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Articles 1 - 27 of 27
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When Is It Fair To Break Promises? Illuminating Promissory Estoppel's Inequity Requirement, Marcus Moore
When Is It Fair To Break Promises? Illuminating Promissory Estoppel's Inequity Requirement, Marcus Moore
All Faculty Publications
Promissory estoppel is an important adjunct to contract law, allowing non-contractual promises to be legally binding under prescribed conditions. These conditions include reliance by the promisee, as the doctrine serves to protect reasonable reliance induced by certain types of promises. Typically, the conditions also include a requirement that it would be inequitable for the promisor to go back on the promise. This inequity requirement reflects the nature of promissory estoppel as a creature of the law of equity. Beyond this, however, considerable uncertainty surrounds the inequity element. For example, there are diverging views as to whether it embodies a distinct …
Minimal Impairment: An Unreasonable Measure Of The Justifiable Limits Of Rights, Marcus Moore
Minimal Impairment: An Unreasonable Measure Of The Justifiable Limits Of Rights, Marcus Moore
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Under both the Oakes and Doré frameworks of proportionality analysis in Canada, critical in assessing the justifiability of rights limitations under section 1 of the Charter has been the “Minimal Impairment” question. Conceptually, Minimal Impairment asks whether a right has been impaired as little as possible in pursuit of the statutory objective. Applied strictly it is a virtually-impossible standard of justification. Thus, sometimes more relaxed standards are applied in practice. This double standard has caused inconsistency in which standard is applied from case- to-case (or even opinion-to-opinion in the same case). New emphasis within the tests on the Proportionality of …
Tending Gardens, Ploughing Fields, And The Unexamined Drift To Constructive Takings At Common Law, Douglas C. Harris
Tending Gardens, Ploughing Fields, And The Unexamined Drift To Constructive Takings At Common Law, Douglas C. Harris
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Expropriation law in Canada has operated on the basis of two presumptions at common law: that compensation is owing for the compulsory acquisition of property unless specifically indicated otherwise by statute; and, that no compensation is owing for land use regulation unless specifically provided for by statute. In its decision in Annapolis Group Inc. v Halifax Regional Municipality, the Supreme Court of Canada abandoned the second presumption that compensation for land use regulation required a statutory foundation. The majority and dissent proceed on the unexamined foundation that there is a common law basis for compensation in claims for constructive takings …
Framing Effects, Rhetorical Devices, And High-Stakes Litigation: A Cautionary Tale, Marcus Moore
Framing Effects, Rhetorical Devices, And High-Stakes Litigation: A Cautionary Tale, Marcus Moore
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Opposing lawyers frame the facts of a case to serve their client, craft leading questions, and exert pressure on the witness to go along with their desired answer. To counter this, counsel for the witness must anticipate this and prepare the witness to tacitly ask themselves before answering such questions: whether a frame is being employed?; and if so, they should respond in their own words, rather than in the terms put to them by the opposing lawyer. Courts might counsel themselves to employ similar caution when incorporating discussion taken from politics or related policy debate. They may not be …
Developments In Contract Law: The 2021-2022 Term — The Enduring Allure Of Freedom Of Contract, Marcus Moore
Developments In Contract Law: The 2021-2022 Term — The Enduring Allure Of Freedom Of Contract, Marcus Moore
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A review of recent developments in Contract Law reveals that Freedom of Contract continues to thrive in the jurisprudence a half-century after its supposed fall. As the analysis here shows, it is a theme which animates not only general thinking about contracts, but also court resolution of specific cases and issues. High-level considerations drive the reasoning, colouring the application of more detailed rules where these exist. And among these high-level considerations, Freedom of Contract enjoys privileged status as the default law, against which opposing considerations in practice must justify themselves as exceptions. Other considerations vary in their power to constrain …
Sexual Assault Of Women And Adolescent Girls With Mental Disabilities, Janine Benedet, Isabel Grant
Sexual Assault Of Women And Adolescent Girls With Mental Disabilities, Janine Benedet, Isabel Grant
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This Report considers the research that addresses the sexual assault of women (age 18+) and adolescent girls (12-17) with mental disabilities (disabilities that affect cognition and decision-making, including intellectual disabilities present from birth, dementia, brain injury and certain psychiatric conditions.) These victims are targeted for sexual violence at rates even higher than for women generally. Yet when these women report abuse to authorities, the criminal trial process struggles to provide them with justice, while the consequences of disclosure can be severe and participation in the criminal justice process particularly traumatizing for them.
Un-Democratizing The City? Unwritten Constitutional Principles And Ontario's Strong Mayor Powers, Alexandra Flynn
Un-Democratizing The City? Unwritten Constitutional Principles And Ontario's Strong Mayor Powers, Alexandra Flynn
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Municipalities are a legal puzzle. Under the Constitution, they are subject to provincial jurisdiction as administrative bodies, like thousands of other tribunals, commissions, and government entities that make decisions on individuals’ daily lives. Local councils must heed the statutory constraints set by provincial governments, with their decisions subject to review by the courts. Yet Canadian cities create and deliver policies and services, with their leaders accountable to the public through regular elections, making them governments, too. They are essentially non-constitutionally protected governments that represent their citizens and are on the front lines of serious issues in their communities like homelessness …
Of Lock-Breaking And Stock Taking: Ip, Climate Change And The Right To Repair In Canada, Graham Reynolds
Of Lock-Breaking And Stock Taking: Ip, Climate Change And The Right To Repair In Canada, Graham Reynolds
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This paper argues that Canadian governments have both legal and moral obligations to act to combat climate change. In seeking to fulfill these obligations, Canadian governments should pay particular attention to Canada’s intellectual property (IP) regime. This paper argues that given the centrality of IP to Canada’s economy, a comprehensive review is required in order to determine whether and the extent to which elements of Canada’s IP regime contribute to climate change or impede climate action. To illustrate the need for such a review, this paper will highlight one example of how Canada’s IP regime, as currently structured, impedes the …
To Whom Are Directors’ Duties Owed? Evidence From Canadian M&A Transactions, Camden Hutchison
To Whom Are Directors’ Duties Owed? Evidence From Canadian M&A Transactions, Camden Hutchison
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One of the most contentious issues in corporate law is the proper scope of fiduciary duties. Many scholars have argued that fiduciary duties are owed exclusively to shareholders, while others have advocated a broader conception of directors’ fiduciary obligations, potentially encompassing a wide variety of stakeholder and community interests. This debate has both normative and positive dimensions: Not only are there theoretical disagreements as to whom directors’ duties should be owed, there are also more basic disagreements as to what the law actually requires, including the extent to which business norms supplement (or undermine) legal rules. In Canada, at least, …
Regulation As Respect, Cristie Ford
Regulation As Respect, Cristie Ford
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The so-called “meme stock” phenomenon of early 2021 was an unexpected, riveting, short-lived, and ultimately tragicomic (or maybe just tragic) event. It was the product of many things but, on some level and for some investors, it was political protest: grassroots “voice” in the form of online stock purchases.
The modern regulatory state does not have effective mechanisms for absorbing public perspectives in all their variety and nuance. Public input mechanisms (including but not limited to notice and comment rulemaking) are embedded within what Julie Cohen and Ari Waldman have called the “regulatory managerialist” model. Within this paradigm, non-expert knowledges …
Regulating The Concussion Crisis In Sports: Canada’S Initiative To Bring Prevention Into Focus, Marcus Moore
Regulating The Concussion Crisis In Sports: Canada’S Initiative To Bring Prevention Into Focus, Marcus Moore
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The twenty-first century has revealed the existence of a concussion crisis in sports. The crisis is of global reach, and Canada is no exception. In recent years, the Canadian government joined citizens in recognizing sports concussion as a major public health issue. A parliamentary committee investigated the crisis, reported findings, and made recommendations which the government accepted. As far as legal responses to the sport concussion crisis, new among the recommendations was a callto- action on prevention (Recommendation 13). Since there remains no medical cure for concussions, the government agreed with the view of injured former athletes and injury prevention …
The Legal Innovation Sandbox, Cristie Ford, Quinn Ashkenazy
The Legal Innovation Sandbox, Cristie Ford, Quinn Ashkenazy
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"The Legal Innovation Sandbox" examines a novel regulatory approach, called the innovation sandbox, in the context of the legal profession. The paper makes the claim that the “sandbox” regulatory model is in fact better suited to fostering innovation in the legal services arena than it is in the financial technology, or fintech, arena in which the sandbox concept developed. However, any effort to transplant a technique from one context to another needs to be carefully considered. This article is comparative across disciplines – financial regulation and legal services regulation – and across jurisdictions – covering the United Kingdom, the United …
Criminality And Inequity Under Canada's Legalization Of Cannabis: A Study Of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, Stephanie Lake, Margot Young
Criminality And Inequity Under Canada's Legalization Of Cannabis: A Study Of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, Stephanie Lake, Margot Young
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The origin of this essay reminds us of the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration to the development and assessment of public policy. It also demonstrates the serendipitous beginnings of many interesting inquiries. This collaboration was thus fortuitous: authors Lake and Young met during Lake’s doctoral dissertation defence. Young was on the examining committee. Lake presented a series of epidemiological studies (three of which are summarized below) involving the use of cannabis for therapeutic and harm reduction purposes among marginalized people who use drugs (PWUD) in Vancouver. Young’s lines of questioning involving the legal implications of Lake’s findings spurred the idea to …
The Canadian Digital Services Tax, Wei Cui
The Canadian Digital Services Tax, Wei Cui
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The Digital Services Tax (DST) may never be enacted in Canada. At least that seems to be what most Canadian tax professionals hope for: the draft Digital Services Tax Act (DSTA), released by the federal government in December 2021, has received little meaningful commentary; likely few Canadian taxpayers potentially affected by the DSTA (and their tax advisors) have attempted to learn from experiences of DST compliance in other countries; and the world also has little to learn from Canadian taxpayers’ preparation for a potential DST. This essay highlights three ways in which this collective dismissal of Canada’s proposed DST is …
The Chinese Enterprise Income Tax, Wei Cui
The Chinese Enterprise Income Tax, Wei Cui
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China’s Enterprise Income Tax (EIT) is the world’s largest corporate income tax by revenue, contributes a significant share to China’s total tax revenue, and is clearly the most substantial component of capital taxation in China. Yet scholarly research on the EIT is still limited. This overview chapter outlines the EIT’s main components from a legal perspective, while referring to empirical economic and accounting research that sheds light on these components. It discusses the personal scope of the EIT, so as to identify the significance of the pass-through and the tax-exempt sectors relative to the taxable corporate sector. It then examines …
Principles Of Interpretation As Applied To Corporate Articles: A Comment On Rogers V. Rogers Communications Inc., Camden Hutchison
Principles Of Interpretation As Applied To Corporate Articles: A Comment On Rogers V. Rogers Communications Inc., Camden Hutchison
All Faculty Publications
Last fall, public attention was captured by a contentious boardroom battle among members of the Rogers family for control of Rogers Communications Inc. (“RCI”). In a corporate showdown that drew comparisons to HBO’s Succession, Edward Rogers attempted to replace RCI’s chief executive officer and several independent directors against the wishes of his mother and two sisters. When the board of directors refused Edward’s demands, he petitioned the British Columbia Supreme Court to validate his changes to RCI’s board. The resulting judgement,1 which validated Edward’s actions, serves as a forceful affirmation that articles of a British Columbia company should be interpreted …
Rich Dad, Gay Dad: The Wealth Traps Of Gay Fatherhood, Aloni Erez
Rich Dad, Gay Dad: The Wealth Traps Of Gay Fatherhood, Aloni Erez
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While legal and societal progress has enabled gay fathers to form families, there remains a critical blind spot in our understanding of their financial wellbeing. Specifically, there are indications that a wealth gap may exist among gay father households. This article introduces a novel taxonomy of the mechanisms that likely contribute to a wealth gap for these households, including surrogacy and adoption costs, legal recognition expenses, parental leave policies, discrimination in housing and borrowing, and limited support from families of origin. These obstacles reflect the structural features and prejudices that disproportionately affect households led by non-heterosexual fathers. The article highlights …
Against Settlement In Transnational Business And Human Rights Litigation, Hassan M. Ahmad
Against Settlement In Transnational Business And Human Rights Litigation, Hassan M. Ahmad
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In Against Settlement, Owen Fiss argued that settlement may not always be the optimal result of civil suits, particularly those that involve novel or ambiguous areas of law or ostensible power imbalances. That work spurred a range of scholarship around the merits and demerits of settlement. And although the settlement versus litigation debate is now almost four decades old, its currency persists in common law systems in which courts are, at times, called upon to expand or even re-envision doctrines or procedural rules. This article revisits that debate. It applies Against Settlement to transnational business and human rights litigation that …
The "Right To City" In The Era Of Crowdsourcing, Alexandra Flynn
The "Right To City" In The Era Of Crowdsourcing, Alexandra Flynn
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This article explores the meaning and context of crowdsourcing at the municipal scale. In order to legitimately govern, local governments seek feedback and engagement from actors and bodies beyond the state. At the same time, crowdsourcing efforts are increasingly being adopted by entities – public and private – to digitally transform local services and processes. But how do we know what the “the right to the city” (RTTC) means when it comes to meaningful and participatory decision-making? And how do we know if participatory efforts called crowdsourcing—a practice articulated in a 2006 Wired article in the context of the …
The Transnational Exchange Of Law Through Climate Change Litigation, Natasha Affolder, Godwin Dzah
The Transnational Exchange Of Law Through Climate Change Litigation, Natasha Affolder, Godwin Dzah
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Climate change litigation continues to bash holes in the view of domestic legal systems as hermetically sealed units. Domestic cases are inspired by litigation elsewhere, actively fostered by transnational advocacy communities, and the decisions themselves are indicative of transjudicial influences and sometimes even dialogue on climate change. This chapter, written in 2021 to reflect the transnationalism of early climate change litigation, takes a close look at practices of transjudicialism in climate change litigation. In so doing, it seeks to disrupt some default patterns of studying the spread of law. By problematizing the practices of ‘finding’ influential climate law cases, measuring …
The Mirage Of Mobile Capital, Wei Cui
The Mirage Of Mobile Capital, Wei Cui
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Capital mobility has preoccupied scholars of international taxation for more than 30 years. According to prevailing narratives, when capital is highly mobile, countries compete to attract investment, creating a race to the bottom; capital mobility also enables multinational enterprises (MNEs) to shift profits. The appeal of these narratives has culminated in the OECD’s proposed Global Minimum Tax, which declares the aim of substantially curtailing tax competition. This paper suggests, however, that the significance of mobile capital for international taxation may be largely an illusion.
Four deflationary arguments are advanced. First, the rising importance of intangibles for MNEs makes capital less, …
New Crossroads And The Opportunity For A Crisis: The State Of Canadian Legal Education, Catherine Dauvergne
New Crossroads And The Opportunity For A Crisis: The State Of Canadian Legal Education, Catherine Dauvergne
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This article considers the challenges facing Canadian law schools and compares the current state of affairs to that analyzed in the 1983 Arthurs Report. The opening sections describe how Canadian legal education is globally unique because of the tacit agreement between law schools and the legal profession that limits the number of law school seats in Canada and helps ensure the success of law schools and law students. On the fortieth anniversary of the Arthurs Report, the article concludes that legal education in Canada is overdue for a new mapping of its strengths, challenges, and future directions that takes the …
Resurrecting 'She Asked For It': The Rough Sex Defence In Canadian Courts, Elizabeth Sheehy, Isabel Grant, Lise Gotell
Resurrecting 'She Asked For It': The Rough Sex Defence In Canadian Courts, Elizabeth Sheehy, Isabel Grant, Lise Gotell
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According to rape crisis centres and women’s shelters in Canada, the US and the UK, women are reporting extreme levels of violence by men who rape them, including strangulation—a particularly dangerous form of violence that is highly predictive of femicide. At the same time, accused men are deploying the “rough sex” defence when the victim—nearly always a woman—has suffered bodily harm or even death as a result of the accused’s actions. This defence is used to suggest that the woman enjoyed strangulation, bondage or other violence as part of “sex play”, inviting judges and jurors to find that she either …
Introduction To Volume I [Of The Canadian Law Of Obligations Iii Conference]: The Power And Limits Of Private Law, Marcus Moore, Samuel Beswick
Introduction To Volume I [Of The Canadian Law Of Obligations Iii Conference]: The Power And Limits Of Private Law, Marcus Moore, Samuel Beswick
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Private law issues touch the everyday experiences of individuals and businesses. Contracts, torts, trusts and other areas of private law and the law of obligations evolve with jurisprudential and statutory changes. The Power and Limits of Private Law is a timely compilation of papers developed from a conference on the subject at the University of British Columbia’s Green College in June of 2022. The contributors are eminent scholars in their respective fields and their commentaries and observations on developments in private law provide a useful reference for lawyers, judges, academics and students who confront private law issues in their work. …
Freedom Of Expression: Values And Harms, Camden Hutchison
Freedom Of Expression: Values And Harms, Camden Hutchison
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When considering restrictions on socially disfavoured expression, the Supreme Court of Canada has often considered the targeted expression’s “value.” In the seminal cases of Ford v. Quebec and Irwin Toy Ltd. v. Quebec, the Supreme Court articulated the importance of expressive freedom by relating it to three core values: (1) seeking and attaining the truth; (2) participation in democratic institutions; and (3) diversity in forms of individual selffulfillment. Subsequent cases considering restrictions on expression have evaluated the extent to which the targeted expression advances these values. Ironically, although Ford and Irwin Toy embraced a broad conception of expressive freedom, the …
Legislated Ableism: Bill C-7 And The Rapid Expansion Of Medical Assistance In Dying In Canada, Isabel Grant
Legislated Ableism: Bill C-7 And The Rapid Expansion Of Medical Assistance In Dying In Canada, Isabel Grant
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This paper explores the recent expansion of medical assistance in dying to disabled people who are suffering intolerably but are not at the end of their lives. The paper argues that it is impossible to separate suffering caused by an irremediable disability and suffering caused by the impacts of systemic ableism, which include high rates of poverty, social isolation and exclusion for people with disabilities. The paper suggests that this expansion raises constitutional issues under s. 15 and s. 7 of the Charter because it is premised on a view that portrays disability as potentially worse than death and thus …
The Legal Innovation Sandbox, Cristie Ford, Quinn Ashkenazy
The Legal Innovation Sandbox, Cristie Ford, Quinn Ashkenazy
All Faculty Publications
"The Legal Innovation Sandbox" examines a novel regulatory approach, called the innovation sandbox, in the context of the legal profession. The paper makes the claim that the “sandbox” regulatory model is in fact better suited to fostering innovation in the legal services arena than it is in the financial technology, or fintech, arena in which the sandbox concept developed. However, any effort to transplant a technique from one context to another needs to be carefully considered. This article is comparative across disciplines – financial regulation and legal services regulation – and across jurisdictions – covering the United Kingdom, the United …