Human Rights Law Commons^™

Twenty Years After Krieger V Law Society Of Alberta: Law Society Discipline Of Crown Prosecutors And Government Lawyers, Andrew Flavelle Martin

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Krieger v. Law Society of Alberta held that provincial and territorial law societies have disciplinary jurisdiction over Crown prosecutors for conduct outside of prosecutorial discretion. The reasoning in Krieger would also apply to government lawyers. The apparent consensus is that law societies rarely exercise that jurisdiction. But in those rare instances, what conduct do Canadian law societies discipline Crown prosecutors and government lawyers for? In this article, I canvass reported disciplinary decisions to demonstrate that, while law societies sometimes discipline Crown prosecutors for violations unique to those lawyers, they often do so for violations applicable to all lawyers — particularly …

Human Rights At The Ocean-Climate Nexus: Opening Doors For The Participation Of Indigenous Peoples, Children And Youth, And Gender Diversity, Unwana Udo, Tahnee Prior, Sara L. Seck

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No abstract provided.

Gender And Intersectionality In Business And Human Rights Scholarship, Melisa N. Handl, Sara L. Seck, Penelope Simons

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In this article, we explore what intersectionality, as an analytic tool, can contribute to business and human rights (BHR) scholarship. To date, few BHR scholars have explicitly engaged in intersectional analysis. While gender analysis of BHR issues remains crucial to expose inequality in business activity, we argue that engagement with intersectionality can enrich and support this and other BHR scholarship. Intersectional approaches allow us to move beyond single-axis analysis, contest simplistic representations about gender issues and expose the complexity of human relations. It draws our attention to structures that sustain disadvantage such as racism, colonialism, social and economic marginalization and …

Is It Actually Violence? Framing Technology-Facilitated Abuse As Violence, Suzie Dunn

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When discussing the term “Technology-Facilitated violence” (TFV) it is often asked: “Is it actually violence?” While international human rights standards, such as the United Nations’ Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, have long recognized emotional and psychological abuse as forms of violence, including many forms of technology-facilitated abuse, law makers and the general public continue to grapple with the question of whether certain harmful technology-facilitated behaviors are actually forms of violence. This chapter explores this question in two parts. First, it reviews three theoretical concepts of violence and examines how these concepts apply to technology-facilitated …

Dispute Settlement Under The African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement: A Preliminary Assessment, Olabisi D. Akinkugbe

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The African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement (AfCFTA) will add a new dispute settlement system to the plethora of judicial mechanisms designed to resolve trade disputes in Africa. Against the discontent of Member States and limited impact the existing highly legalized trade dispute settlement mechanisms have had on regional economic integration in Africa, this paper undertakes a preliminary assessment of the AfCFTA Dispute Settlement Mechanism (DSM). In particular, the paper situates the AfCFTA-DSM in the overall discontent and unsupportive practices of African States with highly legalized dispute settlement systems and similar WTO-Styled DSMs among other shortcomings. Notwithstanding the transplantation of …

Searching For “Superchief” And Other Fictional Indians: A Narrative And Case Comment On R V Bernard, Naiomi Metallic

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In R v Bernard, 2017 NBCA 48, the New Brunswick Court of Appeal upheld the lower courts’ reasoning that a Mìgmaw man living in the traditional Mìgmaq hunting territory of St. John, New Brunswick could not exercise his Aboriginal rights to hunt because he could not prove he descended from the particular subgroup of Mìgmaq who were at St. John at the time of contact with Europeans. In deciding so, the Court of Appeal rejected the argument that the Mìgmaq, as a nation, are the appropriate rights holders and ought to be the body deciding who can exercise the Mìgmaw …

New Brunswick Needs A Public Inquiry Into Systemic Racism In The Justice System: Nova Scotia Shows Why, Naiomi Metallic

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First Nations across New Brunswick have been demanding a public inquiry since the deaths of Chantel Moore and Rodney Levy at the hands of police barely a week apart from each other, and less than two months after the failed prosecution of the man alleged to have hit and killed Brady Francis. There are serious problems in the province’s justice system.

Mi’gmaq and Wolastoqiyik peoples are demanding more than just an investigation into the police conduct in Moore’s and Levy’s deaths; what is sought is a full examination of how New Brunswick’s justice system fails First Nations peoples in the …

Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence: An Overview, Suzie Dunn

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Technology facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) is a complex worldwide phenomenon with devastating results. Research to date shows that victim-survivors of intimate partner violence are tracked by their abusive partners who use technology to monitor their movements and communication. Many women journalists, human rights defenders and politicians face daily death threats and rape threats for speaking out about equality issues or for simply being a woman in a leadership role. Those with intersecting marginalized identities are at specific risk, with Black, Indigenous, and people of colour, LGBTQ+ people, and people with disabilities facing higher rates of attacks and concerted attacks that …

When Law Frees Us To Speak, Jonathon Penney, Danielle Citron

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A central aim of online abuse is to silence victims. That effort is as regrettable as it is successful. In the face of cyber harassment and sexual privacy invasions, women and marginalized groups retreat from online engagement. These documented chilling effects, however, are not inevitable. Beyond its deterrent function, law has an equally important expressive role. In this article, we highlight law’s capacity to shape social norms and behavior through education. We focus on a neglected dimension of law’s expressive role—its capacity to empower victims to express their truths and engage with others. Our argument is theoretical and empirical. We …

Redressing The Imbalances: Rethinking The Judicial Role After R. V. R.D.S., Richard Devlin Frsc, Dianne Pothier

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The decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. R.D.S. dealt with whether a trial judge's comments, about the interactions between police officers and "non-white groups", gave rise to a reasonable apprehension of bias in the circumstances. They strongly criticize the contrary ruling of the dissent as inappropriately drawing a false dichotomy between decisions based on evidence and decisions based on evidence and decision based on generalizations, and as improperly ignoring social context with an unwarranted confidence in the ideology of colour blindness. While more supportive of the majority's analysis, the authors also find cause for concern, with …

Book Review Of Passion: An Essay On Personality , Richard F. Devlin Frsc

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Passion is a cogently structured, compel Jingly argued and seductively enthralling masterpiece which, in years to come, will undoubtedly stand out as an inspirational source for many who seek social transformation. Unger's style, in this essay at least, is lucid and inviting. Substantively, Passion demonstrates not only the depth of his penetrating intellect but also his command of an array of' disciplines. Unger's polymathy is all the more impressive when we remember that ours is an era in which idiosyncratic specialization is the norm.