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Articles 1 - 30 of 71
Full-Text Articles in Law
Legalizing Assisted Dying: Cross Purposes And Unintended Consequences, Emily Jackson
Legalizing Assisted Dying: Cross Purposes And Unintended Consequences, Emily Jackson
Dalhousie Law Journal
In the UK, assisted dying continues to be unlawful, and pro-legalization campaigners have made use of human rights based applications for judicial review and Private Members Bills in order to try to change the law. Interestingly, however, the proposed statute would not offer an assisted death to many of the litigants who have sought to force Parliament's hand. This article considers whether this a one-off peculiarity, or whether there might be other mismatches between what the law can achieve and what matters most to people who are seeking an assisted death for themselves. It also explores what seems to be …
Physicians' Attitudes, Concerns, And Procedural Understanding Of Medical Aid-In-Dying In Vermont, Teresa Ditommaso, Ari P. Kirshenbaum, Brendan Parent
Physicians' Attitudes, Concerns, And Procedural Understanding Of Medical Aid-In-Dying In Vermont, Teresa Ditommaso, Ari P. Kirshenbaum, Brendan Parent
Dalhousie Law Journal
The general purpose of the current study was to collect data on physicians' attitudes towards Act 39, the medical aid-in-dying act that was legislatively approved in 2013. Given the recent nature of the implementation of Act 39, this is the first such study to be conducted in the State of Vermont. The survey was quantitative in nature and addressed three distinct aspects of legalized prescribing of life-ending medication, these being physicians': (I) attitudes regarding ethics and legality of Act 39, (11)understandings of the policies and procedural requirements under the law, including their belief in legal immunity from penalty, and (I1) …
The Animal Protection Commission: Advancing Social Membership For Animals Through A Novel Administrative Agency, John Maccormick
The Animal Protection Commission: Advancing Social Membership For Animals Through A Novel Administrative Agency, John Maccormick
Dalhousie Law Journal
If the state sought to improve law's treatment of nonhuman animals, what form should its intervention take? This paper questions the assumption that the state would have to choose between incremental welfare reforms and an immediate transition to animal personhood. Drawing on Martha Nussbaum's capabilities theory and on Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka's political approach to animal rights, it argues that the focus should be on how the relationship between human and nonhuman animals can be improved. It suggests that the state could intervene by creating an administrative agency with just this task; and that it could look to labour …
Foreword, Michael Macdonald
The Story Of Law Reform In Nova Scotia: A Perilous Enterprise, Bill Charles
The Story Of Law Reform In Nova Scotia: A Perilous Enterprise, Bill Charles
Dalhousie Law Journal
The basic or overarching question addressed by the author is why institutional law reform in Nova Scotia has experienced such operational difficulties and challenges, particularly in relation to funding, to the point where it can be described as a perilous enterprise. In the process of searching for an answer to this question, the author examines the origins and development of organized law reform in Nova Scotia over the last 65 years, with special attention paid to the experience of Nova Scotia's two statutory commissions. As a backdrop to the discussion, the author examines the complicated process of law reform itself …
Connexion: A Note On Praxis For Animal Advocates, John Enman-Beech
Connexion: A Note On Praxis For Animal Advocates, John Enman-Beech
Dalhousie Law Journal
Effective animal advocacy requires human-animal connexion. I apply a relational approach to unfold this insight into a praxis for animal advocates. Connexion grounds the affective relationships that so often motivate animal advocates. More importantly, it enables animal agency, the ability of animals to act and communicate in ways humans can experience and respond to. With connexion in mind, some weaknesses of previous reform efforts become apparent. I join these in the slogan "abolitionismas disconnexion." In so far as abolitionism draws humans and animals apart, it undermines the movement's social basis, limits its imaginative resources, and deprives animals of a deeper …
Social Membership: Animal Law Beyond The Property/Personhood Impasse, Will Kymlicka
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 …
The Only Legitimate Rule: A Reply To Maclean's Critique Of Ecolawgic, Bruce Pardy
The Only Legitimate Rule: A Reply To Maclean's Critique Of Ecolawgic, Bruce Pardy
Dalhousie Law Journal
Is autonomy "natural"? In Ecolawgic: The Logic of Ecosystems and the Rule of Law, I argue that a legal system of intrinsic neutrality is one over which no political office or branch of government has control and in which individuals have the autonomy to pursue their own interests. In 'Autonomy in the Anthropocene," the preceding article in this issue, Jason MacLean challenges the thesis of Ecolawgic. MacLean argues that autonomy is not a feature of neutral legal systems but a product of cultural norms and regulation. He maintains that Ecolawgic's prescription provides neither optimal economic outcomes nor effective environmental protection. …
The Significance Of The Systemic Relative Autonomy Of Labour Law, Bruce P. Archibald
The Significance Of The Systemic Relative Autonomy Of Labour Law, Bruce P. Archibald
Dalhousie Law Journal
The extent to which labour and employment law form an autonomous subsystem within the legal order is a significant matter in labour relations scholarship. Human capability theory helps explain how open legal constructs for structuring personal work relations are emerging in a relatively autonomous manner Similarly concepts of relational rights and relational contract theory assist in understanding the relatively autonomous development of restorative labour market regulation, with both substantive and procedural dimensions. Moreover dramatic changes in freedom of association doctrine under the Charter, which now procedurally protect collective bargaining, the right to strike and the independence of unions from management, …
Informing The Future Of End-Of-Life Care In Canada: Lessons From The Quebec Legislative Experience, Michelle Giroux
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 …
The Future Of Health Law: How Can Law Meet Emerging Health Challenges?, Colleen M. Flood, Lorian Hardcastle
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
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 …
Agonizing Identity In Mental Health Law And Policy (Part Ii):A Political Taxonomy Of Psychiatric Subjectification, Sheila Wildeman
Agonizing Identity In Mental Health Law And Policy (Part Ii):A Political Taxonomy Of Psychiatric Subjectification, Sheila Wildeman
Dalhousie Law Journal
This is the second part of a two-part essay exploring the function of identity in mental health law and policy or more broadly the function of identity in the politics of mental health. Part one began with the Foucauldian exhortation to undertake a "critical ontology of ourselves," and adopted the methodology of autoethnography to explore the construction or constructedness of the authors identity as an expert working in the area of mental health law and policy. That part concluded with a gesture of resistance to identification on one or the other side of the mental health/ illness divide (the divide …
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
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.
Who Are We?: The Quest For Identity In Law, Colin Jackson, Kim Brooks
Who Are We?: The Quest For Identity In Law, Colin Jackson, Kim Brooks
Dalhousie Law Journal
Scholars from Haraway to Foucault to Freud, from Bourdieu to Erikson to Scarry have theorized identity across continents and among disciplines. Despite the rich material available, however, interrogations of identity in law have remained isolated within substantive areas of law (those working on identity in evidence law have not necessarily met issue with those exploring identity in constitutional law, for example), and have been more limited in scope and imagination than the interrogations undertaken in other disciplines.
Agonizing Identity In Mental Health Law And Policy (Part I), Sheila Wildeman
Agonizing Identity In Mental Health Law And Policy (Part I), Sheila Wildeman
Dalhousie Law Journal
In this two-part paper, the author explores the significance of identity in mental health law and policy In this as in other socio-legal domains, identity functions to consolidate dissent as well as to effect social control. The author asks: where do legal experts stand in relation to the identity categories that run so deep in this area oflaw and policy? More broadly, she asks: is "mentalhealth" working on uson the mental health disabled, legal scholars, all of us-in ways that are impairing our capacity for socialjustice? In the first part of the paper, the author considers the Foucauldian exhortation to …
Indigenous Lawyers In Canada: Identity, Professionalization, Law, Sonia Lawrence, Signa Daum Shanks
Indigenous Lawyers In Canada: Identity, Professionalization, Law, Sonia Lawrence, Signa Daum Shanks
Dalhousie Law Journal
For Indigenous communities and individuals in Canada, "Canadian" law has been a mechanism of assimilation, colonial governance and dispossession, a basis for the assertion of rights, and a method of resistance. How do Indigenous lawyers in Canada make sense of these contradictory threads and their roles and responsibilities? This paper urges attention to the lives and experiences of Indigenous lawyers, noting that the number of self-identified Indigenous lawyers has been rapidly growing since the 1990s. At the same time, Indigenous scholars are focusing on the work of revitalizing Indigenous law and legal orders. Under these conditions, Indigenous lawyers occupy a …
Slipping Between Danger, Pleasure And The Law: Thoughts On Three Recent Books Addressing Sexuality., Ummni Khan
Slipping Between Danger, Pleasure And The Law: Thoughts On Three Recent Books Addressing Sexuality., Ummni Khan
Dalhousie Law Journal
Sexuality is slippery. It slips, for example, between pleasure and danger, between surrender and repression, and between force (the kind that turns some of us on) and violence (the kind that terrorizes us). It can be a site of intense oppression and unwanted objectification, and also ofempowerment and affirming desirability. In this review, I address three recent books that reckon with the ambivalence of sexuality in relation to the law and regulatory practices.
Trauma-Informed Approaches To Law: Why Restorative Justice Must Understand Trauma And Psychological Coping, Melanie Randall, Lori Haskell
Trauma-Informed Approaches To Law: Why Restorative Justice Must Understand Trauma And Psychological Coping, Melanie Randall, Lori Haskell
Dalhousie Law Journal
Becoming trauma informed entails becoming more astutely aware of the ways in which people who are traumatized have their life trajectories shaped by the experience and its effects, and developing policies and practices which reflect this understanding. The idea that lawand, in particular the criminaljustice system, should be trauma informed is novel, and, as a result, quite underdeveloped. In this paper we advance the general argument that more effective, fair, intelligent, and just legal responses must work from a perspective which is trauma informed. We specifically apply this argument to legal work being carried out and developed under the rubric …
A Match Made On Earth: Getting Real About Science And The Law, Susan Haack
A Match Made On Earth: Getting Real About Science And The Law, Susan Haack
Dalhousie Law Journal
Modern legal systems increasingly depend on scientific testimony; but they also need somehow to ensure, so far as possible, that fact-finders aren't misled by highly speculative, poorly-conducted, or dishonestly-presented science. The Critical Common-sensist understanding of science that the author has developed in Defending Science and elsewhere sheds some light on why these interactions between law and science have proven so problematic. But Ms. Acharya's approach to these difficult issues rests on a flawed conception of the supposed "scientificmethod,"and an idea of legal "legitimacy" too weak to bear the weight she places on it; and her claim that the author "idealizes" …
Law's Treatment Of Science: From Idealization To Understanding, Nayha Acharya
Law's Treatment Of Science: From Idealization To Understanding, Nayha Acharya
Dalhousie Law Journal
Increasing reliance on scientific evidence in litigation has created a demand for discussions directed at enabling a legitimate interaction between science and law The article develops the notion ofprocedural legitimacy-that adherence to legal procedure maintains the legitimacy of the adjudicative system and its outcomes -and applies it to determining how best to admit and use scientific evidence. The problem of undervaluing procedural legitimacy is illustrated through a commentary on contributions to the science and law discussion of Edmond and Roach, and Haack. The author's thesis is that maintaining adjudicative legitimacy depends on procedural rules being applied as vigilantly to science …
Response To Haack And Edmond/Roach Articles, Nayha Acharya
Response To Haack And Edmond/Roach Articles, Nayha Acharya
Dalhousie Law Journal
I am grateful to Professors Edmond and Roach' and Professor Haack2 for their thoughtful replies to my paper, Law 's Treatment of Science: From Idealizationto Understanding.Much like my experience after reading "A Contextual Approach to the Admissibility of the State's Forensic Science and Medical Evidence,"' and Haack's contributions, 4 I have come away from reviewing Edmond and Roach and Haack's replies with a heightened awareness that the admissibility of scientific evidence is significant and complicated. Both replies have raised important concerns that have demanded further attention from me, which I turn to here. My response to Edmond and Roach's Reply …
"Uncivil By Too Much Civility"?: Critiquing Five More Years Of Civility Regulation In Canada, Alice Woolley
"Uncivil By Too Much Civility"?: Critiquing Five More Years Of Civility Regulation In Canada, Alice Woolley
Dalhousie Law Journal
The author revisits criticisms of the civility movement made in an earlier paper ("Does Civility Matter?" (2008) 46 Osgoode Hall LJ 175). She argues that Canadian law societies remain concerned with lawyer incivility, despite bringing surprisingly few formal prosecutions against lawyers for incivility. In a few cases the law societies' concern can be justified insofar as lawyer incivility in those cases appears to correlate with serious professional dysfunction. Generally however, the focus on incivility is counter-productive. First, in several cases the focus on lawyer incivility elides the complex and difficult ethical issues raised by the behaviour of the lawyers in …
Costs Immunity: Banishing The 'Bane' Of Costs From Public Interest Litigation, Martin Twigg
Costs Immunity: Banishing The 'Bane' Of Costs From Public Interest Litigation, Martin Twigg
Dalhousie Law Journal
For litigants raising a matter of public interest, the possibility of facing an adverse costs award if unsuccessful may act as a deterrent to pursuing their legal claim. The author evaluates a form of costs order called "costs immunity," referred to as "protective costs orders" (PCOs) in the U.K., as a means of removing the deterrent effect of costs on public interest litigants. Part Iprovides an overview of costs law in Canada. Part // reviews the various types of costs orders employed by Canadian courts to facilitate access to justice in public interest litigation. Part Ill explores the English experience …
Searching And Seizing After 9/11: Developing And Applying Empirical Methodology To Measure Judicial Output Inthe Supreme Court's Section 8 Jurisprudence, Richard Jochelson, Michael Weinrath, Melaine Janelle Murchison
Searching And Seizing After 9/11: Developing And Applying Empirical Methodology To Measure Judicial Output Inthe Supreme Court's Section 8 Jurisprudence, Richard Jochelson, Michael Weinrath, Melaine Janelle Murchison
Dalhousie Law Journal
In 2005, Margit Cohn and Mordechai Kremnitzer created a multidimensional model to measure judicial discourse inherent in the decision making of constitutional courts. Their model set out multiple indicia bywhich to measure whether the court acted within proper constitutional constraints in order to determine the extent to which a court rendered a decision that was activist or restrained. This study attempts to operationalize that model. We use this model to analyze changes in interpretation of search and seizure law under section 8 after the enactment of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms at the Supreme Court of Canada. The …
Law And Mental Health: A Relationship In Crisis?, Sheila Wildeman
Law And Mental Health: A Relationship In Crisis?, Sheila Wildeman
Dalhousie Law Journal
What is the significance of the rule of law to the area of professional knowledge and practice that is "mental health"-or to the interaction of those two aspirational, one might say euphemistically-named social systems: the mental health and justice systems? This question centres upon the rule of law-specifically, I suggest (as I relate further in closing), a thick conception of the rule of law grounded in an ideal of state-subject reciprocity-and not, or not directly, upon the individual and social good ofhealth. It is this overarching question that I wish to pursue in setting the stage for the two lectures …
Medicine And The Law: The Challenges Of Mental Illness, Beverley Mclachlin
Medicine And The Law: The Challenges Of Mental Illness, Beverley Mclachlin
Dalhousie Law Journal
In this lecture, I offer some thoughts on a medical/legal issue that is old, yet perennially pertinent; that is common, yet extraordinary; that is wellknown, yet all too often swept under the carpet. I refer to the issue-or more accurately the plethora of issues-that surround mental health and the law.
A.R.Buck, The Making Ofaustralian Property Law, Margaret Mccallum
A.R.Buck, The Making Ofaustralian Property Law, Margaret Mccallum
Dalhousie Law Journal
Students in first year law in English-speaking common law schools in Canada follow a fairly standard curficulum, heavily weighted in favour of private law subjects such as torts, contracts and property, with criminal law, constitutional law, and perhaps a methods, theories or skills course rounding out their required courses. Most students find the content to be as they expected in courses in torts, contracts, criminal and constitutional law. These areas of law, after all, provide the law-related stories that are an increasing part ofnational and even international news. But many students find first year property a puzzle. They expect the …
Reforming Testamentary Undue Influence In Canadian And English Law, Fiona R. Burns
Reforming Testamentary Undue Influence In Canadian And English Law, Fiona R. Burns
Dalhousie Law Journal
The traditional doctrine of testamentary undue influence developed in nineteenth century England. Its utility, however, is limited since the doctrine requires the person alleging undue influence to provide direct proof of coercion according to a high standard. In England the doctrine has remained static and there have been calls for reform. In Canada, some courts have ceased to apply the traditional doctrine so that today there is no one consistent and coherent doctrine of testamentary undue influence. This article explores two possible reforms of the doctrine both of which are evident in recent Canadian case law: a presumption of testamentary …
Building On Strong Foundations: Rethinking Legal Education With A View To Improving Curricular Quality, Veronica Henderson
Building On Strong Foundations: Rethinking Legal Education With A View To Improving Curricular Quality, Veronica Henderson
Dalhousie Law Journal
Recent increases in law school tuition provide an occasion for criticalreflection on precisely what law students are being offered in their formal education. The aim of this article is to help catalyze discussion of what quality legal education entails. It begins by outlining the current underpinnings of Canadian legal education, especially the foundation of issue identification. Newer developments in legal education are also canvassed.A foundational critique is then applied to elucidate the main weakness of thepresent curricular structure: students are graduating with a flat understanding of the law Employing Dr Oliver Sacks's critique of medical education as a starting point, …