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Articles 31 - 60 of 76
Full-Text Articles in Law
Introduction: Gender In Refugee Law: From The Margins To The Centre, Efrat Arbel, Catherine Dauvergne, Jenni Millbank
Introduction: Gender In Refugee Law: From The Margins To The Centre, Efrat Arbel, Catherine Dauvergne, Jenni Millbank
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Questions of gender have strongly influenced the development of international refugee law over the last few decades. This volume assesses the progress towards appropriate recognition of gender-related persecution in refugee law. It documents the advances made following intense advocacy around the world in the 1990s, and evaluates the extent to which gender has been successfully integrated into refugee law. Evaluating the research and advocacy agendas for gender in refugee law ten years beyond the 2002 UNHCR Gender Guidelines, the book investigates the current status of gender in refugee law. It examines gender-related persecution claims of both women and men, including …
The Other Section 7, Margot Young
The Other Section 7, Margot Young
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The somewhat rudimentary notions of liberty, life and security of the person that are corralled by traditional section 7 jurisprudence are not the sole indicator of what the section potentially ought to, and indeed may ultimately, protect and ensure. It is now fairly well established that the rights section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects apply well outside the sphere of criminal law. Two strands of expansion exist, one less controversial than the other. First, it is relatively clear that section 7 encompasses executive administration of the law. The second path of expansion allows section 7 …
Bordering On Failure: Canada-U.S. Border Policy And The Politics Of Refugee Exclusion, Efrat Arbel, Alletta Brenner
Bordering On Failure: Canada-U.S. Border Policy And The Politics Of Refugee Exclusion, Efrat Arbel, Alletta Brenner
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In June 2012, the Canadian government ushered in sweeping reforms to Canada’s refugee system. These reforms brought debates about Canadian refugee protection to the forefront of legal and political discourse. In advancing these reforms, the Canadian government has asserted that Canada’s refugee system is among the most generous and compassionate in the world. Canada’s doors, the Canadian government has stated, remain open to legitimate refugees. This report evaluates these claims by examining the U.S.-Canada Safe Third Country Agreement and border measures implemented under the rubric of the Multiple Borders Strategy, and analyzing their effects on asylum seekers. A detailed examination …
Shifting Borders And The Boundaries Of Rights: Examining The Safe Third Country Agreement Between Canada And The United States, Efrat Arbel
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This article analyzes the Canadian Federal Court and Federal Court of Appeal decisions assessing the Safe Third Country Agreement between Canada and the United States (STCA). It examines how each court’s treatment of the location and operation of the Canada-US border influences the results obtained. The article suggests that both in its treatment of the STCA and in its constitutional analysis, the Federal Court decision conceives of the border as a moving barrier capable of shifting outside Canada’s formal territorial boundaries. The effect of this decision is to bring refugee claimants outside state soil within the fold of Canadian constitutional …
Social Justice And The Charter: Comparison And Choice, Margot Young
Social Justice And The Charter: Comparison And Choice, Margot Young
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At a time of radical inequality, the changes sought by social justice advocacy are urgently needed. Yet repeatedly, courts fail to respond adequately to this challenge. A core issue plagues social justice jurisprudence under sections 7 and 15: the difficulty inevitable in the contemplation and expression of the social and political forms in which oppression and social injustice occur. This problem manifests doctrinally in ways specific to the rights at issue. In section 15 cases, the casting of comparator groups has been deeply problematic, and in both section 15 and section 7 cases, the courts fail to deliver a nuanced …
Positive Obligations And Criminal Justice: Duties To Protect Or Coerce?, Liora Lazarus
Positive Obligations And Criminal Justice: Duties To Protect Or Coerce?, Liora Lazarus
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This chapter explores the relationship between criminal law, criminal process and human rights from a slightly different perspective. It demonstrates that while human rights may well be used to limit the excesses of security and law and order politics, the nature of the relationship between human rights and criminal justice cannot be captured alone by the view of rights as a limit on the coercive reach of the criminal law and criminal justice institutions. Increasingly, human rights, cast as positive rights, have resulted in claims for the extension of the criminal law, the creation of preventative duties or ‘protective policing …
How The Charter Has Failed Non-Citizens In Canada – Reviewing Thirty Years Of Supreme Court Of Canada Jurisprudence, Catherine Dauvergne
How The Charter Has Failed Non-Citizens In Canada – Reviewing Thirty Years Of Supreme Court Of Canada Jurisprudence, Catherine Dauvergne
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This paper presents a study of all of the Supreme Court of Canada’s Charter-era jurisprudence addressing the rights of non-citizens. It traces the jurisprudential evolution from early decisions strongly supportive of non-citizens’ rights claims, to more recent rulings where non-citizens’ rights claims are rejected, sidelined or even ignored. Patterns in decision making are discernible and the decline in protections for non-citizens follows logically enough from a series of interpretive stances made relatively early on. There is evidence here of what I have termed ‘Charter hubris.’ This is a leading factor in explaining the current state of affairs, which works alongside …
Governments In Miniature: The Rule Of Law In The Administrative State, Mary Liston
Governments In Miniature: The Rule Of Law In The Administrative State, Mary Liston
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This chapter discusses several of the key attributes of the rule of law and explores their relevance for Canadian administrative law: the rule of law as an unwritten constitutional principle; the rule of law as a political ideal which structures institutional relations and competencies; and, the rule of law as a distinctive political morality which, in Canada, is understood as a dialogue among the three branches of government. The chapter assesses the Canadian articulation of the rule of law in the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court of Canada, then turns to the contemporary judicial review of administrative action. Recent case …
Migrant Smuggling: Canada's Response To A Global Criminal Enterprise, Benjamin Perrin
Migrant Smuggling: Canada's Response To A Global Criminal Enterprise, Benjamin Perrin
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Migrant smuggling is a dangerous, sometimes deadly, criminal activity. Failing to respond effectively to migrant smuggling and deter it will risk emboldening those who engage in this illicit enterprise, which generates proceeds for organized crime and criminal networks, funds terrorism and facilitates clandestine terrorist travel, endangers the lives and safety of smuggled migrants, undermines border security, and undermines the integrity and fairness of immigration systems. Introduced in the Canadian House of Commons in June 2011, the Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada’s Immigration System Act (Bill C-4) includes proposed amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act that would enhance …
The Culture Of Rights Protection In Canadian Refugee Law: Examining The Domestic Violence Cases, Efrat Arbel
The Culture Of Rights Protection In Canadian Refugee Law: Examining The Domestic Violence Cases, Efrat Arbel
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This article examines Canadian refugee law cases involving domestic violence, analyzed through a comparison with cases involving forced sterilization and genital cutting. Surveying 645 reported decisions, it suggests that Canadian adjudicators generally adopted different methods of analysis in refugee cases involving domestic violence, as compared with these other claims. The article argues that Canadian adjudicators rarely recognized domestic violence as a rights violation in itself but, instead, demonstrated a general predisposition toward finding domestic violence persecution in cultural difference. That is, adjudicators tended to recognize domestic violence claimants not as victims of persecutory practices but rather as victims of persecutory …
Sexual Assault Cases In The Supreme Court Of Canada: Losing Sight Of Substantive Equality?, Emma Cunliffe
Sexual Assault Cases In The Supreme Court Of Canada: Losing Sight Of Substantive Equality?, Emma Cunliffe
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The equality guarantee contained in section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms has prompted reforms that protect women as complainants in sexual assault cases. This article considers the effectiveness of these reforms. Part 2 supplies a history of the relationships between consent, trial procedure, and substantive equality in sexual assault law. The author argues that substantive equality has had a significant effect on both substance and procedure. Part 3 examines the impact of these reforms by considering the extent to which substantive equality has infused judicial reasoning and fact determination in contested sexual assault cases. Specifically, the …
The 'Great Writ' Reinvigorated? Habeas Corpus In Contemporary Canada, Debra Parkes
The 'Great Writ' Reinvigorated? Habeas Corpus In Contemporary Canada, Debra Parkes
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This short prelude to Professor James Oldham’s 2nd Annual DeLloyd J Guth Visiting Lecture in Legal History, “Habeas Corpus, Legal History and Guantanamo Bay,” discusses some of ways that the writ of habeas corpus plays an important role in promoting access to justice and protecting basic liberty interests in contemporary Canadian law. The focus will be on developments in the law since the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was enacted, touching on two important features of a modern doctrine of habeas corpus, namely flexibility and gap-filling, both of which Professor Oldham also develops in his essay.
From Smith To Smickle: The Charter's Minimal Impact On Mandatory Minimum Sentences, Debra Parkes
From Smith To Smickle: The Charter's Minimal Impact On Mandatory Minimum Sentences, Debra Parkes
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This paper attempts to assess the impact that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms has had, and may have in the near future, on mandatory minimum sentences and their legislated proliferation. To answer those questions, the paper first briefly reviews the Supreme Court of Canada case law on the constitutionality of mandatory minimum sentences. The next two sections will outline the approach taken in the recent Smickle decision in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice before moving on to argue that courts should subject the purported goals, justifications and implications of mandatory minimum sentences to a more searching form …
The Case For Leverage-Based Corporate Human Rights Responsibility, Stepan Wood
The Case For Leverage-Based Corporate Human Rights Responsibility, Stepan Wood
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Should companies’ human rights responsibilities arise, in part, from their “leverage” – their ability to influence others’ actions through their relationships? Special Representative John Ruggie rejected this proposition in the United Nations Framework for business and human rights. I argue that leverage is a source of responsibility where there is a morally significant connection between the company and a rights-holder or rights-violator, the company is able to make a contribution to ameliorating the situation, it can do so at modest cost, and the threat to human rights is substantial. In such circumstances companies have a responsibility to exercise leverage even …
Migrant Smuggling: Canada's Response To A Global Criminal Enterprise: With An Assessment Of The Preventing Human Smugglers From Abusing Canada's Immigration System Act (Bill C-4), Benjamin Perrin
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Migrant smuggling is a dangerous, sometimes deadly, criminal activity which cannot be rationalized, justified, or excused. From both a supply and demand side, failing to respond effectively to migrant smuggling and deter it will risk emboldening those who engage in this illicit enterprise, which generates proceeds for organized crime and criminal networks, funds terrorism and facilitates clandestine terrorist travel; endangers the lives and safety of smuggled migrants, undermines border security, with consequences for the Canada/U.S. border, and undermines the integrity and fairness of Canada’s mmigration system. Introduced in Parliament in June, 2011, the Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada’s Immigration …
Insite: Site And Sight (Part 1 - Insights On Insite), Margot Young
Insite: Site And Sight (Part 1 - Insights On Insite), Margot Young
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The Insite case is a great study for students of constitutional law. The twinning of a claim of inter-jurisdictional immunity - in a somewhat novel application to provincial jurisdiction - to the assertion by some of Canada's most marginalized citizens of the fundamental freedoms of life, liberty, and security of the person delivers a compact and compelling recitation of basic features of Canada's constitutional landscape. The case is set in the landscape of the Vancouver's Downtown East-side (DTES) - a geography of spatial outcomes that reflects balances of economic and social power and displacement. This place has a specific demography …
Four Varieties Of Social Responsibility: Making Sense Of The 'Sphere Of Influence' And 'Leverage' Debate Via The Case Of Iso 26000, Stepan Wood
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One of the key controversies in social responsibility discourse is whether an organization’s responsibility should be based on its capacity to influence other parties or only on its actual contribution to social and environmental outcomes. On one side of the debate are those who argue that the limits of an organization’s responsibility should be defined in terms of its “sphere of influence” (SOI): the greater the influence, the greater the responsibility to act. On the other side are those who reject the SOI approach as ambiguous, misleading, normatively undesirable and prone to strategic manipulation. Foremost among the critics is the …
Context, Choice, And Rights: Phs Community Services Society V. Canada (Attorney General), Margot Young
Context, Choice, And Rights: Phs Community Services Society V. Canada (Attorney General), Margot Young
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Constitutional law cases that revolve around the rights or circumstances of those groups most marginalized in Canadian society are not frequent cause for celebration. Typically, these cases push the boundaries of classical liberal understandings of the rights our Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects, asking the courts to recognize social and economic dimensions to liberties that are traditionally and popularly more narrowly construed. Such demands are more often than not sidestepped (or rejected outright) by courts, with the result that activist agendas focusing on leveraging Charter rights to achieve significant social change are less compelling than initially imagined. It …
Political Protest, Mass Arrests, And Mass Detention: Fundamental Freedoms And (Un)Common Criminals, Debra Parkes, Meaghan Daniel
Political Protest, Mass Arrests, And Mass Detention: Fundamental Freedoms And (Un)Common Criminals, Debra Parkes, Meaghan Daniel
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“No Justice. No Peace.” The mass arrest and detention of over 1,105 people during the Toronto G20 summit in June 2010, including author Meaghan Daniel, prompted reflection on the connections between justice and peace and in particular, between peaceful protest, policing, detention and the justice system. The record breaking weekend of mass arrests and temporary detention of people described as “innocent bystanders” and “peaceful protestors” provoked an ongoing conversation about the criminalization of protest. It is the authors’ hope to extend this conversation beyond these (un)common criminals to the “every day” processes of criminalization and imprisonment that go largely unquestioned …
The Meaning Of 'Sphere Of Influence' In Iso 26000, Stepan Wood
The Meaning Of 'Sphere Of Influence' In Iso 26000, Stepan Wood
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The relationship between a company’s influence and its social responsibilities is the subject of persistent controversy, manifested for example in the debate over the use of the concept of “sphere of influence” (SOI) to define the scope of a company’s social responsibility. Early drafts of the ISO 26000 guide on social responsibility employed SOI in this way, stating among other things that influence can give rise to responsibility and that generally, the greater the ability to influence, the greater the responsibility. The UN Special Representative on business and human rights, John Ruggie, rejected this use of SOI as ambiguous, misleading, …
Forced Marriage And The Exoticization Of Gendered Harms In United States Asylum Law, Jenni Millbank, Catherine Dauvergne
Forced Marriage And The Exoticization Of Gendered Harms In United States Asylum Law, Jenni Millbank, Catherine Dauvergne
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While claims of forced marriage or pressure to marry represent only a tiny portion of refugee claims overall, they provide an illuminating sliver reflecting the major recurring themes in gender and sexuality claims from recent decades. Refusal to marry is a flashpoint for expressing non-conformity with expected gender roles for heterosexual women, lesbians and gay men. This paper presents results from our study of 168 refugee decisions from Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States where part of the claim for refugee protection concerned actual or threatened forced marriage. In the present discussion, we highlight our findings from …
Unequal To The Task: ‘Kapp’Ing The Substantive Potential Of Section 15, Margot Young
Unequal To The Task: ‘Kapp’Ing The Substantive Potential Of Section 15, Margot Young
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This paper reviews the Supreme Court of Canada’s interpretation of s. 15 as a guarantee of substantive equality focusing on R. v. Kapp, a recent key section 15 case, as seen in perspective of Andrews v. Law Society of British Columbia (1989). R. v. Kapp (2008) brings together a dense complex of issues involving equality, affirmative action, race and Aboriginal rights. This paper takes on only a piece of this tangle – focusing on three issues that speak to the Court’s continuing failure to engage fully with the promise of Andrews’ rejection of a formal equality framework for section 15. …
The Ioc Made Me Do It: Women's Ski Jumping, Vanoc And The 2010 Winter Olympics, Margot Young
The Ioc Made Me Do It: Women's Ski Jumping, Vanoc And The 2010 Winter Olympics, Margot Young
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This case comment discusses the judicial decisions in Sagen v. VANOC regarding the constitutional challenge brought by women ski jumpers to their exclusion from the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. While the claimants argued that the constitutional equality provision (section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms) had been infringed, the BC courts' decisions focussed on the novelty of the state action problem. At least one level of court accepted that the exclusion was discriminatory but the challenge failed because the decision to exclude lay within the power of the International Olympic Committee, an entity beyond the ambit of …
In Defence Of The Sphere Of Influence: Why The Wgsr Should Not Follow Professor Ruggie's Advice On Defining The Scope Of Social Responsibility, Stepan Wood
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The Working Group on Social Responsibility (WGSR) of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) will meet in Copenhagen from May 17 to 21, 2010 for what is likely to be its last meeting to work on ISO 26000, an international guide on social responsibility. One of the central challenges for the WGSR is to define the scope of an organization’s responsibility for human rights abuses committed by third parties. ISO 26000, approved by a large majority in a recent "Draft International Standard" ballot, answers this question largely in terms of an organization’s degree of control or influence over others’ conduct. …
Making People Illegal: What Globalization Means For Migration And Law, Catherine Dauvergne
Making People Illegal: What Globalization Means For Migration And Law, Catherine Dauvergne
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This book examines the relationship between illegal migration and globalization. Under the pressures of globalizing forces, migration law is transformed into the last bastion of sovereignty. This explains the worldwide crackdown on extra-legal migration and informs the shape this crackdown is taking. It also means that migration law reflects key facets of globalization and addresses the central debates of globalization theory. This book looks at various migration law settings, asserting that differing but related globalization effects are discernible at each location. The ‘core samples’ interrogated in the book are drawn from refugee law, illegal labor migration, human trafficking, security issues …
Bill C-268: Minimum Sentences For Child Trafficking Needed, Benjamin Perrin
Bill C-268: Minimum Sentences For Child Trafficking Needed, Benjamin Perrin
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Under-aged girls as young as 12 years old are being subjected to sexual exploitation by traffickers according to a Criminal Intelligence Service of Canada (CISC); this is a pressing national problem, as organized crime networks are actively trafficking Canadian-born women and under-age girls within and between provinces and to the United States, destined for the sex trade. Law enforcement agencies are beginning to investigate and lay human trafficking charges under Canada’s Criminal Code s. 279.01 which carries a maximum term of imprisonment of 14 years, and up to life imprisonment if the accused kidnaps the victim, subjects them to aggravated …
Mandatory Retirement: Termination At 65 Is Ended, But Exceptions Linger On, Anthony F. Sheppard
Mandatory Retirement: Termination At 65 Is Ended, But Exceptions Linger On, Anthony F. Sheppard
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In employment law, mandatory retirement ("MR") is the compulsory termination of employment as a result of the employee having reached a specified age. In legal circles, MR is regarded as retirement rather than dismissal, though an individual who wishes to continue to work beyond a specified age might disagree. The elimination of MR in British Columbia resulted from the deletion of five little words in the definition of "age" in section 1 of the British Columbia Human Rights Code, RSBC 1996, c 210 (BCHRC). Section 1 of the BCHRC formerly defined "age" as meaning "an age of 19 years or …
Humanitarian Assistance And The Private Security Debate: An International Humanitarian Law Perspective, Benjamin Perrin
Humanitarian Assistance And The Private Security Debate: An International Humanitarian Law Perspective, Benjamin Perrin
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The changing nature of armed conflict has had a dramatic impact on the security risks facing humanitarian personnel. Historically, the safety of humanitarian aid delivery was secured through the consent of the relevant Parties to the conflict. However, non-international ethnically-motivated armed conflicts, failed and failing states, and insurgency-based warfare have fundamentally challenged the viability of this traditional security paradigm. In confronting today's complex security climate, humanitarian organizations are faced with a diverse menu of alternatives to enhance their security. The debate over armed protection that has sharply divided the humanitarian community is explored in this paper, including a critique of …
Faster, Higher, Stronger: Preventing Human Trafficking At The 2010 Olympics, Benjamin Perrin
Faster, Higher, Stronger: Preventing Human Trafficking At The 2010 Olympics, Benjamin Perrin
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This report considers the upcoming 2010 Olympics in Vancouver in the context of Canada’s human trafficking response to date, and makes recommendations to ensure that this event showcases our best to the world – and is not a flashpoint for human trafficking.
A Prisoners' Charter? Reflections On Prisoner Litigation Under The Canadian Charter Of Rights And Freedoms, Debra Parkes
A Prisoners' Charter? Reflections On Prisoner Litigation Under The Canadian Charter Of Rights And Freedoms, Debra Parkes
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This paper examines over twenty years of prisoner litigation under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, beginning with a brief consideration of the social and political context for prisoners into which the Charter was entrenched in 1982, before moving on to consider a variety of successful and unsuccessful prisoners' Charter claims. The author notes some ways in which the impact of the Charter has been diminished at the prison walls, including through a lack of full and meaningful access by prisoners to courts or other means of independent review of prison decisions and conditions, as well as by the …