Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Law Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 30 of 250

Full-Text Articles in Law

The Constitutionality Of Classification: Indigenous Overrepresentation And Security Policy In Canadian Federal Penitentiaries, D'Arcy Leitch Oct 2018

The Constitutionality Of Classification: Indigenous Overrepresentation And Security Policy In Canadian Federal Penitentiaries, D'Arcy Leitch

Dalhousie Law Journal

This article examines one component of the Correctional Service of Canada's (CSC) risk classification scheme. The CSC uses the Custody Rating Scale (CRS), a 12-item actuarial instrument, to measure risk and to provide security classification recommendations. Empirical data shows that while CRS recommendations may have some predictive validity, certain of the 12 items the CRS includes do not, particularly for Indigenous prisoners. This article makes the case that the inclusion ofsuch items in the CRS violates prisoner's rights under section 7 of the Charter by depriving them of liberty in a manner that is arbitrary and overbroad. Habeas corpus is …


A "Reasonable" Expectation Of Sexual Privacy Inthe Digital Age, Moira Aikenhead Oct 2018

A "Reasonable" Expectation Of Sexual Privacy Inthe Digital Age, Moira Aikenhead

Dalhousie Law Journal

Two Criminal Code offences, voyeurism, and the publication of intimate images without consent, were enacted toprotect Canadians' right to sexual privacy in light of invasive digital technologies. Women and girls are overwhelmingly targeted as victims for both of these offences, given the higher value placed on their non-consensual, sexualised images in an unequal society.Both offences require an analysis ofwhether the complainant was in circumstances giving rise to a reasonable expectation of privacy, and the use of this standard is potentially problematic both from a feminist standpoint and in light of the rapidly evolving technological realities of the digital age. This …


Reassessing The Constitutional Foundation Of Delegated Legislation In Canada, Lorne Neudorf Oct 2018

Reassessing The Constitutional Foundation Of Delegated Legislation In Canada, Lorne Neudorf

Dalhousie Law Journal

This article assesses the constitutionalfoundation by which Parliament lends its lawmaking powers to the executive, which rests upon a century-old precedent established by the Supreme Court of Canada in a constitutional challenge to wartime legislation. While the case law demonstrates that courts have continued to follow this earlyprecedent to allow theparliamentary delegation of sweeping lawmaking powers to the executive, it is time for courts to reassess the constitutionality ofdelegation in light ofCanada's status as a liberal democracy embedded within a system of constitutional supremacy. Under the Constitution of Canada, Parliament is placed firmly at the centre ofpublic policymaking by being …


Canada's Residential Schools And The Right To Integrity, Amy Anderson, Dallas K. Miller, Dwight Newman Oct 2018

Canada's Residential Schools And The Right To Integrity, Amy Anderson, Dallas K. Miller, Dwight Newman

Dalhousie Law Journal

Apart from characterizations of the residential schools system as imposing cultural genocide, it is possible to understand the system in terms of a legal wrong involving violations of family integrity. The 19th and early 20th centuries saw increasing state intervention in families generally so as to impose compulsory education. However, wrongs in this intervention were recognized, and international law developed toward a right of family integrity that led to changes in non-Indigenous contexts. Evidence from the TRC shows that Canada did not respond as quickly in the Indigenous context, thus permitting an identification of how the residential schools system violated …


Genderfucking Non-Disclosure: Sexual Fraud, Transgender Bodies, And Messy Identities, Florence Ashley Oct 2018

Genderfucking Non-Disclosure: Sexual Fraud, Transgender Bodies, And Messy Identities, Florence Ashley

Dalhousie Law Journal

If I don't tell you that I was assigned male at birth, as a transgender person, can I go to jail for sexual assault by fraud? In some jurisdictionslike England or Israel, the answer is: yes. Previous arguments against this criminalisation have focused on the realness of trans people's genders: since trans men are men and trans women are women, it is not misleading for them to present as they do. Highlighting the limitationsofthis position, which doesn't fully account for the messiness ofgendered experiences, the author puts forward an argument against the criminalisation of (trans)gender history non-disclosure rooted in privacy. …


The Impact Of The Honour Of The Crown On The Ethical Obligations Of Government Lawyers: A Duty Of Honourable Dealing, Andrew Flavelle Martin, Candice Telfer Oct 2018

The Impact Of The Honour Of The Crown On The Ethical Obligations Of Government Lawyers: A Duty Of Honourable Dealing, Andrew Flavelle Martin, Candice Telfer

Dalhousie Law Journal

The honour of the Crown is recognized as a Canadian constitutional principle that is essential to reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians. As part of the process of reconciliation, this article argues that the honour of the Crown imposes a special ethical obligation on government lawyers in specific circumstances, which we call the duty of honourable dealing. We situate this duty in the divided literature and case law about whether government lawyers have special ethical obligations and in the two dimensions in which the honour of the Crown applies: the Crown as an institution and the Crown as a collection …


Government Lawyering: Duties And Ethical Challenges Of Government Lawyers, Andrew Flavelle Martin Oct 2018

Government Lawyering: Duties And Ethical Challenges Of Government Lawyers, Andrew Flavelle Martin

Dalhousie Law Journal

Are government lawyers different than lawyers in private practice? If so, why does it matter? While these questions have been addressed piecemeal in the Canadian legal ethics literature, Elizabeth Sanderson's Government Lawyering: Duties and Ethical Challenges of Government Lawyers is the first comprehensive and long-form answer to them.1 As Adam Dodek hints in the foreword 2 and has noted elsewhere,3 the degree to which government lawyers have been overlooked in the Canadian legal literature is incongruent with their sheer numbers as a proportion of the legal profession in Canada. The need for this book is pronounced.


Case Comment: Heller V. Uber Technologies Inc., Peter Quon Oct 2018

Case Comment: Heller V. Uber Technologies Inc., Peter Quon

Dalhousie Law Journal

Canadian courts have accepted mandatory arbitration clauses as presumptively enforceable unless there is legislation that precludes their application. This position was confirmed by the Supreme Court in Seidel v. TEL US CommunicationsInc. In Heller v. Uber Technologies Inc., the Ontario Court of Appeal considered an arbitration clause in the context of legislation following the approach in Seidel, but the Court also undertook an unconscionability analysis. Reviewing a motion that was granted to stay a class action proceeding in favour of an arbitration clause, the Court unanimously held that the clause was invalid on two separate grounds. First, the arbitration clause …


Foreseeably Unclear: The Meaning Of The "Reasonably Foreseeable" Criterion For Access To Medical Assistance In Dying In Canada, Jocelyn Downie, Kate Scallion Apr 2018

Foreseeably Unclear: The Meaning Of The "Reasonably Foreseeable" Criterion For Access To Medical Assistance In Dying In Canada, Jocelyn Downie, Kate Scallion

Dalhousie Law Journal

Canada's medical assistance in dying legislation contains the eligibility criterion "naturaldeath has become reasonably foreseeable." The phrase "reasonably foreseeable" is unfamiliar and unclear. As a result of ongoing confusion about its meaning, there is reason to be concerned that under- or over-inclusive interpretations of the phrase are adversely affecting access to MAID. With critical interests at stake (eg access to MAiD and potential criminal liability), it is essential that the meaning of the phrase be clarified. Furthermore, the meaning of "reasonably foreseeable" will be at issue in the Charter challenges to the federal MAiD legislation currently before the courts in …


Euthanasia By Organ Donation, Michael Shapiro Apr 2018

Euthanasia By Organ Donation, Michael Shapiro

Dalhousie Law Journal

Euthanasia, the administration of therapy designed to hasten death, particularly in patients with intolerable suffering, has been gaining in acceptance in countries around the world, most recently in Canada. Organ donation from deceased organ donors has always been performed under the strictures of the dead donor rule, the requirement that donors be declared dead prior to any organ recovery. Recent scientific and ethical investigations, however, have questioned whether all donors, whether pronounced based on neurologic (brain death) or circulatory criteria are, in fact, dead. One potential approach to this quandary would be to abandon the fiction imposed by the dead …


The Stakes In Steak: Examining Barriers To And Opportunities For Alternatives To Animal Products In Canada, Angela Lee Apr 2018

The Stakes In Steak: Examining Barriers To And Opportunities For Alternatives To Animal Products In Canada, Angela Lee

Dalhousie Law Journal

This Article considers some of the different food innovations being presented as potential solutions to the myriad problems associated with conventionalmodels of industrial agriculture. Specifically,in vitro meat (IVM) and plant-based alternatives to animal products-and their corresponding regulatory and market structuresare compared and contrasted. Examining the idiosyncrasies around Canada's approach to regulating these products reveals that the respective degrees of scrutiny may not be commensurate with the respective degrees of risk, due in part to the influence of powerful industry actors who wish to maintain the status quo. Given the significance and scope of the problems implicated by the industrial food …


Hit Them Where It Hurts: State Responses To Biker Gangs In Canada, Graema Melcher Oct 2017

Hit Them Where It Hurts: State Responses To Biker Gangs In Canada, Graema Melcher

Dalhousie Law Journal

From civil and criminal forfeiture, to "gangsterism"offences in the Criminal Code, Canada does not lack for tools to address biker gangs. Yet attempts to stamp out bikers have met with little to no success. State responses to criminal organizations should use those organizations' own structures and symbols of power against them. A gang's reputation may be effectively used against a gang, but this strategy poses significant challenges to prosecution. Attempts to use a gang's internal hierarchy and administrative structure can succeed, but may only produce circumstantial findings if not supported by sufficient and substantial evidence. Attempts to combat gang violence …


On Being A Second: Grace Wambolt, Legal Professionalism And 'Inter-Wave' Feminism In Nova Scotia, Elizabeth Legge Apr 2017

On Being A Second: Grace Wambolt, Legal Professionalism And 'Inter-Wave' Feminism In Nova Scotia, Elizabeth Legge

Dalhousie Law Journal

Grace Wambolt was the fifth female graduate of Dalhousie Law School and the second woman to practise law in Nova Scotia. She was one of the relatively few female lawyers in Canada (up to the influx of the nineteen-seventies) who practiced law following the push by the first female lawyers for the elimination of formal barriers to practice. This paper examines the similarities and differences between the "firsts" and those who followed them, primarily by looking at the life of Wambolt and her letters and speeches preserved in the Wambolt fonds located in the Nova Scotia Archives and donated by …


Social Membership: Animal Law Beyond The Property/Personhood Impasse, Will Kymlicka Apr 2017

Social Membership: Animal Law Beyond The Property/Personhood Impasse, Will Kymlicka

Dalhousie Law Journal

While animal law has been subject to frequent reform in Canada and abroad, the basic legal foundations of animal oppression are largely unchanged. There are many reasons for this impasse, but part of the explanation is that legal reforms are caught in what we might call the property/personhood dilemma. In most legal systems, domesticated animals are defined as property and so long as this remains true, reforms are likely to be marginal and ineffective. However the main alternative-to shift animals from the category of property to personhoodis politically unfeasible, particularly for the domesticated animals who are most intensively exploited in …


Of Malls And Campuses: The Regulation Of University Campuses And Section 2(B) Of The Charter, Sarah E. Hamill Apr 2017

Of Malls And Campuses: The Regulation Of University Campuses And Section 2(B) Of The Charter, Sarah E. Hamill

Dalhousie Law Journal

There have been a number of recent cases from across Canada about whether the Charter applies to public universities. Courts in Alberta have suggested that the Charter will apply to public universities while courts in British Columbia and Ontario have refused to apply the Charter to such cases. In this article I focus on the cases that also involve a claim to use university space, that is, those cases where there is an argument that by failing to allow an event on campus the university has violated the free expression guarantee in the Charter. If the Charter does apply and …


Betterment, Michael G. Pratt Apr 2017

Betterment, Michael G. Pratt

Dalhousie Law Journal

When property is wrongfully damaged the cost of reinstatement is often the appropriate measure of damages. Reinstatement by repair or replacement is, however often possible only by replacing old materials with new materials that enhance the value of the property, generating "betterment." In such cases courts are faced with a choice whether to abide the betterment and award the cost of reinstatement, or reduce damages to offset the betterment. Examples of both responses to betterment are found in the cases, but no clear principle has been articulated by Canadian courts as to when one is to be preferred over the …


Informing The Future Of End-Of-Life Care In Canada: Lessons From The Quebec Legislative Experience, Michelle Giroux Oct 2016

Informing The Future Of End-Of-Life Care In Canada: Lessons From The Quebec Legislative Experience, Michelle Giroux

Dalhousie Law Journal

There have been numerous and challenging developments respecting endof-life care in Canada. In Quebec, political consensus and changes in public opinion led to the adoption of end-of-life care legislation. This paper discusses the context and foundation of that reform and reviews its content with the objective of informing the future of end-of-life care in Canada. In the first part of the paper I explore the balancing of the right to life and autonomy, with a focus on the approach chosen in Quebec by the Legal Experts Panel Report. In Part 11, I discuss Quebec's adoption of An Act Respecting End-of-Life …


Modernizing The Canada Health Act, Colleen M. Flood, Bryan Thomas Oct 2016

Modernizing The Canada Health Act, Colleen M. Flood, Bryan Thomas

Dalhousie Law Journal

The Canada Health Act (CHA) was adopted in 1984, to shore up a health-care system conceptualized in the 1960s. Under the CHA, universal coverage is limited to "medicallynecessary" hospital and physician services, to the exclusion of vital goods and services such as outpatient pharmaceuticals, dental care, long-term care, and many mental health services. Inequities resulting from these gaps in public coverage are partly to blame for pushing Canada's health system to the bottom ofrecent international rankings. But there is more to modernizing Canada s health care system, we argue, than filling these gaps in universal coverage. Every major health system …


A Goal-Oriented Understanding Of The Right To Health Care And Its Implications For Future Health Rights Litigation, Michael Da Silva Oct 2016

A Goal-Oriented Understanding Of The Right To Health Care And Its Implications For Future Health Rights Litigation, Michael Da Silva

Dalhousie Law Journal

International human rights law recognizes a right to health. A majority of domestic constitutions recognize health-related rights. Many citizens believe that they have a moral right to health care. Some theorists agree. Yet the idea of a right to health care remains controversial. Specifying the nature of such a right invites more controversy. Indeed, most models of the right face persistent problems that threaten to undermine the conceptual coherence of a right to health care. This article accordingly sketches preliminary arguments for a new, goal-oriented model of the right to health care. It explains that the model avoids most of …


Out Of The Black Hole: Toward A Fresh Approach To Tort Causation, Allan C. Hutchinson Oct 2016

Out Of The Black Hole: Toward A Fresh Approach To Tort Causation, Allan C. Hutchinson

Dalhousie Law Journal

The present state of Canadian doctrine on causation in tort law is in serious disarray Judges and jurists persist in thinking that it is a factual inquiry separate from policy concerns. This is made obvious in the recent Supreme Court decision in Clements and in the academic commentary around it. In contrast, I insist that the requirement of causation must be understood as being entirely part of the broader debate on the goals and policies of tort law generally Causation is a topic drenched with normative values and should be treated as such.


The Future Of Health Law: How Can Law Meet Emerging Health Challenges?, Colleen M. Flood, Lorian Hardcastle Oct 2016

The Future Of Health Law: How Can Law Meet Emerging Health Challenges?, Colleen M. Flood, Lorian Hardcastle

Dalhousie Law Journal

Canadians have often prided themselves on having one of the best health-care systems in the world, but in recent years our system has fallen to the bottom of relevant international comparisons. Incremental attempts to improve the system have not resulted in significant improvements and the reality is that our most pressing challenges can be addressed only through ambitious, systemic reforms. For example, it is well established that Canada's patchwork scheme for providing long-term care will not scale to meet growing needs as a quarter ofthe population enters retirement age over the next two decades.' As yet further examples, the Canadian …


And Miles To Go Before I Sleep: The Future Of End-Of-Life Law And Policy In Canada, Jocelyn Downie Oct 2016

And Miles To Go Before I Sleep: The Future Of End-Of-Life Law And Policy In Canada, Jocelyn Downie

Dalhousie Law Journal

This paper reviews the legal status of a number ofend-of-life law and policy issues that have, to date, been overshadowed by debates about medical assistance in dying. It suggests that law reform is needed in relation to palliative sedation without artificial hydration and nutrition, advance directives for the withholding and withdrawal of oral hydration and nutrition, unilateral withholding and withdrawal of potentially life-sustaining treatment, and the determination of death. To leave the law in its current uncertain state is to leavepatients vulnerable to having no access to interventions that they want or at the other extreme, being forced to receive …


Cross-Cultural Dynamics In Palliative Care: The Emerging Canadian Scenario, Chidi Oguamanam Oct 2016

Cross-Cultural Dynamics In Palliative Care: The Emerging Canadian Scenario, Chidi Oguamanam

Dalhousie Law Journal

As modern technologies leverage medical sciences, life expectancy is on the rise in Canada, and indeed globally with a remarkable increase in the elderly population in need of health care. The same is true of the diversity of cultural groups who are now patrons and stakeholders in Canada's health care landscape. An emergent feature ofthis landscape is the complexity ofcontexts for negotiating and mediating medical care delivery at the end of life. This paper examines the gaps in regulatory and legal interventions as well as the gaps and opportunities to negotiate the transition to palliative care in cross-cultural contexts that …


Aboriginal Consultation In Canadian Water Negotiations:The Mackenzie Bilateral Water Management Agreements, Andrea Beck Oct 2016

Aboriginal Consultation In Canadian Water Negotiations:The Mackenzie Bilateral Water Management Agreements, Andrea Beck

Dalhousie Law Journal

Due to constitutional protection of Aboriginal water rights, the Canadian government has a duty to consult Aboriginal peoples in water-related decision making. In 2015, Alberta and the Northwest Territories signed an agreement for managing their shared waters in the Mackenzie River Basin. In light of Canada's record, observers have praised the preceding negotiation process as pathbreaking due to its high level of Aboriginal involvement. To evaluate such claims, this paper analyzes Aboriginal consultations in the 2011-2015 NWT-Alberta transboundary water negotiation. The comparative case study reaches the following conclusions. In their bilateral water negotiation, the two jurisdictions differed markedly in terns …


Dna, Donor Offspring And Derivative Citizenship: Redefining Parentage Under The Citizenship Act, Stefanie Carsley Oct 2016

Dna, Donor Offspring And Derivative Citizenship: Redefining Parentage Under The Citizenship Act, Stefanie Carsley

Dalhousie Law Journal

Under Canada's Citizenship Act, children born outside Canada acquire derivative citizenship-that is, citizenship through descent or parentage-if at least one of their parents is Canadian. However according to Citizenship and Immigration Canada, in order to qualify for derivative citizenship a child must have a genetic link to a Canadian citizen. Canadians who use donated sperm or eggs to conceive-including women who give birth using donated eggs-are therefore not considered parents for citizenship purposes. According to the Federal Court of Appeal, Canadian donors may also pass on their citizenship to their genetic offspring. This article argues that current interpretations of the …


Canadian Perspectives On Animals And The Law, Sabrina Tremblay-Huet Apr 2016

Canadian Perspectives On Animals And The Law, Sabrina Tremblay-Huet

Dalhousie Law Journal

It is commonplace to affirm that animal law is much more developed in the United States than in Canada; animal abuser registries are being implemented,' animal law degrees are offered,2 and prosecutions ofanimal abusers occur frequently,3 for example. However, the tide is changing in Canada as well, the legal norms and case law becoming increasingly aligned with the social norms surrounding the treatment of animals. An example ofthis is the recent adoption by Quebec ofa new status for animals in its Civil Code, the Loi visant 1'amiliorationde la situationjuridiquede l'animal, adopted on December 4th, 2015.' There are also new challenges …


Doctoral Studies In Law: From The Inside Out, Dia Dabby, Bethany Hastie, Jocelyn Stacey Apr 2016

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 …


Public Institutions As Defamation Plaintiffs, Hilary Young Apr 2016

Public Institutions As Defamation Plaintiffs, Hilary Young

Dalhousie Law Journal

This article focuses on public institutions' ability to sue in defamation. It has a descriptive and a normative section. The descriptive part begins with an analysis of the relevant law in several common law jurisdictions. The state of Canadian law is then examined. The normative section considers which public institutions should be prohibited from suing in defamation and why Whereas some case law suggests that a prohibition on public institution defamation actions should be grounded in the public importance of speech about such institutions, this article takes the position that that is unprincipled. Instead, the focus is on factors such …


Legal Barriers To Age Discrimination In Hiring Complaints, Pnina Alon-Shenker Apr 2016

Legal Barriers To Age Discrimination In Hiring Complaints, Pnina Alon-Shenker

Dalhousie Law Journal

Studies have shown that senior workers endure longer spells of unemployment than their younger counterparts. Age discrimination has been identified as one of the main obstacles to reemployment. This article critically examines how Canadian anti-age discrimination law has responded to the contemporary challenges experienced by senior job seekers. It articulates several difficulties in our existing age discrimination legal framework by analyzing and contrasting social science literature on the present labour market experience of senior job applicants with human rights tribunal and court decisions in hiring complaints. It concludes by sketching a preliminary set of workable proposals for change that derives …


Wired Identities: Retention And Destruction Of Personal Health Information In An Electronic World, Elaine Gibson Oct 2015

Wired Identities: Retention And Destruction Of Personal Health Information In An Electronic World, Elaine Gibson

Dalhousie Law Journal

This article examines the issue of the retention and destruction of personal health information. While legislation in Canada shows some attention to the issue of retaining health records, very little consideration has been given to their destruction. As technological advances have made indefinite retention feasible, serious privacy issues are now being raised by the lack of a standard related to the destruction of health records. The author argues that this issue needs to be explicitly addressed. The author analyzes this problem by looking at issues of autonomy, public good, inequality, and privacy as a social good before offering thoughts on …