Law Commons^™

A Legal History Of The Regulation Of Assault-Style Rifles In Canada, R. Blake Brown

Dalhousie Law Journal

This article provides the first legal history of the regulation of “assault-style” weapons in Canada. A contentious part of Canada’s gun control regime is the firearms classification system that divides guns into non-restricted, restricted, and prohibited firearms. The sale of semi-automatic firearms, often based on military designs that could be quickly fired and reloaded, sparked concerns since the 1970s, particularly after mass shooting events. Canada adopted a classification regime relying on both statutory provisions that used technical details of firearms and Orders-in-Council to name models of firearms as restricted or prohibited weapons. Critics warned that this system allowed private citizens …

Toward Justice Epidemiology: Outlining An Approach For Person-Centred Access To Justice, Andrew Pilliar

Dalhousie Law Journal

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought widespread public attention to the fields of epidemiology and public health. These fields share a common commitment to the systematic study of disease across populations, with goals of better understanding, preventing, and treating adverse health events. They are empirical, evidence-based, and person-centred. This paper draws on the histories, norms, and methodologies of public health and epidemiology to construct a novel field of study: justice epidemiology. In recent years, a growing body of unmet legal needs research in Canada and elsewhere has demonstrated that justiciable events are likely ubiquitous, but also that these events tend to …

Transnational Corporations And Climate Governance: A Case Study Of Amazon.Com’S Net-Zero Climate Pledge, Jason Maclean

Dalhousie Law Journal

“Net zero” has become the predominant way of framing global, national, and nonstate climate change commitments. Hundreds of countries and thousands of corporations promise to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 or earlier. Hopeful as this may seem, early evidence suggests the need to carefully scrutinize corporations’ climate promises. Specifically, there is an urgent need to critically assess the claim that strategic collaboration and compromise at the science-business-society interface can deliver the transformative social, economic, and political change required to address climate change.

Analyzing Amazon.com’s net-zero pledge as a case study, this article argues that strategic conflict with—and within—transnational corporations is …

If I Had More Time, Would I Have Written A Shorter And Faster Decision? An Empirical Examination Of The Evolution Of Trial Court Decisions, Jon Khan

Dalhousie Law Journal

This article draws from my 2019 LLM thesis on Canadian judicial decisions, where I sought to understand two things: how current approaches to judicial decision-writing may impact access to justice and how might we make decisions a better source of data while also making them more timely, concise, accessible, and consistent. It presents the results and analysis of an original empirical study of the evolution of British Columbia trial decisions over 40 years (1980–2018). It argues that the current process for writing Canadian judicial decisions likely does not further the goals of access to justice and may even hinder them. …

Covid-19, Human Rights And Public Health In Prisons: A Case Study Of Nova Scotia’S Experience During The First Wave Of The Pandemic, Adelina Iftene

Dalhousie Law Journal

The importance of preventing outbreaks in prisons during a pandemic, such as COVID-19, cannot be overstated. The risk of the infection spreading rapidly once inside these institutions is much higher than in the community, due to the underlying vulnerabilities of prison populations and the congregated living nature of prisons. This article documents the Nova Scotia provincial prison system’s experience in dealing with COVID-19 during the first wave, including its uniquely swift decarceration efforts. One goal of this investigation is to identify a set of best practices that can help Canadian prisons systems with their short-term responses to crisis in a …

Faith And/In Medicine: Religious And Conscientious Objections To Maid, Daphne Gilbert

Dalhousie Law Journal

Across Canada, health care institutions that operate under the umbrella of religious traditions refuse to offer medical assistance in dying (MAiD) on the grounds that it violates their Charter-protected rights to freedom of religion and conscience. This article analyses the Supreme Court jurisprudence on section 2(a) and concludes that it should not extend to the protection of institutional rights. While the Court has not definitively pronounced a view on this matter, its jurisprudence suggests that any institutional right to freedom of religion would not extend to decisions on publicly-funded and legal health care. MAiD is a constitutionally-protected option for individuals …

Does “No, Not Without A Condom” Mean “Yes, Even Without A Condom”?: The Fallout From R V Hutchinson, Lise Gotell, Isabel Grant

Dalhousie Law Journal

In R v Kirkpatrick, the Court of Appeal for British Columbia held that consent to sexual activity cannot be established where a man proceeds with unprotected vaginal intercourse when his sexual partner has insisted on a condom. While this finding should be uncontroversial, it is in fact contrary to the Supreme Court of Canada ruling in R v Hutchinson. In this comment we argue that the approach taken in Kirkpatrick is correct and consistent with the landmark decision in R v Ewanchuk. We urge the Supreme Court of Canada to reconsider its majority judgment in Hutchinson in order to fully …

Intervenors At The Supreme Court Of Canada, Geoffrey D. Callaghan

Dalhousie Law Journal

My aim in this paper is to offer a normatively attractive and explanatorily sound interpretation of the Supreme Court of Canada’s approach to third party intervention. The crux of my interpretation is that the policy the Court has developed on intervenors allows it to strike a reasonable balance among a number of competing democratic considerations, all of which have value in the context of judicial decision making. In this respect, the Court should be commended for identifying a way to liberalize a practice that possesses many democratically-attractive features, but also the inherent capacity to undermine the democratic standing of the …

A Leap Of Faith: Twail Meets Caribbean Queer Rights Jurisprudence—Intersections With International Human Rights Law, H. Patrick Wells

Dalhousie Law Journal

This article examines the legal status of queer rights in Caribbean jurisprudence. It conducts an analysis of Caribbean queer rights case law, in order to arrive at an understanding of the extent and dynamics of constitutional protection for these rights. It then uses the revelations from this analysis to determine how Caribbean queer rights jurisprudence has intersected with international human rights norms, values and rules. Finally, the article applies the TWAIL methodological approach to international law to argue that the Caribbean queer rights jurisprudence has not so far reflected the counter-hegemonic, resistance, anti-imperialist discourse that TWAIL champions, in spite of …

The Opioid Crisis As Health Crisis, Not Criminal Crisis: Implications For The Criminal Justice System, Haley Hrymak

Dalhousie Law Journal

The criminal justice system’s response to the opioid crisis exacerbates risks faced by people using drugs and is harmful to public health. Interviews with 11 interviewees including defence counsel, probation officers, and public interest lawyers and advocates revealed three key challenges of working in the criminal justice system during the opioid crisis. First, there is a lack of understanding of addiction within the criminal justice system. Second, as a result of the opioid crisis, fentanyl trafficking sentencing decisions in British Columbia emphasize the need for lengthier prison sentences, which disproportionately affects people who use substances. Third, the conditions on bail …

Justice: An Un-Original Position, Neil Maccormick

Dalhousie Law Journal

Human societies are not voluntary associations. At least so far as concerns national societies and states, most human beings do not have a choice to which one they will belong, nor what shall be the law and the constitition of that to which they do belong; especially, their belonging to a given state is not conditional upon their assenting to the basic structure of its organization. Someone who is born into a given state has obviously no choice, no opportunity to stipulate conditions upon which he will accept citizenship. Choice can perhaps be exercised later, when one is an adult, …

Justice: An Un-Original Position, Neil Maccormick

Dalhousie Law Journal

Human societies are not voluntary associations. At least so far as concerns national societies and states, most human beings do not have a choice to which one they will belong, nor what shall be the law and the constitition of that to which they do belong; especially, their belonging to a given state is not conditional upon their assenting to the basic structure of its organization. Someone who is born into a given state has obviously no choice, no opportunity to stipulate conditions upon which he will accept citizenship. Choice can perhaps be exercised later, when one is an adult, …

Justice: An Un-Original Position, Neil Maccormick

Dalhousie Law Journal

Human societies are not voluntary associations. At least so far as concerns national societies and states, most human beings do not have a choice to which one they will belong, nor what shall be the law and the constitition of that to which they do belong; especially, their belonging to a given state is not conditional upon their assenting to the basic structure of its organization. Someone who is born into a given state has obviously no choice, no opportunity to stipulate conditions upon which he will accept citizenship. Choice can perhaps be exercised later, when one is an adult, …

The Creative Role Of Law, I. F. G. Baxter

Dalhousie Law Journal

A few years ago, the writer was asked by a professional association (concerned with pharmacy) to organize the legal side of a research project. The project was to examine the state of the profession and to produce a new design for the future. The suggestion was made that the legal part of the report should be done first so that the other reporters could know what they could or could not suggest in making their proposals. It was replied (by the legal researchers) that law too is a planning variable, and that law's true role is not to confine desirable …