Law Commons^™

Fighting For Deinstitutionalization In Nova Scotia: Emerald Hall Human Rights Case, Sheila Wildeman

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Those who have not been following the human rights complaint, MacLean v Nova Scotia, should start paying attention now. The case will be heard at the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal in November. People First Canada, CACL and the Council of Canadians with Disabilities will intervene.

At stake is whether institutionalization counts as discrimination - and what, if anything, human rights can do to respond.

Beth MacLean, Joey Delaney and Sheila Livingstone, all persons labeled with intellectual disabilities, brought the complaint to the Nova Scotia human rights commission in 2014. The Disability Rights Coalition [DRC] joined in the complaint.

MacLean, …

Disabling Solitary: An Anti-Carceral Critique Of Canada's Solitary Confinement Litigation, Sheila Wildeman

Research Papers, Working Papers, Conference Papers

The title of this chapter signifies at least three things. The first is the disabling effects of solitary confinement. The second is recent efforts of prison justice advocates in Canada to use law, or specifically litigation, to disable the logic of solitary confinement: to disrupt that logic through the logic of human rights. The third, most oblique reference, and one I develop here, speaks to dangers presented by the path Canada’s solitary confinement litigation has taken: a path of isolating disability-based prison justice claims from the wider ambitions of intersectional substantive equality. My thesis is that this isolation of disability …

Freedom: A Work In Progress, Rusi Stanev, Sheila Wildeman

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Rusi Stanev, survivor of an intransigent system of guardianship and institutionalisation, victor in a ground breaking disability rights case against Bulgaria at the European Court of Human Rights, my partner in this writing project and (for too short a time) my friend, died on March 9, 2017, before our chapter could be completed. He was 61. Questions have been raised about the appropriateness of the care Rusi received in his final days; at the time of finalising this chapter, a formal inquest into the circumstances of his death had not issued in a decision. But whether or not Rusi Stanev’s …