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The Rise And Fall Of Duress (Or How Duress Changed Necessity Before Being Excluded By Self-Defence), Steve Coughlan
The Rise And Fall Of Duress (Or How Duress Changed Necessity Before Being Excluded By Self-Defence), Steve Coughlan
Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press
The Supreme Court of Canada decision in R. v. Ryan significantly reshaped both the common law and statutory defenses of duress, harmonizing them and, in the case of the common law defense, fully articulating it for the first time. The decision is admirable for that reason. This paper argues that two further results can also be seen. First, the defense of necessity is a common law one which is conceptually similar to duress. The Court's reasoning at a policy level about duress ought therefore to be applicable to necessity: this paper traces the ways in which that latter defense ought …
Telus: Asking The Right Questions About General Warrants, Steve Coughlan
Telus: Asking The Right Questions About General Warrants, Steve Coughlan
Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press
The general warrant provisions in the Criminal Code have often been interpreted by lower courts in a way which threatens to make that power quite open-ended, and to make those warrants available as a way of making an "end run" around the requirements of other provisions. This note argues that the Supreme Court of Canada is correct, in Telus,to adopt a "substantive equivalence" approach to general warrants, thereby limiting the circumstances in which they can be used. Lower courts have sometimes taken the view that a general warrant is only unavailable if the proposed technique would fall squarely within some …