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Full-Text Articles in Law

Rights Adjudication In A Plurinational State: The Supreme Court Of Canada, Freedom Of Religion, And The Politics Of Reasonable Accommodation, Sujit Choudhry Jan 2013

Rights Adjudication In A Plurinational State: The Supreme Court Of Canada, Freedom Of Religion, And The Politics Of Reasonable Accommodation, Sujit Choudhry

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

A disproportionate number of the Supreme Court of Canada’s recent cases on freedom of religion come out of Quebec and involve claims for reasonable accommodation. These decisions represent a point of national cleavage in two respects. First, in each case the Quebec Court of Appeal rejected the section 2(a) claims, and the Supreme Court of Canada overturned its decision. Second, the Supreme Court has often divided on national lines with one or more francophone judges from Quebec writing a concurrence or a sharp dissent. Moreover, francophone judges from outside Quebec have also broken ranks with their colleagues. The cleavages on …


Patterning Rights Constitutionalism: Thirty Years With The Charter, Benjamin L. Berger, Jamie Cameron Jan 2013

Patterning Rights Constitutionalism: Thirty Years With The Charter, Benjamin L. Berger, Jamie Cameron

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

No abstract provided.


The Charter's Influence Around The World, Mark Tushnet Jan 2013

The Charter's Influence Around The World, Mark Tushnet

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

Over the past several decades, the influence of the United States Constitution and Supreme Court around the world has waned while that of the Canadian Charter and Supreme Court has increased. This article examines several reasons for these changes, including: the relative ages of the constitutions; the US Supreme Court’s recent conservatism; the Canadian Supreme Court’s role in developing the doctrine of proportionality; the US Supreme Court’s interest in originalism; differing structures of constitutional review and judicial supremacy; and the two Courts’ relative openness to transnational influences.


Rights In The Age Of Identity Politics, Avigail Eisenberg Jan 2013

Rights In The Age Of Identity Politics, Avigail Eisenberg

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

In 1982, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was entrenched in the Constitution at the height of what has come to be known as an era of identity politics. The influence of identity politics on Canadian jurisprudence is evident both in some of the specific rights entrenched in the Charter and in the manner these rights have been interpreted. This paper examines two approaches to Charter interpretation that use the resources of identity politics. On the identity approach, claims individuals and groups make about their identities in the course of advancing rights claims are treated as immutable, non-negotiable facts, rather …


The Supreme Court Of Canada And Constitutional (Equality) Baselines, Rosalind Dixon Jan 2013

The Supreme Court Of Canada And Constitutional (Equality) Baselines, Rosalind Dixon

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

In its approach to defining “analogous grounds” for the purposes of subsection 15(1) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Supreme Court of Canada has adopted an unusual mix of broad and generous interpretation, and high formalism. This article argues that one potential reason for this is the degree of heterogeneity among the nine distinct enumerated grounds in section 15. Heterogeneity of this kind can produce quite different interpretive consequences, depending on whether a court adopts a direct, “multi-pronged,” or a more synthetic, “common denominator,” approach to the question of analogical development. The Court, over time, has implicitly shifted …


The New Borders Of The Constitutional, Gavin W. Anderson Jan 2013

The New Borders Of The Constitutional, Gavin W. Anderson

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

The key critical constitutional debates of the future are likely—and need—to be very different from those that animated the Charter’s first thirty years. Since 1982, the borders between law and politics, rights and utility, and the public and the private have staked out the main territory contested by critical scholarship. However, these borders now demarcate a restricted landscape, drawing critics onto the ground of normative debate preferred by liberal theory, and leading them to propose, at best, a form of moderate pragmatism. A more promising approach lies in reconnecting constitutional debate to the socio-historical strand of critical theory, as represented …


Aboriginal And Treaty Rights And Violence Against Women, John Borrows Jan 2013

Aboriginal And Treaty Rights And Violence Against Women, John Borrows

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

Violence against Indigenous women is a crisis of national proportions. Unfortunately, Indigenous peoples have been prevented from arguing that Indigenous communities are a constitutional site of activity for dealing with such violence. This article suggests that Aboriginal and treaty rights under section 35 of the Constitution could play a significant role in ensuring that all levels of government are seized with the responsibility for dealing with violence against women. This article explores how section 35 could be reinterpreted in ways that place issues of gender and violence at the heart of its analysis.


The Charter At Thirty, Michael Ignatieff Jan 2013

The Charter At Thirty, Michael Ignatieff

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

No abstract provided.


Inclusion, Voice, And Process-Based Constitutionalism, Colleen Sheppard Jan 2013

Inclusion, Voice, And Process-Based Constitutionalism, Colleen Sheppard

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

This article explores a growing emphasis on process issues in the elaboration of constitutional rights and freedoms, focusing on the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In a diverse range of contexts, judges are framing constitutional rights and freedoms in terms of the processes and practices they require, rather than in terms of specific constitutionally mandated substantive outcomes. Thus, constitutional rights have been interpreted to require a duty to negotiate, a duty to consult, a duty to accommodate, and entitlements to participate in democratic governance. The growing emphasis on processes and practices is positive to the extent that it resonates …


Undoing Historical Wrongs: Law And Indigeneity In India, Pooja Parmar Apr 2012

Undoing Historical Wrongs: Law And Indigeneity In India, Pooja Parmar

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

Beginning with a close look at a recent call by the Supreme Court of India to undo the historical injustices done to the "original inhabitants" of the country, this paper examines similar calls for justice made by Jaipal Singh Munda, the most vocal representative of Adivasis in the Constituent Assembly of India between December 1946 and January 1950, when both the possibilities and limitations of addressing past injustices were being written into the Constitution of India. While drawing attention to debates and disagreements over righting certain past wrongs that remain largely absent from historical accounts of the Constitution's drafting, this …


The Legitimacy Of The Juridical: Constituent Power, Democracy, And The Limits Of Constitutional Reform, Joel Colon-Rios Apr 2010

The Legitimacy Of The Juridical: Constituent Power, Democracy, And The Limits Of Constitutional Reform, Joel Colon-Rios

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

This article asks and answers the question of what conditions must be met for a constitutional regime to enjoy democratic legitimacy. It argues that the democratic legitimacy of a constitutional regime depends on its susceptibility to democratic re-constitution. In other words, it argues that a constitution must provide an opening, a means of egress for constituent power to manifest from time to time. In developing this argument, the article advances a distinction between ordinary constitutional reform -- understood as subject to certain limits -- and the exercise of constituent power through which a society produces novel juridical forms without being …


Are National Class Actions Constitutional?: A Reply To Hogg And Mckee, Janet Walker Jan 2010

Are National Class Actions Constitutional?: A Reply To Hogg And Mckee, Janet Walker

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

This article argues that there is no constitutional impediment to the certification of multijurisdictional class actions by provincial superior courts, and no constitutional requirement to confine plaintiff classes to those in which each claim has a real and substantial connection to the forum. Neither the text of the Constitution nor the constitutionally mandated rules of the conflict of laws restrict court jurisdiction in this way. Rather, the principles of order and fairness require Canadian courts to exercise jurisdiction over multi-jurisdictional class actions in a way that maximizes the objectives of class actions, and minimizes the incidence of overlapping classes and …


The Supreme Court Of Canada, Charter Dialogue, And Deference, Rosalind Dixon Apr 2009

The Supreme Court Of Canada, Charter Dialogue, And Deference, Rosalind Dixon

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

For those concerned about the democratic legitimacy of Charter review by Canadian courts, the idea of dialogue offers a promising middle path between the extremes of judicial and legislative supremacy. Current dialogue theory, however, largely fails to live up to this promise of compromise. Instead of distinguishing democratic worries associated with US style, strong-form judicial review, it largely endorses the legitimacy of such review. For dialogue to live up to its original promise, a new theory that more clearly distinguishes Canada from the United States is required. This article offers a new theory of dialogue in which the willingness of …


Modern Constitutional Democracy And Imperialism, James Tully Jul 2008

Modern Constitutional Democracy And Imperialism, James Tully

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

To what extent is the development of modern constitutional democracy as a state form in the West and its spread around the world implicated in western imperialism? This has been a leading question of legal scholarship over the last thirty years. James Tully draws on this scholarship to present a preliminary answer. Part I sets out seven central features of modern constitutional democracy and its corresponding international institutions of law and government. Part II sets out three major imperial roles that these legal and political institutions have played, and continue to play. And finally, Part III surveys ways in which …


The Constitutive Paradox Of Modern Law: A Comment On Tully, Ruth Buchanan Jul 2008

The Constitutive Paradox Of Modern Law: A Comment On Tully, Ruth Buchanan

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

This commentary draws out and elaborates upon some of the more challenging aspects of Professor Tully's sophisticated taxonomy of the relationship between modern constitutional forms and constituent powers. Tully's article reveals the historical particularities of these formations, and at the same time encourages the reader to think beyond them, towards the potentially uncategorizable realm of democratic constitutionalism. Yet, how is it possible to use a taxonomy of modern constitutional democracy as a means of understanding what ties in the uncharted territory beyond? This commentary further explores to what extent this paradoxical modern configuration of constituent powers and constitutional forms may …


Judicial Review And American Constitutional Exceptionalism, Miguel Schor Jul 2008

Judicial Review And American Constitutional Exceptionalism, Miguel Schor

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

This article challenges the conventional view of the pervasiveness of American-style judicial review. It questions why social movements contest constitutional meaning by fighting over judicial appointments in the United States, and why this strategy makes little sense in democracies that constitutionalized rights in the late twentieth century. The United States has been both a model and an anti-model in the global spread of judicial review, as the hope of Marbury (constitutionalized rights) has been tempered by the fear of Lochner [courts run amok). In reconciling Marbury and Lochner, other polities have adopted stronger mechanisms of judicial accountability that make it …


Prescribed By Law/Une Règle De Droit, Robert Leckey Jul 2007

Prescribed By Law/Une Règle De Droit, Robert Leckey

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

In Multani, the Supreme Court of Canada's kirpan case, judges disagree over the proper approach to reviewing administrative action under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The concurring judges questioned the leading judgment, Slaight Communications, on the basis that it is inconsistent with the French text of section I. This disagreement stimulates reflections on language and culture in Canadian constitutional and administrative law. A reading of both language versions of section 1, Slaight, and the critical scholarship 'reveals a linguistic dualism in which scholars read one version of the Charter and of the judgment and write about them in …


Beyond Self-Congratulations: The Charter At 25 In An International Perspective, Louise Arbour, Fannie Lafontaine Apr 2007

Beyond Self-Congratulations: The Charter At 25 In An International Perspective, Louise Arbour, Fannie Lafontaine

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the authors situate the Canadian human rights evolution in an international context. They look first at the context of the Charters adoption and the characteristics that make it an agent of positive social change in Canada. Secondly, they discuss three areas where interaction between international legal values and our domestic human rights system can be rendered more effective: a) the use of international law in defining the content and possible limitations of Charter rights; b) the increased necessity for a better implementation of international human …


Law's Religion: Rendering Culture, Benjamin L. Berger Apr 2007

Law's Religion: Rendering Culture, Benjamin L. Berger

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

This article argues that constitutional law's inability to deal with religion in a satisfying way flows, in part, from its failure to understand religion as, in a robust sense, culture. Once one begins to understand the Canadian constitutional rule of law itself as a cultural form, it becomes apparent that law renders religion in a very particular fashion, and that this rendering is a product of law's symbolic categories and interpretive horizons. This article draws out the elements of Canadian constitutionalism's unique rendering of religion and argues that, although Canadian constitutionalism claims to understand religion as a culture, this is …


The Charter 25 Years Later: The Good, The Bad, And The Challenges, Beverley Mclachlin Apr 2007

The Charter 25 Years Later: The Good, The Bad, And The Challenges, Beverley Mclachlin

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

This year, as we celebrate the 25th anniversary of the adoption of the Charter, journals and newspapers are replete with evaluations. Some are positive, some less so. Some are downright critical. Today, I would like to offer my reflections on the good news and the bad news about the Charter,a quarter-century on.


Taking Dialogue Theory Much Too Seriously (Or Perhaps Charter Dialogue Isn't Such A Good Thing After All), Andrew Petter Jan 2007

Taking Dialogue Theory Much Too Seriously (Or Perhaps Charter Dialogue Isn't Such A Good Thing After All), Andrew Petter

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

This article challenges the thesis of Peter W. Hogg, Allison A. Bushell Thornton, and Wade K. Wright (put forth earlier in this issue) that the frequency of legislative responses to Charter decisions striking down laws, which they refer to as "Charter dialogue," provides evidence that Canada has a weaker form of. judicial review than is thought to exist in the United States. This article also critiques their claim that judicial review is justified by the idea that individuals have rights that cannot be taken away by an appeal to the general welfare'. The author maintains that this claim not only …


Foreword, Jamie Cameron Jan 2007

Foreword, Jamie Cameron

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

No abstract provided.


Does The Observer Have An Effect?: An Analysis Of The Use Of The Dialogue Metaphor In Canada's Courts, Richard Haigh, Michael Sobkin Jan 2007

Does The Observer Have An Effect?: An Analysis Of The Use Of The Dialogue Metaphor In Canada's Courts, Richard Haigh, Michael Sobkin

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

In "Charter Dialogue Revisited-Or 'Much Ado About Metaphors,"' it is noted that the original idea behind the dialogue metaphor was simply to describe Canada's constitutional structure. Despite this, the metaphor has been criticized for having normative content and influencing courts and legislatures. In this commentary, the authors analyze all Supreme Court of Canada and lower court uses of the dialogue metaphor and conclude that, with some exceptions, the courts have employed the metaphor properly, i.e., descriptively. Since, however, the metaphor can be misapplied-used other than to describe or explain the relationship between the courts and legislatures in Canada-the authors recommend …


Charter Dialogue Revisited: Or "Much Ado About Metaphors", Peter W. Hogg, Allison A. Bushell Thornton, Wade K. Wright Jan 2007

Charter Dialogue Revisited: Or "Much Ado About Metaphors", Peter W. Hogg, Allison A. Bushell Thornton, Wade K. Wright

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

This article is a sequel to the 1997 article "The Charter Dialogue Between Courts and Legislatures (Or Perhaps The Charter of Rights Isn't Such A Bad Thing After All)." In the present article, the authors review various academic critiques of their "dialogue" theory, which postulates that Charter decisions striking down laws are not the last word, but rather the beginning of a "dialogue," because legislative bodies are generally able to (and generally do) enact sequel legislation that accomplishes the main objective of the unconstitutional law. The authors also examine the Supreme Court of Canada's dicta on the "dialogue" phenomenon, and …


Constitutionalism From The Top Down, Grant Huscroft Jan 2007

Constitutionalism From The Top Down, Grant Huscroft

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

Dialogue theory regards judicial interpretation of the Charter as authoritative, and, as a result, denies that continuing disagreement with the courts is legitimate. There is little scope, in other words, for dialogue with the courts in any meaningful sense. The Charter is best understood as establishing strong-form judicial review rather than weak, and legislatures have only as much room to respond to judicial decisions as the courts are prepared to allow.


The Day The Dialogue Died: A Comment On Sauve V. Canada, Christopher P. Manfredi Jan 2007

The Day The Dialogue Died: A Comment On Sauve V. Canada, Christopher P. Manfredi

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

In Sauvé v. Canada (2002) a sharply divided Supreme Court of Canada nullified the inmate disenfranchisement provision of the Canada Elections Act. One of the more important aspects of the majority decision by Chief Justice McLachlin is her refusal to let the concept of dialogue take her down the path of judicial deference. This commentary examines the chief justice's reasons for not taking this path and explores how these reasons reveal the limitations of the dialogue metaphor as originally articulated by Peter Hogg and Allison Bushell. The commentary concludes that any meaningful concept of legislative-judicial dialogue must recognize a coordinate …


Dialogue Theory, Judicial Review, And Judicial Supremacy: A Comment On "Charter Dialogue Revisted", Carissima Mathen Jan 2007

Dialogue Theory, Judicial Review, And Judicial Supremacy: A Comment On "Charter Dialogue Revisted", Carissima Mathen

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

By suggesting that we view the judicial-legislative relationship as a dialogue, the authors of "Charter Dialogue" have greatly influenced constitutional debate in Canada. This commentary offers three observations about the authors' latest contribution. First, it queries the continued usefulness of the term "dialogue." Second, it raises concerns with the idea that section 1 of the Charter promotes dialogue, as the term is now explained by the authors. Finally, it queries the authors' perspective on judicial review and their accompanying terminology.


Sharpening The Dialogue Debate: The Next Decade Of Scholarship, Kent Roach Jan 2007

Sharpening The Dialogue Debate: The Next Decade Of Scholarship, Kent Roach

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

The first part of this commentary examines the roles of coordinate construction in which legislatures act on their own interpretation of the constitution, second look cases in which the courts judge the constitutionality of a legislative reply to a judicial decision, and various constitutional remedies. The second part examines some differences in emphasis between the author's approach to dialogue and that taken by Hogg and his co-authors with respect to the justification of the judicial role in the dialogue, the relation between Charter dialogue and common law constitutionalism, and the proper interpretive approach to section 7 of the Charter. Three …


A Reply On "Charter Dialogue Revisited", Peter W. Hogg, Allison A. Bushell Thornton, Wade K. Wright Jan 2007

A Reply On "Charter Dialogue Revisited", Peter W. Hogg, Allison A. Bushell Thornton, Wade K. Wright

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

No abstract provided.


Europe's Darker Legacies; Notes On Mirror Reflections, The Constitution As Fetish, And Other Such Linkages Between The Past And The Future Darker Legacies Of Law In Europe; The Shadow Of National Socialism And Fascism Over Europe And Its Legal Traditions Edited, By Christian Joerges And Navraj Singh Ghaleigh (Eds); European Constitutionalism Beyond The State, By J. H. H. Weiler And Marlene Wind (Eds), Peer Zumbansen Jul 2005

Europe's Darker Legacies; Notes On Mirror Reflections, The Constitution As Fetish, And Other Such Linkages Between The Past And The Future Darker Legacies Of Law In Europe; The Shadow Of National Socialism And Fascism Over Europe And Its Legal Traditions Edited, By Christian Joerges And Navraj Singh Ghaleigh (Eds); European Constitutionalism Beyond The State, By J. H. H. Weiler And Marlene Wind (Eds), Peer Zumbansen

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

No abstract provided.