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Articles 1 - 30 of 46
Full-Text Articles in Law
Freedom Of Thought At The Ethical Frontier Of Law & Science, Marcus Moore
Freedom Of Thought At The Ethical Frontier Of Law & Science, Marcus Moore
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Some of the most compelling contemporary ethical questions surround 21st Century neuroscientific technologies. Among these, neurocognitive intervention technologies allow an unprecedented ability to alter thought. Concerns exist about their impact on individual freedom, behavior and personhood. They could also distort society, eroding core values of dignity, equality, and diversity. Potent laws are needed to anchor regulation in this rising field. The article explores how the long-neglected human right of Freedom of Thought might protect the integrity of the mind at the legal system’s highest level. Sample cases illustrate how it could be given effect ethically and legally to set boundaries …
Climate Disruption In Canadian Constitutional Law: References Re Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, Jocelyn Stacey
Climate Disruption In Canadian Constitutional Law: References Re Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, Jocelyn Stacey
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This analysis considers the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in References re Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, 2021 SCC 11, in which a majority of the Court upheld as constitutional national carbon pricing legislation. The decision presents an excellent illustration of the legally disruptive nature of climate change. Illustrating that nothing is static in a climate disrupted world—including constitutional law—this article identifies three shifts the Court makes in relation to climate disruption. First, the decision represents a shift away from climate denialism toward a judicial willingness to confront the environmental, social and legal implications of climate change for Canada. Second, …
Constitutional Scholars As Constitutional Actors, Liora Lazarus
Constitutional Scholars As Constitutional Actors, Liora Lazarus
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Few constitutional scholars would dispute that Carl Schmitt played a legitimating role in the downfall of the Weimar Republic, or that Albert Venn Dicey has defined the UK and other commonwealth constitutions. Why then is there no general conception of constitutional scholars as constitutional actors? It is now well established that ‘to understand how our Constitution and laws are practised, it is necessary to study and understand many more institutions in the system than simply the Judiciary’ While the focus has broadened to include a range of constitutional office holders and institutions, little has been said about the role and …
R. V. K.R.J.: Shifting The Balance Of The Oakes Test From Minimal Impairment To Proportionality Of Effects, Marcus Moore
R. V. K.R.J.: Shifting The Balance Of The Oakes Test From Minimal Impairment To Proportionality Of Effects, Marcus Moore
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The judgment of the Supreme Court in R. v. K.R.J. reflects an important potential change in the way proportionality analysis is conducted in the review of constitutional rights limitations under Canada’s Oakes test. Previously, most cases came down to the “Minimal Impairment” stage of Oakes. Its dominant role is challenged by KRJ, which places new weight on the subsequent and final “Proportionality of Effects” step. A permanent shift in the focus of the test to the Proportionality of Effects inquiry would be a landmark change in the thirty-year history of proportionality in Canada. The shift does not appear crafted to …
R. V. Safarzadeh-Markhali: Elements And Implications Of The Supreme Court's New Rigorous Approach To Construction Of Statutory Purpose, Marcus Moore
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The Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Safarzadeh-Markhali holds great significance, beyond Criminal Law, in the area of Statutory Interpretation: in Markhali, the Court decisively endorses a new rigorous approach to construing legislative purpose. Previously, while legislation itself was long-interpreted utilizing rigorous approaches, legislative purpose was typically construed ad hoc while providing only summary justification. Markhali’s new framework is distinct from prior approaches in at least four ways: (1) It expressly acknowledges the critical importance of purpose construction in many cases; (2) It is conscious of how a less-than-rigorous approach risks being self-defeating of larger legal analyses in which the …
Bordering The Constitution, Constituting The Border, Efrat Arbel
Bordering The Constitution, Constituting The Border, Efrat Arbel
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It is an established principle in Canadian law that refugees present at or within Canada’s borders are entitled to basic constitutional protection. Where precisely these borders lie, however, is far from clear. In this article, I examine the Canadian border as a site in which to study the constitutional entitlements of refugees. Through an analysis of the Multiple Borders Strategy (MBS) – a broad strategy that re-charts Canada’s borders for the purposes of enhanced migration regulation – I point to a basic tension at play in the border as site. I argue that the MBS imagines and enacts the border …
Reconsidering Copyright's Constitutionality, Graham Reynolds
Reconsidering Copyright's Constitutionality, Graham Reynolds
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In 1996, in Compagnie Générale des Établissements Michelin – Michelin & Cie v. National Automobile, Aerospace, Transportation and General Workers Union of Canada (CAW-Canada) (Michelin), Teitelbaum J. of the Federal Court (Trial Division) held both that specific provisions of the Copyright Act did not infringe the right to freedom of expression as protected under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Charter) and that, even if they did, these provisions could be justified under s. 1 of the Charter. Since Michelin, these conclusions have been treated by Canadian courts as settled. The purpose of this paper is to challenge these …
Contesting Unmodulated Deprivation: Sauvé V Canada And The Normative Limits Of Punishment, Efrat Arbel
Contesting Unmodulated Deprivation: Sauvé V Canada And The Normative Limits Of Punishment, Efrat Arbel
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Despite a pressing need for judicial guidance on the legalities of administrative segregation, Canadian courts have yet to outline clear, comprehensive principles by which to assess its deployment. While some courts have rebuked the Correctional Service of Canada for the improper use of administrative segregation in specific cases, the regulation of the practice more broadly has proven elusive. This article turns to the Supreme Court of Canada’s prisoner voting rights decision in Sauvé v Canada for guidance in this regard. Since its release in 2002, Sauvé has been applied largely in cases involving political rights, and rarely in cases involving …
Ending The Isolation: An Introduction To The Special Volume On Human Rights And Solitary Confinement, Debra Parkes
Ending The Isolation: An Introduction To The Special Volume On Human Rights And Solitary Confinement, Debra Parkes
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Prisoners and their advocates in Canada and around the world have been calling attention to the harms and impact of solitary confinement for some time. What is significant about the current moment is that these calls seem to be achieving some traction, even as the use of solitary confinement grows across jurisdictions. This short piece introduces a special volume of the Canadian Journal of Human Rights which collects the writing of advocates and scholars from a range of disciplines (criminology, law, philosophy) who bring a variety of perspectives and methodologies to bear on the opaque correctional systems that hold human …
The Environmental Emergency And The Legality Of Discretion In Environmental Law, Jocelyn Stacey
The Environmental Emergency And The Legality Of Discretion In Environmental Law, Jocelyn Stacey
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This article argues that environmental issues confront us as an ongoing emergency. The epistemic features of serious environmental issues – the fact that we cannot reliably distinguish ex ante between benign policy choices and choices that may lead to environmental catastrophe – are the same features of an emergency. This means that, like emergencies, environmental issues pose a fundamental challenge for the rule of law: they reveal the necessity of unconstrained executive discretion. Discretion is widely lamented as a fundamental flaw in Canadian environmental law, which undermines both environmental protection and the rule of law itself. Through the conceptual framework …
The Policing Of Major Events In Canada: Lessons From Toronto's G20 And Vancouver's Olympics, W. Wesley Pue, Robert Diab, Grace Jackson
The Policing Of Major Events In Canada: Lessons From Toronto's G20 And Vancouver's Olympics, W. Wesley Pue, Robert Diab, Grace Jackson
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Major events ranging from sporting events to major international conferences too often result in disorder, deployment of riot squads, and mass arrests. Events surrounding a meeting of the G20 in Toronto and those at Vancouver’s Winter Olympics provide insight into the ways in which things can go wrong and the ways in which they can go well at major events. This article employs a “thick history” of events in order to explore gaps in Canadian law, including gaps between “law in the books” and “law in action.”
The legal frameworks governing large-scale events affect the likelihood of success measured in …
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 …
Social Justice And The Charter: Comparison And Choice, Margot Young
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 …
The Other Section 7, Margot Young
The Other Section 7, Margot Young
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The somewhat rudimentary notions of liberty, life and security of the person that are corralled by traditional section 7 jurisprudence are not the sole indicator of what the section potentially ought to, and indeed may ultimately, protect and ensure. It is now fairly well established that the rights section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects apply well outside the sphere of criminal law. Two strands of expansion exist, one less controversial than the other. First, it is relatively clear that section 7 encompasses executive administration of the law. The second path of expansion allows section 7 …
From Smith To Smickle: The Charter's Minimal Impact On Mandatory Minimum Sentences, Debra Parkes
From Smith To Smickle: The Charter's Minimal Impact On Mandatory Minimum Sentences, Debra Parkes
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This paper attempts to assess the impact that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms has had, and may have in the near future, on mandatory minimum sentences and their legislated proliferation. To answer those questions, the paper first briefly reviews the Supreme Court of Canada case law on the constitutionality of mandatory minimum sentences. The next two sections will outline the approach taken in the recent Smickle decision in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice before moving on to argue that courts should subject the purported goals, justifications and implications of mandatory minimum sentences to a more searching form …
The 'Great Writ' Reinvigorated? Habeas Corpus In Contemporary Canada, Debra Parkes
The 'Great Writ' Reinvigorated? Habeas Corpus In Contemporary Canada, Debra Parkes
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This short prelude to Professor James Oldham’s 2nd Annual DeLloyd J Guth Visiting Lecture in Legal History, “Habeas Corpus, Legal History and Guantanamo Bay,” discusses some of ways that the writ of habeas corpus plays an important role in promoting access to justice and protecting basic liberty interests in contemporary Canadian law. The focus will be on developments in the law since the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was enacted, touching on two important features of a modern doctrine of habeas corpus, namely flexibility and gap-filling, both of which Professor Oldham also develops in his essay.
Why Is The Japanese Supreme Court So Conservative?, Shigenori Matsui
Why Is The Japanese Supreme Court So Conservative?, Shigenori Matsui
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The Constitution of Japan, enacted on November 3, 1946, and effective as of May 3, 1947, gave the judicial power to the Supreme Court and the inferior courts established by the Diet, the national legislature, and gave the power of judicial review to the judiciary. Equipped with the power of judicial review, the Japanese Supreme Court was expected to perform a very significant political role in safeguarding the Constitution, especially its Bill of Rights, against infringement by the government. Yet, it has developed a very conservative constitutional jurisprudence ever since its establishment. This article examines why the Japanese Supreme Court …
Context, Choice, And Rights: Phs Community Services Society V. Canada (Attorney General), Margot Young
Context, Choice, And Rights: Phs Community Services Society V. Canada (Attorney General), Margot Young
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Constitutional law cases that revolve around the rights or circumstances of those groups most marginalized in Canadian society are not frequent cause for celebration. Typically, these cases push the boundaries of classical liberal understandings of the rights our Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects, asking the courts to recognize social and economic dimensions to liberties that are traditionally and popularly more narrowly construed. Such demands are more often than not sidestepped (or rejected outright) by courts, with the result that activist agendas focusing on leveraging Charter rights to achieve significant social change are less compelling than initially imagined. It …
Constitutional Precedents In Japan: A Comment On The Role Of Precedent, Shigenori Matsui
Constitutional Precedents In Japan: A Comment On The Role Of Precedent, Shigenori Matsui
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Japan is a civil law country, and the precedent of the Supreme Court is not binding on either the Supreme Court itself or lower courts. Judges are supposed to return to the text of the statute for each legal dispute and apply the rules to specific cases. Judicial decisions are not law to be applied by the courts. However, since judges have followed the precedent of the Supreme Court most of the time, these precedents have a de facto binding power even though they are not legally binding. In this Comment, the author focuses on constitutional law precedents to illustrate …
Insite: Site And Sight (Part 1 - Insights On Insite), Margot Young
Insite: Site And Sight (Part 1 - Insights On Insite), Margot Young
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The Insite case is a great study for students of constitutional law. The twinning of a claim of inter-jurisdictional immunity - in a somewhat novel application to provincial jurisdiction - to the assertion by some of Canada's most marginalized citizens of the fundamental freedoms of life, liberty, and security of the person delivers a compact and compelling recitation of basic features of Canada's constitutional landscape. The case is set in the landscape of the Vancouver's Downtown East-side (DTES) - a geography of spatial outcomes that reflects balances of economic and social power and displacement. This place has a specific demography …
Religion-Based Claims For Impinging On Queer Citizenship, Bruce Macdougall, Donn Short
Religion-Based Claims For Impinging On Queer Citizenship, Bruce Macdougall, Donn Short
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Competing claims for legal protection based on religion and on sexual orientation have arisen fairly frequently in Canada in the past decade or so. The authors place such competitions into five categories based on the nature of who is making the claim and who is impacted, the site of the competition, and the extent to which the usual legal and constitutional norms applicable are affected. Three of the five categories identified involve a claim that a religion operate in some form in the public area so as to impinge on the usual protection of equality on the basis of sexual …
Unequal To The Task: ‘Kapp’Ing The Substantive Potential Of Section 15, Margot Young
Unequal To The Task: ‘Kapp’Ing The Substantive Potential Of Section 15, Margot Young
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This paper reviews the Supreme Court of Canada’s interpretation of s. 15 as a guarantee of substantive equality focusing on R. v. Kapp, a recent key section 15 case, as seen in perspective of Andrews v. Law Society of British Columbia (1989). R. v. Kapp (2008) brings together a dense complex of issues involving equality, affirmative action, race and Aboriginal rights. This paper takes on only a piece of this tangle – focusing on three issues that speak to the Court’s continuing failure to engage fully with the promise of Andrews’ rejection of a formal equality framework for section 15. …
The Ioc Made Me Do It: Women's Ski Jumping, Vanoc And The 2010 Winter Olympics, Margot Young
The Ioc Made Me Do It: Women's Ski Jumping, Vanoc And The 2010 Winter Olympics, Margot Young
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This case comment discusses the judicial decisions in Sagen v. VANOC regarding the constitutional challenge brought by women ski jumpers to their exclusion from the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. While the claimants argued that the constitutional equality provision (section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms) had been infringed, the BC courts' decisions focussed on the novelty of the state action problem. At least one level of court accepted that the exclusion was discriminatory but the challenge failed because the decision to exclude lay within the power of the International Olympic Committee, an entity beyond the ambit of …
The Gap In Canadian Police Powers: Canada Needs 'Public Order Policing' Legislation, W. Wesley Pue, Robert Diab
The Gap In Canadian Police Powers: Canada Needs 'Public Order Policing' Legislation, W. Wesley Pue, Robert Diab
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The authors identify a gap in Canadian policing law. Police have neither common law nor statutory authority to undertake the sorts of public order policing measures that are thought to be essential to securing large public events, such as Vancouver's 2010 Olympics. The paper argues for the adoption of a Public Order Policing Act designed to confer the necessary powers and ensure their operation in a manner that respects constitutional law and fundamental civil liberties. Revised and published as W. Wesley Pue & Robert Diab “The Gap in Canadian Police Powers: Canada Needs 'Public Order Policing' Legislation” (2010) 28 Windsor …
Nafta Chapter 11 As Supraconstitution, Stepan Wood, Stephen Clarkson
Nafta Chapter 11 As Supraconstitution, Stepan Wood, Stephen Clarkson
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More and more legal scholars are turning to constitutional law to make sense of the growth of transnational and international legal orders. They often employ constitutional terminology loosely, in a bewildering variety of ways, with little effort to clarify their analytical frameworks or acknowledge the normative presuppositions embedded in their analysis. The potential of constitutional analysis as an instrument of critique of transnational legal orders is frequently lost in methodological confusion and normative controversy. An effort at clarification is necessary. We propose a functional approach to supraconstitutional analysis that applies across issue areas, accommodates variation in kinds and degrees of …
A Prisoners' Charter? Reflections On Prisoner Litigation Under The Canadian Charter Of Rights And Freedoms, Debra Parkes
A Prisoners' Charter? Reflections On Prisoner Litigation Under The Canadian Charter Of Rights And Freedoms, Debra Parkes
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This paper examines over twenty years of prisoner litigation under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, beginning with a brief consideration of the social and political context for prisoners into which the Charter was entrenched in 1982, before moving on to consider a variety of successful and unsuccessful prisoners' Charter claims. The author notes some ways in which the impact of the Charter has been diminished at the prison walls, including through a lack of full and meaningful access by prisoners to courts or other means of independent review of prison decisions and conditions, as well as by the …
Public Protection, Proportionality, And The Search For Balance, Benjamin J. Goold, Liora Lazarus, Gabriel Swiney
Public Protection, Proportionality, And The Search For Balance, Benjamin J. Goold, Liora Lazarus, Gabriel Swiney
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This report examines how courts in the UK and Europe respond when human rights and security appear to conflict. It compares cases from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). It examines how rights are applied and how courts use the concept of proportionality to mediate conflicts between rights and security. The report concludes that British courts are less consistent in their application of proportionality than countries with constitutional rights protections which tend to be more rigorous in their protections of rights than are countries, like the UK, that rely instead on the …
Protecting Constitutionalism In Treacherous Times: Why 'Rights' Don't Matter, W. Wesley Pue
Protecting Constitutionalism In Treacherous Times: Why 'Rights' Don't Matter, W. Wesley Pue
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Common lawyers have focused too much on rights talk and especially on constitutionally entrenched Bills of Rights in critiquing Anti-Terrorism legislation enacted by democratic common law countries since September 11, 2001. This paper illustrates the ways in which rights talk acts as a distraction from fundamental principles of legality when Anti-Terrorism laws are considered, arguing that embedded rights play three roles antithetical to sustaining governance in accordance with fundamental principles of legality: the roles of paper tiger, Trojan horse, and narcotic.
Police Powers, Trespass And Expressive Rights Under The Canadian Constitution, W. Wesley Pue
Police Powers, Trespass And Expressive Rights Under The Canadian Constitution, W. Wesley Pue
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This paper traces the history of the ancillary police powers doctrine in Canadian police law/ constitutional law over the past 40 years. It identifies a doctrine creep wherein a heading of police power which had modest origins has expanded massively. The expansion is spatial and conceptual and reached its reductio ad absurdum when the entire central area of Quebec city was zoned into no-go areas by police acting without legislative authority, claiming the right to erect barricades in public streets, to issue passes (or not) as necessarily ancillary to police powers. The paper includes the only English translation of the …
The Problem Of Official Discretion In Anti-Terrorism Law: Comment On Khawajah, W. Wesley Pue, Robert Russo
The Problem Of Official Discretion In Anti-Terrorism Law: Comment On Khawajah, W. Wesley Pue, Robert Russo
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This paper assesses the first judicial ruling on key provisions of the Anti Terrorism Act. Rutherford J.'s ruling struck down provisions creating a motive requirement in the definition of terrorist activity while upholding the overall structure of the act against challenges on the basis of overbreadth and vagueness. A fault-line divides the two sides of the ruling. On one side the court looked to the lived-experience of legal rules, concluding that including motive requirements would mislead officials in the direction of improper and unconstitutional racial or religious profiling. On the other side of the fault-line the court restricted itself to …