Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Discipline
-
- Arts and Humanities (2)
- Constitutional Law (2)
- Contracts (2)
- Ethics and Political Philosophy (2)
- Law and Politics (2)
-
- Philosophy (2)
- Public Law and Legal Theory (2)
- Criminal Law (1)
- Human Rights Law (1)
- International Law (1)
- Law and Philosophy (1)
- Legal Studies (1)
- Legal Theory (1)
- National Security Law (1)
- Natural Law (1)
- Privacy Law (1)
- Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration (1)
- Social and Behavioral Sciences (1)
- Publication Type
Articles 1 - 11 of 11
Full-Text Articles in Jurisprudence
Restoring Accountability In Freedom Of Expression Theory: Public Libel Law And Radical Whig Ideology, Randall Stephenson
Restoring Accountability In Freedom Of Expression Theory: Public Libel Law And Radical Whig Ideology, Randall Stephenson
Osgoode Hall Law Journal
As leading common law jurisdictions grapple with the Internet’s impact on defamation law, comparative legal scholarship has revealed long-standing problems with its underlying theoretical justifications. Specifically, public libel doctrine is commonly supported by appeals to democratic theory in the abstract. Accountability concerns most relevant to adjudicating public libel cases are thus routinely overlooked. This article aims to diagnose the causes of these theoretical inaccuracies, describe their impact on public libel law, and translate their significance for law reform. Through exploring eighteenth-century libertarian thought, we highlight the foundational importance of accountability and the checking function rationale to democratic theory and governance. …
The Place Of Legitimacy In Legal Theory, Dan Priel
The Place Of Legitimacy In Legal Theory, Dan Priel
Articles & Book Chapters
In this essay I argue that in order to understand debates in jurisprudence one needs to distinguish clearly between four concepts: validity, content, normativity, and legitimacy. I show that this distinction helps us, first, make sense of fundamental debates in jurisprudence between legal positivists and Dworkin: these should not be understood, as they often are, as debates on the conditions of validity, but rather as debates on the right way of understanding the relationship between these four concepts. I then use this distinction between the four concepts to criticize legal positivism. The positivist account begins with an attempt to explain …
The Intelligibility Of Extralegal State Action: A General Lesson For Debates On Public Emergencies And Legality, François Tanguay-Renaud
The Intelligibility Of Extralegal State Action: A General Lesson For Debates On Public Emergencies And Legality, François Tanguay-Renaud
Articles & Book Chapters
Some legal theorists deny that states can conceivably act extralegally in the sense of acting contrary to domestic law. This position finds its most robust articulation in the writings of Hans Kelsen and has more recently been taken up by David Dyzenhaus in the context of his work on emergencies and legality. This paper seeks to demystify their arguments and ultimately contend that we can intelligibly speak of the state as a legal wrongdoer or a legally unauthorized actor.
Book Review: Justice In Robes By Ronald Dworkin (2006), Dan Priel
Book Review: Justice In Robes By Ronald Dworkin (2006), Dan Priel
All Papers
Since the 1960's Ronald Dworkin has been arguing for a particular account of law that he believed was both explanatorily superior to the one offered by competing theories, and also the basis for normative arguments for producing right answers to legal questions. Justice in Robes collects Dworkin's most recent essays on this subject and thus provides the appropriate opportunity for assessing the legal theory of one of the more influential legal philosophers. In this Review I seek to offer a clearer account than appears in the book itself of Dworkin's project, and in this way offer a measured assessment of …
The Constitutionalization Of Quebec Libel Law, 1848-2004, Joseph Kary
The Constitutionalization Of Quebec Libel Law, 1848-2004, Joseph Kary
Osgoode Hall Law Journal
In 1848, a Quebec judge changed the law of defamation to accord with the newly-applicable constitutional right to freedom of speech. His decision and those that followed seem strange now that the Supreme Court of Canada has held that Charter rights do not apply to private law. These decisions show that the constitutionalization of libel law was not an American innovation, but rather one that emerged in Canada over a century earlier. This article analyzes the Quebec cases in detail, and suggests that they were grounded in liberal ideas about the British Constitution that were prevalent in Lower Canada at …
Governance And Anarchy In The S.2(B) Jurisprudence: A Comment On Vancouver Sun And Harper V. Canada, Jamie Cameron
Governance And Anarchy In The S.2(B) Jurisprudence: A Comment On Vancouver Sun And Harper V. Canada, Jamie Cameron
Articles & Book Chapters
The article identifies and explains a double standard in the Supreme Court of Canada jurisprudence. The contrast is between the open court jurisprudence, which is a model of good constitutional governance – or principled decision making – and the Court’s s.2(b) methodology, which is “anarchistic” or capricious and undisciplined, in the sense of this article. Two landmark cases decided in 2004 illustrate the double standard: the first is Re Vancouver Sun, [2004] 2 S.C.R. 332, which dealt with the open court principle under Parliament’s anti-terrorism provision for investigative hearings, it represents a high water mark for open court and s.2(b) …
Critiques Of The Limits Of Freedom Of Contract: A Rejoinder, Michael J. Trebilcock
Critiques Of The Limits Of Freedom Of Contract: A Rejoinder, Michael J. Trebilcock
Osgoode Hall Law Journal
This rejoinder to the foregoing critiques of the author's book, The Limits of Freedom of Contract, focuses on several themes: a) what range of contractually-related issues do courts possess the requisite institutional competence to address? b) whether problematic normative issues in contract law are amenable to rational analysis and at least provisional resolution, or are inherently indeterminate, contingent, and political? c) what the value of individual autonomy implies in terms of the type of transactions parties should be permitted to engage in? d) whether an "internal" rather than consequentialist theory of contract law is conceivable? and e) whether autonomy values …
The Idea Of A Public Basis Of Justification For Contract, Peter Benson
The Idea Of A Public Basis Of Justification For Contract, Peter Benson
Osgoode Hall Law Journal
The essay has two main objects. The first is to take up and to develop certain of the difficulties that Professor Trebilcock finds with autonomy and welfare-based theories of contract law. The essay reaches the conclusion that efficiency, autonomy, and welfare approaches suffer from fundamental and yet qualitatively different kinds of defects. Moreover, in the course of its critical examination of these theories, the essay introduces and makes explicit an ideal of justification which The Limits of Freedom of Contract only implicitly assumes-an ideal of justification which the essay, following the recent work of Rawls, calls a "public basis of …
The Last Emperor?, Allan C. Hutchinson
The Myth Of Retributive Justice, Brian Slattery
The Myth Of Retributive Justice, Brian Slattery
Articles & Book Chapters
In fairy tales, villains usually come to a bad end, snared in a trap of their own making, or visited with a disaster nicely suited to their particular villainy. Read a story of this kind to children and you will be struck by the profound satisfaction with which this predictable of events is greeted. Yet, if children cheer when the villain is done in, they are just as satisfied when the hero manages to get the villain by the throat but takes pity and spares him. These tales of retribution and mercy, even reduced to their barest bones, seem to …
Rights, Communities, And Tradition, Brian Slattery
Rights, Communities, And Tradition, Brian Slattery
Articles & Book Chapters
This paper argues that there is a close connection between basic human rights and communal bonds. It criticizes the philosophical views of Alan Gewirth and Alasdair MacIntyre, which in differing ways deny this connection.