claims and can enhance access to justice by providing a mechanism to litigate small claims. This article considers whether these efficiency and access aims are being achieved. The authors argue that whilst some developments in class action jurisprudence have been consistent with these legislative aims, other have not. Several features of Australian class action jurisprudence and practice have hampered the healthy development of the legislative regimes, including adverse costs orders, unclear threshold requirements, evasive posturing and unresolved class …

Accountants, Privilege, And The Problem Of Working Papers, Paul Paton

Dalhousie Law Journal

Full and frank disclosure between corporate issuers and their auditors and accounting advisors is critical for maintaining access to the information required for audits and public confidence in the capital markets. While tax authorities in the United States, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom have the power to make broad requests for working papers, in all four jurisdictions, legislation or administrative practice reflects the determination that the best approach for balancing tax and capital markets requirements is for the revenue authorities to seek working papers only in exceptional circumstances. Additionally, limited forms of privilege for accountants have been recognized …

Air Travel, Accidents And Injuries: Why The New Montreal Convention Is Already Outdated, Andrew Field

Dalhousie Law Journal

The 1999 Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules for International Carriage by Air (the "Montreal Convention") came into force in 2003. It is the latest in a series of attempts to replace a number of variations on the 1929 Warsaw Convention with a single agreement which regulates the rights and liabilities of international air carriers, their passengers and shippers. At the time, the Montreal Convention was hailed as providing better protection and compensation for victims of air accidents. However despite its recent adoption, in relation to claims for death and personal injuries the Montreal Convention is still firmly planted …

An Unashamed Majoritarian, James Allan

Dalhousie Law Journal

The author a Canadian teaching in Australia, challenges what he regards as the prevailing Canadian orthodoxy, one that he thinks gives the unelected judiciary too much power. He challenges the perception that rights, however understood and though fully supported, necessitate the construction of anti-majoritarian protections such as the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Knowing that the Charter is here to stay he concludes by urging judges to adopt methods of interpretation that build in a much greater degree of deference to the legislature.

Fisheries And Oceans Governance In Australia And Canada: From Sectoral Management To Integration?, Marcus Haward, Rod Dobell, Anthony Charles, Elizabeth Foster

Dalhousie Law Journal

Australia and Canada have significant oceans domains, and concomitant responsibility for large maritime zones. Fisheries in both countries are important activities with capture fishing, aquaculture and associated processing being vital rural industries Australia and Canada both face major challenges affecting fisheries management. These challenges include managing multiple and at times conflicting uses and claims on ocean and marine resources, while also recognizing the complexity and profound uncertainty associated with those resources. In that context, and having regard to the different histories of Australia and Canada, this paper outlines the different strategies and emphases adopted recently by the two countries. These …

Offshore Petroleum In Australia - Cooperative Governance In A Sea Of Federalism, Nathan Evans

Dalhousie Law Journal

Since 1980 when jurisdiction over the offshore was finally settled, divisive jurisdictional posturing between the state and federal governments has been reduced. Since then, efforts have concentrated on improving the administration and policy affecting offshore sectors, especially with respect to petroleum resources. In this context, the inclusion of environmental drivers represents a natural progression. Building upon this enhanced responsibility integration with other maritime sectors would seem to be the next objective for the petroleum sector to pursue. Although now mandated by government policy, integration as a concept challenges sectoral decision-making so fundamentally that the delivery of integrated ocean policy approaches …

The Challenges Of Integrating Tourism Into Canadian And Australian Coastal Zone Management, Alison Gill, Lorne K. Kriwoken, Suzanne Dobson, Liza D. Fallon

Dalhousie Law Journal

This article discusses the challenges of integrating tourism into Canadian and Australian coastal zone management. Comparisons are drawn between coastal and marine tounsm resources in Australia and Canada. The resources considered include the cruise ship industry, recreational boating, fishing, sea kayaking, SCUBA diving and marine wildlife tourism. In the introduction, some of the problems of definition and data are addressed. Tourism is described as an industry, but unlike many traditional industries, the tourism arena consists of a myriad of players and sectors. After the comparison of tourism resources in both countries, the power and politics associated with managing user conflicts …

Australia And Canada In Regional Fisheries Organizations: Implementing The United Nations Fish Stocks Agreement, Rosemary Rayfuse, Marcus Haward, Gregory Rose, Sali Bache

Dalhousie Law Journal

In the late 1980s and early 1990s a number of factors and events coalesced to encourage the international community to re-examine high seas fisheries issues. The need to enhance the effectiveness of regional fisheries organizations led to the development of the 1995 United Nations Fish Stocks Agreement, dealing with straddling and highly migratory stocks. Both Canada and Australia played a significant role in the development of this agreement While having much in common, each state had different interests and concerns Canada's attention was focused on the problem of straddling stocks, while Australia 's interests have been primarily, though not exclusively, …

Liability For Damage To The Marine Environment From Ships, Michael White

Dalhousie Law Journal

Marine pollution damage from ships is not a major problem in Australian jurisdictions, but there are regular incidents. The Australian law relating to marine pollution from ships closely follows the international conventions. Australia is a party to almost all of the relevant IMO conventions and, as is required for common law countries, the domestic legislation to give effect to them needs to be put in place. This has been done for the most part by the Commonwealth, the states and the Northern Territory as Australia is a federation. The Commonwealth and the states have established adequate enforcement resources for the …

Australian And Canadian Perspectives On Offshore Management, Donald R. Rothwell, David Vanderzwaag

Dalhousie Law Journal

Challenges in ocean and coastal management are facing all coastal states of the world. including Australia and Canada. Overharvesting of fish stocks, increasing pressure from land-based sources of pollution, expanding offshore petroleum developments, and rising risks of ship-sourced pollution in fragile marine ecosystems have caused both countries to begin a process of reassessment and rethinking. In January 1997 Canada adopted a new Oceans Act, which called for the development of a National Oceans Management Strategy based on principles of sustainable development, precaution and integration, and a new national marine protected areas network. In December 1998, Australia released a National Oceans …

Australasian Law And Canadian Statutes In The Nineteenth Century: A Study Of The Movement Of Colonial Legislation Between Jurisdictions, Jeremy Finn

Dalhousie Law Journal

This paper considers the use between 1850 and 1900 by Anglo-Canadian legislatures of legislative precedents from the Australian and New Zealand colonies and argues that while a wide range of Australasian laws were considered by Canadian legislators, the most significant Australasian influences are to be found in mining law, electoral and constitutional law and land law The paper goes on to explore, by use of archival, parliamentary and published materials, the processes by which Canadian legislators acquired their knowledge of these Australasian initiatives. While governmental and institutional channels (including the Colonial Office) played a significant part in the transmission of …

The Best Things In Law Are Free?: Towards Quality Free Public Access To Primary Legal Materials In Canada, Teresa Scassa

Dalhousie Law Journal

In this article the author explores the move in several jurisdictions towards providing primary legal materials online without charge. In Canada the federal government, most provincial governments and many courts currently provide some form of online access to primary legal materials. However, this is not done in a unified, comprehensive or systematic manner. The author evaluates the "legal information institute" model as it has emerged in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, and considers whether such a model would be useful or workable in Canada. In the course of this assessment, the author canvasses such issues as the …

Law Reports From A Non-Colony And A Penal Colony: The Australian Manuscript Decisions Of Sir Francis Forbes As Chief Justice Of Newfoundland, Bruce Kercher

Dalhousie Law Journal

The author reports on the existence and contents of a manuscript copy of a selection of judgments by Sir Francis Forbes while he was Chief Justice of Newfoundland from 1817-1822. The manuscript found its way into the State Library of New South Wales sometime after Forbes' translation to New South Wales as its first Chief Justice in 1823. The author comments on the insights these manuscript reports afford of the early legal history of Newfoundland as it developed into a British colony. In particular, he draws attention to the significance of twenty-nine judgments in the manuscript but not available in …

Of Federalism, Secession, Canada And Quebec, Greg Craven

Dalhousie Law Journal

This article does not seek to examine comprehensively either the political or the legal intricacies of the possible secession of Quebec from Canada. To either task, the author's knowledge would be unequal. In general terms, all that is aimed at here is the very modest goal of bringing to bear upon the present Quebec-Canada scenario perceptions garnered from a consideration of similar (though different) situations which have arisen in other federations, and especially in the Australian federation. More specifically, what is attempted is three things. First, a brief discussion is undertaken of the concept of secession as such. Second, secession …

The New Principle Of Law Reform In Australia, Alex. C. Castles

Dalhousie Law Journal

Until comparatively recent times, continuous, systematic law reform has not been favoured with strong support in those countries nurtured in the common law tradition. In particular, many lawyers in Australia, as elsewhere in the common law world, have tended, for the most part,' to be suspicious and perhaps, subconsciously, more than a little fearful of legal evolution through legislative action rather than judge-made law. This state of mind has belied the realities of the twentieth century life of the law and in many ways as well, the thrust of the law as it evolved in common law countries in the …