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Full-Text Articles in Law
Open Your Eyes: Teaching And Learning About Anti-Asian Racism And The Law In Canada, Angela Lee
Open Your Eyes: Teaching And Learning About Anti-Asian Racism And The Law In Canada, Angela Lee
Dalhousie Law Journal
Recently, policymakers, institutional actors, and the public have made greater efforts towards being attentive to issues relating to anti-racism and discrimination, as well as equity, diversity, and inclusion more broadly, prompted in part by growing calls for reconciliation with Indigenous peoples and the increasing visibility of the Black Lives Matter movement. Yet, there has been a relative dearth of attention paid to the specific ways in which anti-Asian racism manifests and is maintained, particularly in the Canadian context. More than just being a relic of the past, antiAsian racism is an ongoing phenomenon both within and beyond Canada’s borders, as …
Teaching Civil Obligations (Or What I Learned About Law, Legal Thinking And Teaching), Alan Hutchinson
Teaching Civil Obligations (Or What I Learned About Law, Legal Thinking And Teaching), Alan Hutchinson
Dalhousie Law Journal
In most of my decades-long teaching and professorial career, I primarily taught Torts, but never Contracts. However, last year, I agreed to teach jointly a postgraduate class of 35 students on “Civil Obligations.” It was a decision that conformed to one of the more unsettling tropes of my life— “act in haste, repent at leisure.” My role in this arrangement was, after a general opening about the nature of civil obligations and the interface of Contract and Tort, to assume responsibility for the Contracts component of the course. This presented itself as a considerable task, but I thought that it …
Critique-Inspired Pedagogies In Canadian Criminal Law Casebooks: Challenging "Doctrine First, Critique Second" Approaches To First-Year Law Teaching, Sarah-Jane Nussbaum
Critique-Inspired Pedagogies In Canadian Criminal Law Casebooks: Challenging "Doctrine First, Critique Second" Approaches To First-Year Law Teaching, Sarah-Jane Nussbaum
Dalhousie Law Journal
This article is a critical evaluation of Canadian criminal law casebooks. The author explores the aims, practices, and challenges of these teaching texts by examining their relationship to critique-inspired pedagogical methods. A number of English-language Canadian criminal law casebooks add a welcome feature to the Canadian common law teaching landscape: all but one of six recently published casebooks teach doctrine and critique together. The research builds on an emerging scholarship of Canadian legal education by demonstrating evidence of critical political commitments and critique-inspired teaching methods within Canadian criminal law education. Yet casebook editors and other professors who utilize critical methods …
From Law To Legal Studies And Beyond: 50 Years Of Law And Legal Studies At Carleton University, Vincent Kazmierski, Darren Pacione
From Law To Legal Studies And Beyond: 50 Years Of Law And Legal Studies At Carleton University, Vincent Kazmierski, Darren Pacione
Dalhousie Law Journal
This paper considers the evolution of Carleton University's Department of Law and Legal Studies and its approach to the study of law and the legal within the context of the continuing growth of legal studies programs across the country. It starts by outlining the historical development of the Department and the evolution of its perspective of its role and purpose. Part II examines a number of aspects of the architecture of fourteen undergraduate legal studies programs across the country and the ways in which the roles of these programs are described. Part III provides a brief outline of the current …
Doctoral Studies In Law: From The Inside Out, Dia Dabby, Bethany Hastie, Jocelyn Stacey
Doctoral Studies In Law: From The Inside Out, Dia Dabby, Bethany Hastie, Jocelyn Stacey
Dalhousie Law Journal
This article explores the purpose, structure and experience of doctoral studies in Canadian law schools. Relying on an auto-ethnographic methodology where we draw on our personal experience as doctoral students, we identify three tensions in doctoral studies in law. We explore how these tensions-between practice/theory structure/space, and supervisory/other relationships-emerge from the structure of doctoral studies in law and how they manifest themselves in the lived experience of doctoral students. We detail how these tensions are a product of the ambiguous and underexplored nature ofdoctoral studies in law. By making these tensions explicit, we encourage doctoral students, law professors and administrators …
Not Ideas Of The Thing But The Thing Itself: Imagining A Support Group For Separated And Divorced Fathers As A Site Of Legal Education, Thomas Mcmorrow
Not Ideas Of The Thing But The Thing Itself: Imagining A Support Group For Separated And Divorced Fathers As A Site Of Legal Education, Thomas Mcmorrow
Dalhousie Law Journal
Legal education is not just about attaining an abstract knowledge of formal institutions, norms, and processes; it is also about developing insight into oneself and ones relationships. Therefore, understanding and developing the personal and social conditions that make governance through law possible are crucial elements of legal education. This article highlights legal education's potential role in fostering every person's sense of implication in-and responsibility forbuilding a just society In order to illustrate this concept, this article looks at the ways in which DADs, a support group for separated and divorced fathers, constitutes a site of legal education.
Queering Indigenous Legal Studies, Emily Snyder
Queering Indigenous Legal Studies, Emily Snyder
Dalhousie Law Journal
A handful of scholars have examined sex, gender, and sexuality in relation to Indigenous laws; yet their work is infrequently taken up in the field, and there is a broader need for conversations about what it means to "queer" Indigenous legal studies. In this paper, I centre and examine work that contributes to this queering so as to promote inclusive critical legal education and engagement. I also discuss the implications of not attending to sexuality and develop preliminary propositions for queering Indigenous legal studies.
Guilty Displeasures: White Resistance In The Social Justice Classroom, Rakhi Ruparelia
Guilty Displeasures: White Resistance In The Social Justice Classroom, Rakhi Ruparelia
Dalhousie Law Journal
In this article, the author reflects on the challenges of teaching white law students about racism and whiteprivilege asa racializedprofessor To situateher experiences and to better understand the obstacles that professors who teach critically about race and racism confront, she draws from theories of racial identity development and research on student evaluations to contextualize student responses to antiracist pedagogy Grappling with racism in a meaningful way leaves many white students feeling distraught, angry and guilty, among other unpleasant emotions. Professors who initiate these discussions become the natural targets of criticism and blame as students struggle with their discomfort. The hostility …
Troubling Feelings: Moral Anger And Clinical Legal Education, Sarah Buhler
Troubling Feelings: Moral Anger And Clinical Legal Education, Sarah Buhler
Dalhousie Law Journal
Many law students experience strong and sometimes difficult emotions during their time in clinical lawprograms: sadness at clients'stories of trauma, excitement about a victory in court, or anger at the injustices faced by clients. In this article, I focus on the emotion of "moral anger,"or "moral outrage" experienced by lawyers and students in clinicalcontexts, and consider how educators and students might address manifestations of moral anger in clinical law contexts in ways that ignite a critical and social-justice oriented approach to legal practice. By drawing on theoretical insights from the emerging field of critical emotion studies, I argue that a …
Hugh Kindred And The Teaching Of International Law In Canada, Don Mcrae
Hugh Kindred And The Teaching Of International Law In Canada, Don Mcrae
Dalhousie Law Journal
The casebook, International Law, Chiefly as Interpreted and Applied in Canada under the general editorship of Hugh Kindred, which first appeared in 1987, was a milestone in the teaching of international law in Canada. It was an important teaching tool that made international law accessible to students. Seeing international law through the eyes of Canadian practice, Canadian materials and Canadian experience, the book was an introduction to the fundamentals of the field and to the developments and debates of contemporary international law Engaging on the editorial board Canadian academics from different law schools, Hugh Kindred has been able to provide …
Hugh M. Kindred: A Tribute, Robert J. Currie, Phillip Saunders
Hugh M. Kindred: A Tribute, Robert J. Currie, Phillip Saunders
Dalhousie Law Journal
We are pleased to introduce this special issue of the Dalhousie Law Journal, which is essentially a mini-festschriftin honour of Professor Hugh Kindred. Hugh began teaching at what was then Dalhousie Law School in 1971 and retired from full-time teaching in 2008, with a well-deserved Professor Emeritus status bestowed on him in 2010. In between Hugh provided wisdom, quiet counsel and gracious generosity to generations of students and faculty at what is now called the Schulich School of Law, and became a pillar of the Canadian legal academic community. His legacy is enormous and ongoing, as Hugh has continued to …
No Longer "Naked And Shivering Outside Her Gates": Establishing Law As A Full-Time On-Campus Academic Discipline At Mcgill University Inthe Nineteenth Century, A J. Hobbins
Dalhousie Law Journal
Although Canada was a single province (1763-1791), subsequently divided into Upper and Lower Canada, legal education developed very differently in the two components. The Law Society of Upper Canada controlled legal education in Ontario until the second half of the twentieth century, while in Quebec, where the legal system was based on both civil and common law, university-based legal education began in the first half of the nineteenth century. This study examines how legal education developed at McGill University, moving from part-time teaching by professionals off-campus to an on-campus faculty taught by full-time academics by the end of the century …
Journeys To 20th Street: The Inner City As Critical Pedagogical Space For Legal Education, Sarah Buhler
Journeys To 20th Street: The Inner City As Critical Pedagogical Space For Legal Education, Sarah Buhler
Dalhousie Law Journal
This essay draws on critical geographical theories to propose that the location of clinical legal education programs in inner city space can affect the production of professional identities and ideologies oflaw students. It anchors its analysis in an examination of the clinical law program at the University of Saskatchewan College of Law, where students work at a poverty law clinic in Saskatoon's inner city. The paper first turns to a critical examination of law school space, which can function to promote dominant notions about law and legal practice. The author cautions that ifnot navigated attentively, thejourney to inner city space …
Building On Strong Foundations: Rethinking Legal Education With A View To Improving Curricular Quality, Veronica Henderson
Building On Strong Foundations: Rethinking Legal Education With A View To Improving Curricular Quality, Veronica Henderson
Dalhousie Law Journal
Recent increases in law school tuition provide an occasion for criticalreflection on precisely what law students are being offered in their formal education. The aim of this article is to help catalyze discussion of what quality legal education entails. It begins by outlining the current underpinnings of Canadian legal education, especially the foundation of issue identification. Newer developments in legal education are also canvassed.A foundational critique is then applied to elucidate the main weakness of thepresent curricular structure: students are graduating with a flat understanding of the law Employing Dr Oliver Sacks's critique of medical education as a starting point, …
Designating The Dean Of Law: Legal Education At Mcgill University And The Montreal Corporate And Professional Elite, 1946-1950., A J. Hobbins
Dalhousie Law Journal
The nature of legal education has been the subject of an ongoing debate in all Canadian jurisdictions. A central theme of this debate for much of the twentieth century was whether legal education should be restricted to training for the local Bar as opposed to studying law as an academic discipline in addition to such professional training A decanal vacancy at McGill University brought this question to the fore in 1946 when the anglophone members of the Montreal Bar exerted a great deal of influence on the selection process. The matter was complicated by the opposition of the corporate elite …
Canadian Graduate Legal Education: Past, Present And Future, Sanjeev S. Anand
Canadian Graduate Legal Education: Past, Present And Future, Sanjeev S. Anand
Dalhousie Law Journal
Canadian graduate legal education has seldom been the subject of scholarly inquiry This article seeks to fill the vacuum by describing and evaluating various features associated with master s and doctoral programs offered by the nation s /ao schools. A number of criteria are used in this analysis, some of which have been garnered from the broader literature on higher education The article concludes with a series of specific programmatic and policy reform proposals aimed at strengthening the state of graduate legal education in this country
Competition, Cooperation Or Cartel: A National Law School Accreditation Process For Canada?, Alvin Esau
Competition, Cooperation Or Cartel: A National Law School Accreditation Process For Canada?, Alvin Esau
Dalhousie Law Journal
Law schools in Canada are engaged in increased competition with one another and significant disparities in resources and reputations have developed. The author argues that this competitive context may be a threat to the maintenance in some schools of the broader mission of the law school to teach and produce contextual and critical perspectives on law. It is suggested that Canadian law schools should cooperate with each other and that various initiatives could be taken which would help all schools. Beyond cooperation on specific projects, the authorraises the question of whetherlawschools should set up theirown national accreditation scheme. He suggests …
An Analysis Of Gender In Admission To The Canadian Common Law Schools From 1985-86 To 1994-95, Brian M. Mazer
An Analysis Of Gender In Admission To The Canadian Common Law Schools From 1985-86 To 1994-95, Brian M. Mazer
Dalhousie Law Journal
Using statistical data covering a ten year period, this study examines the issue of gender representation in admissions to first year law study at common law schools in Canada. After addressing three identifiable steps in the admission process-applications, offers and registration-the author concludes that while there has been progress and the gap has narrowed, the problem of gender inequality persists.
A Case For Compulsory Legal Ethics Education In Canadian Law Schools, Jocelyn Downie
A Case For Compulsory Legal Ethics Education In Canadian Law Schools, Jocelyn Downie
Dalhousie Law Journal
The author presents principled arguments, consequentialist arguments, arguments by analogy and arguments by authority in support of her conclusion that Canadian law schools should have compulsory legal ethics education. Among other things, she argues that legal ethics education is an imperfect but essential way to meet the obligations that arise from the public trust placed in the legal profession. She also explores a number of benefits that can accrue to students, law schools, the legal profession and society in general when ethics is a compulsory component of legal education.
Teacher Power In The Law School Classroom, Julie Macfarlane
Teacher Power In The Law School Classroom, Julie Macfarlane
Dalhousie Law Journal
Law teachers make choices over syllabus material, teaching methods and assessment formats, and thus inevitably exercise some control over what and how students learn. The actualpowerof each individual law professor will depend on the context of her particular classroom and her perceived credibility, generally defined by the university as the demonstration of a particular (rationalist) model of subject expertise. The intrinsic hierarchies and highly competitive culture of law school sustain this traditional model of knowledge along with its congruent image of the professor as autonomous, powerful and the focus of the classroom. Feminist law teachers and others who wish to …
Playing The Game, Allan C. Hutchinson
Playing The Game, Allan C. Hutchinson
Dalhousie Law Journal
Soccer is my game. It has been part of my life and, therefore, a part of me since before I can remember. Much of my early years was spent kicking a ball around in one setting or another. Sleeping or waking, I was never far from a soccer ball. On my own against a wall or with a couple of likeminded friends, I took the part of legendary favourites and played out some of soccer's great games. The stuff of boyhood fantasizing, some of my best memories can still be traced back to my grandfather's back yard or the local …
Madame Justice Wilson: Trailblazer For Justice, Brian Dickson
Madame Justice Wilson: Trailblazer For Justice, Brian Dickson
Dalhousie Law Journal
Mr. Dean, Mme Justice Wilson, Mrs. Read, other distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen: May I say first of all that I am deeply honoured to have been invited to give the Horace E. Read Memorial Lecture for 1991, inaugurated in memory of the distinguished Dean of Dalhousie Law School who served in that capacity from 1950 to 1964. Dean Read's contribution to legal education and to legal scholarship in general was a massive one, encompassing as it did law reform, legislation and the legislative process, conflict of laws, labour law and legal education. Horace Read acquired an enviable international reputation …
Legal Research In A Social Science Setting: The Problem Of Method, T Brettel Dawson
Legal Research In A Social Science Setting: The Problem Of Method, T Brettel Dawson
Dalhousie Law Journal
As part of its ongoing process of curriculum development, the Department of Law at Carleton University decided in 1988 that a compulsory course in legal research methods was long overdue in the B.A. Honours degree in Law. Fortified with interest nurtured by methodological debates in feminist scholarship,' experience devilling' for a barrister pending my call to the bar, and practice from instructing a course in legal research and writing while a graduate student, I set about developing the proposed course. No guidelines existed for such a course, beyond the logic that it should complement the socio-legal or legal studies focus …
An Essay On Institutional Responsibility: The Indigenous Blacks And Micmac Programme At Dalhousie Law School, Richard F. Devlin, A Wayne Mackay
An Essay On Institutional Responsibility: The Indigenous Blacks And Micmac Programme At Dalhousie Law School, Richard F. Devlin, A Wayne Mackay
Dalhousie Law Journal
Dalhousie Law School, like most other law schools, as a tribute to its graduates and as a manifestation of its traditions, adorns its walls with class photographs of years gone by. However, if one were to stop and scrutinize more carefully these pictures one might want to reconsider the tradition in a more circumspect light. Perhaps one might notice that until the nineteen sixties women were few and far between and that even now they still make up less than half of most graduating classes. More conspicuous still, is the general absence of First Nations peoples from the celebratory pageant. …
Improving Access To Legal Education For Native People In Canada: Dalhousie Law School's I.B.M. Program In Context, Hugh Macaulay
Improving Access To Legal Education For Native People In Canada: Dalhousie Law School's I.B.M. Program In Context, Hugh Macaulay
Dalhousie Law Journal
This paper is about access to legal education for Native peoples in Canada. It is important at the very outset of this undertaking to explain my interest in this issue and to describe the perspective from which I write. At the beginning of the 1989-90 academic year I returned to Halifax to discover that Dalhousie had implemented a program to increase access for Blacks and Micmacs to legal education. Motivated by my support for this initiative, I applied to be a tutor in the program and was fortunate enough to be selected.
The Faculty Of Law, University Of British Columbia 1981-90, Joost Blom
The Faculty Of Law, University Of British Columbia 1981-90, Joost Blom
Dalhousie Law Journal
It may be uninspiring to begin a sketch of the UBC Law Faculty since 1981 by talking about money, but the Faculty's financial circumstances during this period are the key to much of what follows. For about five years from 1982, the provincial government's fiscal watchword was "restraint", which so far as the universities were concerned meant, in the early years, actually cutting operating grants and, later on, keeping a fairly tight lid on them. UBC's budget fell in absolute terms for three successive years, and continued to slip in real terms for another year or two. The Law Faculty …
Problem-Based Learning: An Alternative Approach To Legal Education, Suzanne Kurtz, Michael Wylie, Neil Gold
Problem-Based Learning: An Alternative Approach To Legal Education, Suzanne Kurtz, Michael Wylie, Neil Gold
Dalhousie Law Journal
This paper is intended to provide legal educators with an introduction to problem-based learning. Problem-based learning has several variations and each of them will be briefly reviewed with a view to providing insights as to how the method might be used. We will underscore the pedagogical rationale for the method and place it in the context of developments in legal education generally. In addition we will describe what a teacher actually does when using a particular variation of the method.
Research In A Changing World Of Law And Technology, Morris L. Cohen
Research In A Changing World Of Law And Technology, Morris L. Cohen
Dalhousie Law Journal
As a long-time friend and admirer of legal education at Dalhousie, it is an honor and a pleasure for me to offer the Read lecture this year. It is particularly warming to have Mrs. Read and the next two generations of Reads here today, since Dean Read was the strongest proponent of the law library's development during his deanship here. One of the designated topics for these lectures has been legal education. With the dedication of the addition to the Weldon Building housing the restored Sir James Dunn Law Library, and the designation of a librarian, for the first time, …
Doorkeepers: Legal Education In The Territories And Alberta, 1885-1928, Peter M. Sibenik
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 Fiercest Debate: Cecil A. Wright, The Benchers And Legal Education In Ontario 1923-1957, W R. Lederman
The Fiercest Debate: Cecil A. Wright, The Benchers And Legal Education In Ontario 1923-1957, W R. Lederman
Dalhousie Law Journal
In the dozen years after the end of the Second World War, long-standing conflicts about the nature of education for the legal profession in Ontario became especially acute. Fortunately, climax and successful compromise came in 1957. In that year the Law Society of Upper Canada, which had controlled legal education and admission to practice from the early days of the Colony of Upper Canada, gave up its monopoly of legal education and conceded an equal position in this respect to Ontario universities willing and able to enter the field. Several were, and promptly did so. Indeed the University of Toronto …