Digital Commons Network^™

Rural And Remote Access To Justice, A Literature Review, Nicole Aylwin, Lisa Moore

Canadian Forum on Civil Justice

All Canadians, regardless of financial or other barriers, should have reasonable access to justice. Yet the reality remains that for the nearly 20% of Canadians living in rural and remote communities, accessing justice remains difficult, largely due to the unique challenges to service provision that exist in rural and remote communities. These challenges are rooted in the geographical, demographic, and social and cultural characteristics that define rurality and remoteness, and in the varied combinations of these elements that determine the legal and social service needs of individual communities. Moreover, rural and remote areas have various infrastructure, resource, communication and social …

Volume 89, Issue 5 (2015)

Obiter Dicta

No abstract provided.

Volume 89, Issue 4 (2015)

Obiter Dicta

No abstract provided.

The Osgoode Brief (Fall 2015), Osgoode Hall Law School Of York University

The Osgoode Brief

No abstract provided.

Indigenous Lawyers In Canada: Identity, Professionalization, Law, Sonia Lawrence, Signa A. Daum Shanks

Articles & Book Chapters

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 …

Volume 89, Issue 3 (2015)

Obiter Dicta

No abstract provided.

Volume 89, Issue 1 (2015)

Obiter Dicta

No abstract provided.

Unionization At Justice Canada: A Case Study, Andrij Roman Kowalsky

PhD Dissertations

In April 2005, non-management lawyers working at the federal Department of Justice Canada (DOJ) were recognized by the Public Service Labour Relations Act (PSLRA) as employees. This dissertation explores DOJ lawyers unionizing by addressing two research questions: (1) what led DOJ lawyers to unionize with the Association of Justice Counsel (AJC)? and (2) what was the AJC’s experience in negotiating a first collective agreement?

The dissertation is organized using a conventional structure. The literature review presented in Chapter 2 maps the academic study of lawyer unionization. Chapter 3 elaborates on the dissertation’s research design as a case study. Chapter 4 …

Just In Time Research: Rural & Remote Access To Justice: Application Research, Canadian Forum On Civil Justice

Canadian Forum on Civil Justice

This memo provides a survey of smartphone applications that might serve as useful reference points for the development of a rural access to justice app. It is hoped that such an application could help “address the rural conundrum” by using natural language, issue identification, resource listing and mapping, as well as data tracking and sharing to improve access to justice in Canada’s remote communities. By sorting through the “shopping list” of suggested features and functionality provided by the Boldness Project, and by searching for similar use cases, a number of applications came forward as potential sources of inspiration.

Creating New Pathways To Justice Using Simple Artificial Intelligence And Online Dispute Resolution, Darin Thompson

Osgoode Legal Studies Research Paper Series

Access to justice in can be improved significantly through implementation of simple artificial intelligence (AI) based expert systems deployed within a broader online dispute resolution (ODR) framework. Simple expert systems can bridge the ‘implementation gap’ that continues to impede the adoption of AI in the justice domain. This gap can be narrowed further through the design of multi-disciplinary expert systems that address user needs through simple, non-legalistic user interfaces. This article provides a non-technical conceptual description of an expert system designed to enhance access to justice for non-experts. The system’s knowledge base would be populated with expert knowledge from the …

Extending The Reach Of Legal Aid: Report On The Pilot Phase Of The Legal Health Check-Up Project, Ab Currie

Canadian Forum on Civil Justice

The intermediary partnerships that are the foundation of the Legal Health Check-Up (LHC) project are a solid platform for developing a legal service delivery model targeted at people who are the most disadvantaged that includes the pillars of outreach, integrated and holistic service.

Extending The Reach Of Legal Aid: Report On The Pilot Phase Of The Legal Health Check-Up Project, Ab Currie

Canadian Forum on Civil Justice

Research makes clear that legal service delivery, especially to the poor, fails dramatically if clients must find their own way to legal aid offices. The Legal Health Check-Up project addresses this by extending legal aid in partnership with trusted intermediary groups that are part of the everyday world of disadvantaged groups. These intermediaries make an active offer of legal service.It is hoped that the intermediaries will go beyond the gateway roles of problem-spotting and legal referral to – with the legal aid clinic – provide holistic and integrated legal services that otherwise would not be available.

Addressing Access To Justice Through New Legal Service Providers: Opportunities And Challenges, Alice Woolley, Trevor C. W. Farrow

Articles & Book Chapters

Most informed observers of the Canadian and American legal systems accept the existence of a significant crisis in access to justice. One possible solution is to permit paralegals, notaries or other licensed individuals with training more limited than that enjoyed by a licensed attorney to practice in certain areas of law. This paper supports these developments, arguing for a regulated and incremental introduction of new legal service providers into the legal services market. It considers the appropriate training and scope of practice for new legal service providers, and some of the associated opportunities and challenges.

Increasing Innovation In Legal Process: The Contribution Of Collaborative Law, Martha Emily Simmons

PhD Dissertations

This dissertation examines the role of innovation in resolving complex disputes, using Collaborative Law as its case study. Innovation, for the purposes of this research, can be defined as applied creativity that leads to optimal resolution for clients. The process of innovation is required to resolve complex problems, which are increasingly prevalent in legal, economic and social spheres. Collaborative Law indeed has the capacity to resolve such issues in the legal realm. Collaborative Law is a process by which parties and their lawyers enter into a binding contract that limits the representation to a facilitative problem-solving process with the intent …

Volume 88, Issue 11 (2015)

Obiter Dicta

No abstract provided.

Volume 88, Issue 8 (2015)

Obiter Dicta

No abstract provided.

Continuum: Volume 39 (Winter 2015), Osgoode Hall Law School Of York University

Continuum: Osgoode Hall Law School Alumni Magazine

No abstract provided.

Osgoode Syllabus Of Courses And Seminars: 2015 - 2016, Office Of Student Services

Syllabi

No abstract provided.

Grounding Access To Justice Theory And Practice In The Experiences Of Women Abused By Their Intimate Partners, Janet Mosher

Articles & Book Chapters

For women seeking to extricate themselves from the web of entrapment woven together by the multiple threads that make up the coercive control repertoire of their abusive intimate partners, it is often difficult to avoid engagement with legal systems. Yet, the legal systems they encounter—criminal, family, child welfare, immigration among them—are frequently unwelcoming (if not hostile), controlling, demeaning, fragmented and contradictory. While there has been a recent explosion of interest in “access to justice,” little attention has been paid to how we might conceptualize access to justice in a manner that speaks meaningfully to the circumstances of women who experience …

Land Use Priorities And The Law Of Nuisance, Dan Priel

Articles & Book Chapters

Rights-based approaches to tort law have been prominent in recent years in theoretical discussions of tort law. Much of this work has been either highly abstract or focused on a small number of torts like negligence or trespass. Allan Beever’s The Law of Private Nuisance attempts to extend this approach to the tort of private nuisance. Central to his account is the view that the law of nuisance is concerned with prioritising land uses, and that what the law calls ‘nuisance’ is really a case of one land use conflicting with another, higher-ranked one. This essay argues that despite claims …

Towards A Pedagogy Of Diversity In Legal Education, Faisal Bhabha

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

There is resounding consensus that diversity in legal education is a priority. Yet, North American law schools continue to be criticized for failing to reflect the diversity of the society that they are training lawyers to serve. This article is a project of conceptual reorientation against a backdrop of critical scholarship and empirical evidence. Parts I and II examine the past twenty years of diversity promotion in legal education, concluding that, while several advances have been made, especially in increasing numerical representation of diverse groups in law schools, the promise of meaningful diversity remains unfulfilled. Part III suggests that reforms …

A Road To Home: The Right To Housing In Canada And Around The World, Darcel Bullen

Journal of Law and Social Policy

Collects papers presented at the Right to Housing symposium, “A Road to Home: The Right to Housing in Canada and Around the World” held in Toronto, 24 October 2013. Contributors speak to the various interventions and strategies used to actualize housing as a fundamental human right in South Africa, France, the United States, Scotland, and Canada, ranging from litigation, to community awareness building, to protests, and to lobbying. Also speaks to the challenges of enforcement of the right to housing once that right is recognized at law.

Catherine Lennon's Story: Lessons From Front Line Advocacy On The Human Right To Housing, Rob Robinson

Journal of Law and Social Policy

Discusses the United States housing crisis, where four and a half million families were foreclosed on between 2008 and 2013. Families who lacked universal or adequate health insurance, found the physical pain and suffering of a loved one was soon followed by the economic pain and suffering associated with the high costs of health care. The human reality of this suffering is reflected by the story of New York state resident Catherine Lennon. Ensuring the pay out to Bank of America was the law firm of Steven J. Baum, the notorious New York based foreclosure mill, which has since been …

Fighting For The Right To Housing In Canada, Tracy Heffernan, Fay Faraday, Peter Rosenthal

Journal of Law and Social Policy

This paper examines Tanudjaja v Attorney General—the “Right to Housing” case. The authors, co-counsel on the case, discuss the context of the case, the nature of the application, and the legal underpinnings of the section 7 and 15 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms claims, including positive obligations under the Charter and international law, innovative procedure taking a systemic approach to challenging oppressive legislation, and innovative supervisory orders. The authors examine the procedural and substantive implications of the provincial and federal governments’ move to strike the case, parse the Ontario Superior Court of Justice and Ontario Court of Appeal decisions …

No Lawyer For A Hundred Miles?: Mapping The New Geography Of Access Of Justice In Canada, Jamie Baxter, Albert Yoon

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

Recent concerns about the geography of access to justice in Canada have focused on the dwindling number of lawyers in rural and remote areas, raising anxieties about the profession’s inability to meet current and future demands for localized legal services. These concerns have motivated a range of policy responses that aim to improve the education, training, recruitment and retention of practitioners in underserved areas. We surveyed lawyers across Ontario to better understand their physical proximity to clients and how, if at all, that proximity promotes access to justice. We find that lawyers’ scope of practice varies based on a number …

Coercing Justice? Exploring The "Aspirations And Practice" Of Law As A Tool In Struggles Against Social Inequalities, Karen Schucher

PhD Dissertations

This dissertation examines the role of law as a tool in struggles against social inequalities, by tracing the history of Ontario’s human rights legislation and enforcement from the enactment of fair practices statutes in the 1950s through the restructuring of the enforcement regime in 2006. Ontario was the first Canadian province to pass anti-discrimination legislation and to establish a human rights commission enforcement process. This legislation and the commission enforcement process were the models for all other Canadian jurisdictions.

The dissertation approaches the role of law through the framework of tensions between the “aspirations” and the “practices” of law. On …

Safe Havens Or Dangerous Waters? A Phenomenological Study Of Abused Women's Experiences In The Family Courts Of Ontario, Lois Shereen Winstock

PhD Dissertations

This qualitative, interdisciplinary research study explores the experiences of women abused by their intimate partners who appear as litigants in family court proceedings in Ontario, and the responses of judges presiding over those proceedings.

Domestic violence and abuse affects families from all social, economic and cultural groups. Women have been overwhelmingly identified as the victims of domestic violence and abuse. Children exposed to domestic violence and abuse, either directly or indirectly, are also negatively impacted. The term woman abuse has been employed to denote the gendered nature of the phenomena.

Studies of abused womens interactions with the legal system across …

Recovering The Promise Of Public Truth: Juridification And The Loss Of Purpose In Public Inquiries, Jessica Mckeachie

LLM Theses

My intention in this work is to investigate the apparent disconnect between the intended social purposes of inquiries and the impact pressures of juridification have had on them, and consider what steps inquiries may take to resist these pressures. Public inquiries, formerly relied on as an alternative to criminal and civil proceedings and as a means to engage the public on issues of policy, now seem to exhibit more intense procedures akin to those found in the alternative processes they were designed to resist. Under increasing juridification pressures, what function should public inquiries fulfil? In short, my aim is to …

The Osgoode Brief (Fall 2014), Osgoode Hall Law School Of York University

The Osgoode Brief

No abstract provided.

The Application Of Gladue To Bail: Problems, Challenges, And Potential, Jillian Anne Rogin

LLM Theses

This paper argues that the principles articulated by the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. Gladue and re-iterated in R. v. Ipeelee are being interpreted and implemented at the bail phase in a manner that exacerbates, rather than ameliorates the systemic failures of the criminal justice system in its dealings with Aboriginal people. Aboriginal people are grossly over-represented in Canadian prisons including those being detained in remand custody. It is now settled that the principles expressed in Gladue are applicable outside of the context of sentencing and in many jurisdictions have been found to be applicable to judicial interim …