Law Commons^™

Humour, A Meditation, John Henry Schlegel

Dalhousie Law Journal

Back in 1987 when Critical Legal Studies was still “hot,” I was shopping a piece that was a long review essay on Laura Kalman’s history, Legal Realism at Yale. An acquaintance who was on that faculty invited me to present the piece—which I am still quite proud of—at the workshop he was running. Owen Fiss was the first person to ask a question. He wanted to know whether the piece was “serious” work or whether it was just an elaborate joke. Surprised and bewildered by the question, I answered, “Both.” In response he asserted that unless it were one or …

Show And Tell, Liam Mchugh-Russell

Dalhousie Law Journal

...to break the rules wisely, you have to know the rules well.

–Le Guin, Steering the Craft

I finished my doctorate in June of 2019. Most of my waking hours that late summer and early fall were spent writing and rewriting cover letters, teaching statements, and research agendas (and equity statements, long CVs, short CVs, etc.)—all the variegated materials demanded from applicants to tenure-track positions in North American law faculties. Writing those materials, and integrating the feedback on early drafts that I received from a host of generous peers and colleagues, became an accidental study in the principal subtext of …

Why The Multilateral Investment Court Is A Bad Idea For Africa, Akinwumi Ogunranti

Dalhousie Law Journal

The UNCITRAL Working Group III (WG III) is discussing procedural reforms in the investor state dispute settlement system (ISDS). The ISDS framework is criticized on various grounds, including arbitrator bias, lack of transparency, and inconsistent arbitral decisions. One of the recent reform proposals before the WG III is the possibility of a multilateral investment court (MIC). This proposal is championed by European Union states and supported by Canada. The proposal recommends replacing ISDS’ Ad hoc investment tribunals with an established and permanent court where states appoint judges. This paper examines the MIC reform option and argues that replacing the ISDS …

The Political Economy Of Laughter And Outrage, Genevieve Renard Painter

Dalhousie Law Journal

A bit uncomfortable. That is how it feels to be among dear friends but labelled professionally as an outsider. I have a law degree, a bar membership, and a PhD in Jurisprudence and Social Policy. I am a professor in a women’s studies department at Concordia University. At conference receptions, people respond breathlessly, “But they don’t have a law school at Concordia!?,” as though I am hearing confession in a gas station, or something as heretical. I teach legal history, international law, feminist legal theory, and constitutional law to undergraduates who are not in law school and mostly don’t want …

Law’S Sexual Infections, Kyle Kirkup

Dalhousie Law Journal

In 2019, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights published its study on the criminalization of HIV non-disclosure in Canada. The report recommended removing HIV non-disclosure from sexual assault laws in Canada. This constituted a welcome development for many HIV advocates. Yet other recommendations proved more controversial. In order to counter the exceptional targeting of HIV, the Committee proposed an offence for the non disclosure of all infectious diseases. This article uses the proposal to develop three arguments. First, the idea of creating an offence for all infectious diseases finds its origins in criminal laws dating …

Mixing Mathematics And Morality: Precarity And Moral Hazard In Employment Insurance And Personal Insolvency Law, Anna J. Lund

Dalhousie Law Journal

This article examines how financially precarious Canadians face particular challenges to accessing the benefits of employment insurance and personal insolvency because these two systems include features designed to guard against moral hazard. However, these design features do not adequately account for how an increasing number of Canadians are precariously employed and precariously indebted. This article synthesizes the research on precarious employment in Canada, and uses it to suggest how one might conceptualize precarious indebtedness. It then traces how the Canadian employment insurance and personal insolvency systems treat characteristics of financial precarity as evidence of misconduct. As a result, precariously employed …

Lost: Heritage Stock. The Heritage Property Act And Heritage Conservation In Downtown Halifax, Nova Scotia, Eliza Richardson

Dalhousie Law Journal

This article considers heritage conservation in Halifax, examining the Heritage Property Act and its implementation. As one of the oldest cities in Canada, Halifax, Nova Scotia was graced with an abundance of built heritage. However, historic properties have been disappearing at an alarming rate, with 41 per cent of potential heritage buildings in downtown Halifax, Nova Scotia having been demolished since 2009. This article argues that the current approach to heritage conservation in Halifax is nominally successful but consistently falls short of the spirit in which it was enacted. The Act performs well in specific situations, namely where the owners …

Masthead & Table Of Contents

Dalhousie Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Introduction, Kim Brooks, Jamie Irvine

Dalhousie Law Journal

The dream for the Dalhousie Law Journal, included in the Foreword of the Journal’s first issue in 1973, was typically Dalhousie-modest: to have a “long and reasonably useful career.”1 As we celebrate our 50th anniversary, it’s clear that we have delivered on duration and over-delivered on purpose.

The Borders Of Responsibility, The Democratic Intellect, And Other Elephants In The Room, Liam Mchugh-Russell

Dalhousie Law Journal

What can André Zucca’s photos, taken during the Nazi occupation of Paris, tell us about the law to come or the challenges it will pose to lawyers, legal scholars and legal educators? In short: Zucca’s photos serve not just as a cipher for a past in need of reckoning but as a caution about abiding a present in which crisis is always just out of frame. In the throes of slow-motion apocalypse, what should an intellectual be? And for whom? In 80 years, when someone is rifling through an attic shoebox of our history, will we appear like the subjects …

Police-Generated Evidence In Bail Hearings: Generating Criminality And Mass Pretrial Incarceration In Canada, Jillian Rogin

Dalhousie Law Journal

Systemic racism in policing impacts many aspects of the criminal legal system including the system of judicial interim release. This paper traces the ways in which reliance on police-created evidence at bail hearings might contribute to mass pretrial incarceration in Canada which is disproportionately felt by Indigenous, Black, and marginalized people. The police synopsis and police-created criminal records are state knowledge created for state purposes. This state-created evidence in fact generates race and racialization; all of the structural inequalities built into the system of policing become relied on at bail hearings through police-created evidence which contributes to mass pretrial incarceration …

Open Your Eyes: Teaching And Learning About Anti-Asian Racism And The Law In Canada, Angela Lee

Dalhousie Law Journal

Recently, policymakers, institutional actors, and the public have made greater efforts towards being attentive to issues relating to anti-racism and discrimination, as well as equity, diversity, and inclusion more broadly, prompted in part by growing calls for reconciliation with Indigenous peoples and the increasing visibility of the Black Lives Matter movement. Yet, there has been a relative dearth of attention paid to the specific ways in which anti-Asian racism manifests and is maintained, particularly in the Canadian context. More than just being a relic of the past, antiAsian racism is an ongoing phenomenon both within and beyond Canada’s borders, as …

Cultivating Versatility: The Multiple Foundations Of The Law School’S Public Mission, David Sandomierski

Dalhousie Law Journal

Law schools should aspire to cultivate versatility. To accomplish this goal, the salient features of the law school should reflect three foundational intellectual pillars: a commitment to the rule of law and legal rationality, an emphasis on multiple legal process, and an appreciation for legal pluralism. Complementing these symbolically “vertical” pillars on which the law school’s activity rests are three transversal virtues that operate “horizontally” to brace the foundations. These include a commitment to critique, context, and diversity. Ultimately, legal educators should concern themselves with how they can best prepare their students for a wide range of contributions to society …

Masthead & Table Of Contents

Dalhousie Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Modular Legal Learning: Revitalizing The Law Classroom, David Sandomierski, Stephanie Ben-Ishai

Dalhousie Law Journal

The targeted and strategic use of asynchronous learning materials can free up important space for classroom teaching, and can unlock the spirit of experimentation, innovation, and engagement that animates in-person learning. This article sets out five principles that should guide future efforts to integrate asynchronous modules into legal education. Modules should be designed to supplement, not substitute, the live classroom; they should deliver content but also stimulate reflection, critique, and contextualization; they should be varied with respect to their subject matter, theoretical underpinnings, and pedagogical approach; professors should be able to easily customize their selections; and they should encourage collaboration …

Law Society Regulation And The Lawyer-Academic, Andrew Flavelle Martin

Dalhousie Law Journal

Can, and should, law societies regulate and discipline lawyers for their teaching and research? This article explores these largely overlooked but critically important questions in order to establish a foundation for further debate and discussion by lawyers, legislators, and law societies. It argues that professionalism precludes only low-value teaching and research—teaching and research with little pedagogical or epistemic value such that it is unlikely or unworthy to be protected by academic freedom—and that any chilling effect on lawyer-academics comes as much from uncertainty as from actual danger of regulatory consequences. The author concludes that law societies and other stakeholders should …

Masthead & Table Of Contents

Dalhousie Law Journal

No abstract provided.

But Why Him? A Review Of The Tenth Justice: Judicial Appointments, Marc Nadon, And The Supreme Court Act Reference, By Carissima Mathen And Michael Plaxton, Andrew Flavelle Martin

Dalhousie Law Journal

To the great benefit of the Canadian legal community and the Canadian public, the authors have created an extensive, concise, and highly readable account of the Nadon saga. Anyone unfamiliar with the purported appointment of Justice Nadon to the Supreme Court of Canada, the Reference re Supreme Court Act, ss 5 and 6 (also known as the Nadon Reference), and the aftermath will find this book invaluable. I expect this work will become the definitive and authoritative account of this saga and that it will be indispensable to future scholars.

I begin this review with a brief overview of the …

Public Service And Charter Pessimism: A Review Of Harry Arthurs, Connecting The Dots: The Life Of An Academic Lawyer, Charlotte Hobson

Dalhousie Law Journal

Charlotte Hobson: Public Service and Charter Pessimism: A Review of Harry Arthurs, Connecting the Dots: The Life of an Academic Lawyer (McGill–Queen’s University Press, 2019)

Masthead & Table Of Contents

Dalhousie Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Teaching Civil Obligations (Or What I Learned About Law, Legal Thinking And Teaching), Alan Hutchinson

Dalhousie Law Journal

In most of my decades-long teaching and professorial career, I primarily taught Torts, but never Contracts. However, last year, I agreed to teach jointly a postgraduate class of 35 students on “Civil Obligations.” It was a decision that conformed to one of the more unsettling tropes of my life— “act in haste, repent at leisure.” My role in this arrangement was, after a general opening about the nature of civil obligations and the interface of Contract and Tort, to assume responsibility for the Contracts component of the course. This presented itself as a considerable task, but I thought that it …

Critique-Inspired Pedagogies In Canadian Criminal Law Casebooks: Challenging "Doctrine First, Critique Second" Approaches To First-Year Law Teaching, Sarah-Jane Nussbaum

Dalhousie Law Journal

This article is a critical evaluation of Canadian criminal law casebooks. The author explores the aims, practices, and challenges of these teaching texts by examining their relationship to critique-inspired pedagogical methods. A number of English-language Canadian criminal law casebooks add a welcome feature to the Canadian common law teaching landscape: all but one of six recently published casebooks teach doctrine and critique together. The research builds on an emerging scholarship of Canadian legal education by demonstrating evidence of critical political commitments and critique-inspired teaching methods within Canadian criminal law education. Yet casebook editors and other professors who utilize critical methods …

Responsible Scholarship In A Crisis: A Plea For Fairness In Academic Discourse On Carbon Pricing References, Stepan Wood, Meinhard Doelle, Dayna N. Scott

Dalhousie Law Journal

This article offers a critical review of a paper Professor Dwight Newman recently published on the constitutionality of the federal government’s national carbon pricing legislation and the Saskatchewan and Ontario court decisions upholding the law. Rather than engage with the substance of Professor Newman’s article, the authors consider whether it respects the norms of rigorous and fair inquiry that enable constructive scholarly debate. The authors conclude that it does not, and that the consequences for the Supreme Court’s resolution of the carbon pricing reference cases could be significant.

Le présent article propose une analyse critique d’un texte publié récemment par …

The Bad, The Ugly, And The Horrible: What I Learned About Humanity By Doing Prison Research, Adelina Iftene

Dalhousie Law Journal

Every Canadian academic conducting research with humans must submit an ethics application with their university’s Research Ethics Board. One of the key questions in that application inquired into the level of vulnerability of the interviewees. Filling in that question, I had to check nearly every box: the interviewees were incarcerated, old, under-educated, poor, Indigenous or other racial minorities, and likely had mental and physical disabilities. However, it was not until I met John that I understood what all those boxes actually meant. They were signalling that I was entering a universe of extreme marginalization—the universe of the forgotten. I learned …

From Law To Legal Studies And Beyond: 50 Years Of Law And Legal Studies At Carleton University, Vincent Kazmierski, Darren Pacione

Dalhousie Law Journal

This paper considers the evolution of Carleton University's Department of Law and Legal Studies and its approach to the study of law and the legal within the context of the continuing growth of legal studies programs across the country. It starts by outlining the historical development of the Department and the evolution of its perspective of its role and purpose. Part II examines a number of aspects of the architecture of fourteen undergraduate legal studies programs across the country and the ways in which the roles of these programs are described. Part III provides a brief outline of the current …

Doctoral Studies In Law: From The Inside Out, Dia Dabby, Bethany Hastie, Jocelyn Stacey

Dalhousie Law Journal

This article explores the purpose, structure and experience of doctoral studies in Canadian law schools. Relying on an auto-ethnographic methodology where we draw on our personal experience as doctoral students, we identify three tensions in doctoral studies in law. We explore how these tensions-between practice/theory structure/space, and supervisory/other relationships-emerge from the structure of doctoral studies in law and how they manifest themselves in the lived experience of doctoral students. We detail how these tensions are a product of the ambiguous and underexplored nature ofdoctoral studies in law. By making these tensions explicit, we encourage doctoral students, law professors and administrators …

Not Ideas Of The Thing But The Thing Itself: Imagining A Support Group For Separated And Divorced Fathers As A Site Of Legal Education, Thomas Mcmorrow

Dalhousie Law Journal

Legal education is not just about attaining an abstract knowledge of formal institutions, norms, and processes; it is also about developing insight into oneself and ones relationships. Therefore, understanding and developing the personal and social conditions that make governance through law possible are crucial elements of legal education. This article highlights legal education's potential role in fostering every person's sense of implication in-and responsibility forbuilding a just society In order to illustrate this concept, this article looks at the ways in which DADs, a support group for separated and divorced fathers, constitutes a site of legal education.

Queering Indigenous Legal Studies, Emily Snyder

Dalhousie Law Journal

A handful of scholars have examined sex, gender, and sexuality in relation to Indigenous laws; yet their work is infrequently taken up in the field, and there is a broader need for conversations about what it means to "queer" Indigenous legal studies. In this paper, I centre and examine work that contributes to this queering so as to promote inclusive critical legal education and engagement. I also discuss the implications of not attending to sexuality and develop preliminary propositions for queering Indigenous legal studies.

Guilty Displeasures: White Resistance In The Social Justice Classroom, Rakhi Ruparelia

Dalhousie Law Journal

In this article, the author reflects on the challenges of teaching white law students about racism and whiteprivilege asa racializedprofessor To situateher experiences and to better understand the obstacles that professors who teach critically about race and racism confront, she draws from theories of racial identity development and research on student evaluations to contextualize student responses to antiracist pedagogy Grappling with racism in a meaningful way leaves many white students feeling distraught, angry and guilty, among other unpleasant emotions. Professors who initiate these discussions become the natural targets of criticism and blame as students struggle with their discomfort. The hostility …

Troubling Feelings: Moral Anger And Clinical Legal Education, Sarah Buhler

Dalhousie Law Journal

Many law students experience strong and sometimes difficult emotions during their time in clinical lawprograms: sadness at clients'stories of trauma, excitement about a victory in court, or anger at the injustices faced by clients. In this article, I focus on the emotion of "moral anger,"or "moral outrage" experienced by lawyers and students in clinicalcontexts, and consider how educators and students might address manifestations of moral anger in clinical law contexts in ways that ignite a critical and social-justice oriented approach to legal practice. By drawing on theoretical insights from the emerging field of critical emotion studies, I argue that a …