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Full-Text Articles in Legal History

The Origins Of A Coming Crisis: Renewal Of The Churchill Falls Contract, James P. Feehan, Melvin Baker Apr 2007

The Origins Of A Coming Crisis: Renewal Of The Churchill Falls Contract, James P. Feehan, Melvin Baker

Dalhousie Law Journal

The 1969 Churchill Falls contract between Hydro-Quebec and the Churchill Falls Labrador Corporation has been the subject of political controversy. It has also been challenged in the courts, with appeals reaching to the Supreme Court of Canada. Yet, despite the scrutiny of those court cases, the political rhetoric, and the literature that has been spawned by this matter, an extraordinary element of that contract remains remarkably obscure. It is the contract's renewal clause. At the expiry of the contract's forty-four-year term in 2016, that clause requires an automatic renewal for twenty-five additional years at a fixed nominal price that is …


Conflict Of Interest, Duress And Unconscionability In Quebec Civil Law: Comment On "The Origins Of A Coming Crisis: Renewal Of The'churchill Falls Contract", Sarah P. Bradley Apr 2007

Conflict Of Interest, Duress And Unconscionability In Quebec Civil Law: Comment On "The Origins Of A Coming Crisis: Renewal Of The'churchill Falls Contract", Sarah P. Bradley

Dalhousie Law Journal

As Professor James Feehan and archivist-historian Melvin Baker describe the circumstances in which the fateful renewal provision of the 1969 Churchill Falls hydro contract was negotiated, they suggest that the legal doctrines of conflict of interest or economic duress might offer a basis upon which the contract, or perhaps the renewal provision, could be impugned. In addition to interesting historical insights, their analysis offers the intriguing possibility that the government of Newfoundland may yet succeed in its long-standing battle to rid itself of its obligations under the grossly disadvantageous Churchill Falls contract.


The Dartmouth Schools Question And The Supreme Court Of Nova Scotia, Robert Nicholas Bérard Apr 2005

The Dartmouth Schools Question And The Supreme Court Of Nova Scotia, Robert Nicholas Bérard

Dalhousie Law Journal

Scholars have often demonstrated that courts in Canada have long been responsive to the political, social, cultural and economic contexts in which they operate. An illustration of the ways in which the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia embodied this role can be found in the Court's handling of a dispute between the Town of Dartmouth and the Roman Catholic Episcopal Corporation of Halifax, often referred to as the "Dartmouth Schools Question" in 1939 and 1940 The case concerned the attempt of the Town of Dartmouth, alone among municipalities in Nova Scotia, to collect local taxes on property used for Catholic …


The Course Of Law Cannot Be Stopped': The Aftermath Of The Cumberland Rebellion In The Civil Courts Of Nova Scotia, Jim Phillips, Ernest A. Clarke Oct 1998

The Course Of Law Cannot Be Stopped': The Aftermath Of The Cumberland Rebellion In The Civil Courts Of Nova Scotia, Jim Phillips, Ernest A. Clarke

Dalhousie Law Journal

This article examines a series of cases launched in the Nova Scotia courts following the Cumberland Rebellion of 1776. In these cases loyalists sued former rebels, including those granted amnesty by the authorities, for losses sustained during the rebellion. The article traces the history of the cases and places them in the context of post-rebellion government policy. It argues that such proceedings were without precedent and effectively took the place of official schemes of expropriation of rebel land and compensation to loyalists. It also suggests that the use of civil courts in this way prolonged and exacerbated the social and …


Collective Violence In Ferryland District, Newfoundland, 1788, Christopher English Oct 1998

Collective Violence In Ferryland District, Newfoundland, 1788, Christopher English

Dalhousie Law Journal

In September 1788 a court found 114 men guilty of riotous assembly in the district of Ferryland the previous winter. This event is remarkable for the number involved (45% of the adult male population of the district); for the number of charges (21% of all civil and criminal actions heard in the district's courts over the next 25 years); for the absence of damage to property; and for the severity of the sentences, which included loss of wages, flogging, transportation and banishment. These proceedings occurred in a community where *the majority (Irish planters, fishermen and apprentices) were socially distinct from …


Sedition In Nova Scotia: R. V. Wilkie (1820) And The Incontestable Illegality Of Seditious Libel Before R. V. Howe (1835), Barry Cahill Oct 1994

Sedition In Nova Scotia: R. V. Wilkie (1820) And The Incontestable Illegality Of Seditious Libel Before R. V. Howe (1835), Barry Cahill

Dalhousie Law Journal

Given its primacy and exceptionality in the Nova Scotian context, Wilkie both exemplifies the judiciary's role in official repression, and instantiates the importance of what Wright calls "the ideological mechanisms of the criminal law" in prescribing the outer limits of legitimate political discourse. This paper examines the first known use by the government of Nova Scotia of the eighteenth-century, judicially-invented misdemeanour of seditious libel in order to silence and punish criticism of the ruling eite. As Nova Scotia had neither indigenous caselaw, nor statutory legislation to supplement and reinforce the common law offence-Upper Canada's SeditionAct (1804) was still in full …


Discrimination, The Right To Seek Redress And The Common Law: A Century-Old Debate, Béatrice Vizkelety Oct 1992

Discrimination, The Right To Seek Redress And The Common Law: A Century-Old Debate, Béatrice Vizkelety

Dalhousie Law Journal

Does discrimination law have anything in common with the common law? This question, which may have been reworded from time to time in deference to the age in which it was raised, is one which has recurred with remarkable tenacity throughout most of this century. It is also a question which continues, despite initial impressions, to be relevant to the manner in which adjudicatots interpret and apply anti-discrimination legislation today.


The Constitution And Immigration: The Impact Of The Proposed Changes To The Immigration Power Under The Constitution Act, 1867, Davies Bagambiire Oct 1992

The Constitution And Immigration: The Impact Of The Proposed Changes To The Immigration Power Under The Constitution Act, 1867, Davies Bagambiire

Dalhousie Law Journal

This article examines the impact that the suggested changes would have on the immigration power as presently set forth in sections 95 and 91(25) of the Constitution Act, 1867, and on Canadian immigration policy generally. First, it discusses how the present immigration power is allocated as between the federal government and the provinces, how it has been exercised or attempted to be exercisedby the two levels of government and how it has evolved and been interpreted by the Courts. Secondly, it looks at the problems that could arise as a result of the federal government transferring some of its immigration …


Doorkeepers: Legal Education In The Territories And Alberta, 1885-1928, Peter M. Sibenik May 1990

Doorkeepers: Legal Education In The Territories And Alberta, 1885-1928, Peter M. Sibenik

Dalhousie Law Journal

Legal education has been subjected to greater scrutiny in common law jurisdictions since the publication of Lawyers and the Courts in 1967.2 Most of the recent literature has addressed the issue of who received a legal education and became entitled to practise law. It has also examined how a conservative-minded profession regenerated itself, and whether it equipped new recruits with the proper tools to meet the challenges of a changing society.


The Use Of History In Canadian Constitutional Adjudication, Frederick Vaughan Apr 1989

The Use Of History In Canadian Constitutional Adjudication, Frederick Vaughan

Dalhousie Law Journal

It is only in recent years that the use by judges of extrinsic materials has become an issue openly discussed in Canadian legal periodicals. Chief Justice Brian Dickson virtually occasioned a debate on the question in a public address in 1979. The Chief Justice said: ". . . the Supreme Court of Canada recently signalled an increasing receptiveness to the use of extrinsic materials in the Anti-Inflation Reference. Accordingly, I expect that we will see an increasing use by appellate courts of extrinsic evidence". Dickson gave the impression that extrinsic material was not widely used by Canadian courts prior to …