Law Commons^™

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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Towards A Distinctive Trademark Law For The 21st Century, David Vaver

Articles & Book Chapters

Canada's Trade Marks Act, when passed in 1953, was probably the best then around, but 65 years later it is ready to be pensioned off. The Act's deficiencies have become more evident as new markets and interests have gained prominence. A broadly-based Committee to reconsider the reform ofall intellectual property laws, with trademark law as one component, should be struck to produce a user-friendly code fit for 21st century commerce.

Canadian Civil Justice: Relief In Small And Simple Matters In An Age Of Efficiency, Jonathan Silver, Trevor C. W. Farrow

Articles & Book Chapters

Canada is in the midst of an access to justice crisis. The rising costs and complexity of legal services in Canada have surpassed the need for these services. This article briefly explores some obstacles to civil justice as well as some of the court-based programmes and initiatives in place across Canada to address this growing access to justice gap. In particular, this article explains the Canadian civil justice system and canvasses the procedures and programmes in place to make the justice system more efficient and improve access to justice in small and simple matters. Although this article does look briefly …

Aboriginal Food Security In Northern Canada: An Assessment Of The State Of Knowledge, Harriet Kuhnlein, Fikret Berkes, Laurie Hing Man Chan, Treena Wasonti:Io Delormier, Asbjørn Eide, Chris Furgal, Murray Humphries, Henry Huntington, Constance Macintosh, Ian Mauro, David Natcher, Barry Prentice, Chantelle Richmond, Cecilia Rocha, Kue Young

Reports & Public Policy Documents

As the world’s population increases, as global markets become more interconnected, and as the effects of climate change become clearer, the issue of food insecurity is gaining traction at local, national, and international levels. The recent global economic crisis and increased food prices have drawn attention to the urgent situation of the world’s 870 million chronically undernourished people who face the number one worldwide risk to health: hunger and malnutrition. Although about 75% of the world’s undernourished people live in low-income, rural regions of developing countries, hunger is also an issue in Canada. In 2011, 1.6 million Canadian households, or …

Decentralizing Family: An Inclusive Proposal For Individual Tax Filing In The United States, Anthony C. Infanti

Articles

The debate in the United States over individual versus joint federal income tax filing is at something of a crossroads. For decades, progressive - and, particularly, feminist - scholars have urged us to abolish the joint return in favor of individual filing. On the rare occasion when scholars have described what such an individual filing system might look like, the focus has been on the ways in which the traditional family must be accommodated in an individual filing system. These descriptions generally do not take into account - let alone remedy - the tax system’s ongoing failure to address the …

Canadian Softwood Lumber And Free Trade Under Nafta, Sydney M. Cone Iii.

Articles & Chapters

Canada and the United States have been involved in a long-running dispute over U.S. efforts to protect U.S. producers of softwood lumber by imposing high duties on imports of Canadian-origin softwood lumber. This dispute was prolonged by virtue of the fact that Canada and the United States not only are parties to the North American Free Trade Agreement ("NAFTA"), but also are members of the World Trade Organization ("WTO"). NAFTA contains provisions for the resolution of a trade dispute by an arbitration panel. A WTO agreement known as the Dispute Settlement Understanding ("DSU") separately provides for the creation of panels …

The Political Economy Of Canada's "Widely Held" Rule For Large Banks, Eric J. Gouvin

Faculty Scholarship

All of the recent changes in foreign access to Canada's banking market have been essentially cosmetic-appearing to make foreign access more liberal while in reality changing the status quo very little. On one point, the so-called widely held rule, Canada does not even bother to pretend that its banking law is friendly to foreign entrants. Under this rule, no person or group may control ten percent or more of a Schedule I bank unless one first obtains the approval of the Minster of Finance. This rule makes foreign acquisition of a Schedule I bank virtually impossible. The widely held rule …

The Economics Of Canadian National Railway V. Norsk Pacific Steamship (The Jervis Crown), David S. Cohen

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Economic analysis of legal doctrine assumes, indeed its relevance largely depends upon the assumption, that judicial decisions will have an instrumental impact on the future behaviour of firms and individuals who are not themselves parties to the litigation which resulted in the specific doctrinal development being analysed. In other words, economic analysis assumes that the decisions of courts - and particularly, for what should be obvious reasons, the decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada - have a direct influence upon the manner in which non-litigants will choose to order their affairs following that decision. Thus, the focus of a …

Procedural Fairness And Incentive Programs: Reflections On The Environmental Choice Program, David S. Cohen

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This paper explores the application of procedural fairness to the federal government’s Environmental Choice Program’s decision-making processes. While Canadian courts have traditionally required public bureaucrats to act “fairly” when implementing command models of regulation, they have only recently been confronted with demands that regulators implementing economic incentive programs also act in accordance with procedural fairness norms.

Judicial Choice And Disparities Between Measures Of Economic Values, David S. Cohen

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

An important idea, which characterizes law in society, is a reluctance to move from the status quo. In general, one can argue that legal institutions and legal doctrine are not engaged in the redistribution of wealth from one party to another. This paper explores a possible explanation for that principle. The authors' research suggests that, across a wide range of entitlements and in a variety of contexts, individuals value losses more than foregone gains. The paper argues, as a matter of efficiency, that law and social policy might have developed in a manner consistent with this valuation disparity. Furthermore, this …

Government Liability For Economic Losses: The Case Of Regulatory Failure, David S. Cohen

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Compensation claims against provincial and federal governments are largely a product of the second half of the 20th century. The initial surge of cases after the enactment of the federal Crown Liability Act in 1953--mirrored also in developments at the provincial level-- were typically "private" tort claims. Indeed a significant percentage of claims against the federal government continue to be nothing more than automobile accident, occupier liability claims and lawsuits arising out of similar relatively minor bureaucratic error. Recently, however, as a result of both the imagination of litigators and the growth of the regulatory state, claims against governments have …

The Regulation Of Green Advertising: The State, The Market And The Environmental Good, David S. Cohen

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In this paper I explore this most recent development in regulatory policy and, in particular, the role government plays when it chooses to use private markets (consumer, institutional and corporate) as regulatory instruments to produce and allocate environmental benefits. The privatization of environmental regulation by employing markets to deliver environmental benefits does not involve the implementation of public policy through executive or legislative action. Rather, it is achieved through a public choice to privatize the delivery of environmental regulation by permitting or encouraging decentralized economic power to respond to consumer demands for environmental quality.

Regulating Regulators: The Legal Environment Of The State, David S. Cohen

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In this paper I focus on the ability of tort law to reduce primary costs, or losses associated with the number and seriousness of accidents. In one sense I will be analysing the state as if it were a private firm in which losses suffered by private individuals and firms are externalities. Several years ago Mark Spitzer wrote a paper on this topic in which he posited several models of state activity and analysed the incentive effects of liability rules in each case. In my view Spitzer's general conclusion - the rule which may be synthesized from all of the …

Bleeding Hearts And Peeling Floors: Compensation For Economic Loss At The House Of Lords, David S. Cohen

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The decision of the House of Lords in Junior Books Ltd. v. Veitchi Ltd. represents an unwarranted development in the law of tort and contract, unless its rationale and limitations are fully appreciated. This reform in such an important area is premature "in the absence of hard data on the probable impact of such an extension of liability.” Much of the published commentary on recovery of economic loss in tort, and on this decision in particular, has been written from the ex post perspective of accident compensation doctrine and theory. Most writers have been concerned with the development of positive …