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Full-Text Articles in Law
Criminal Law On The Aboriginal Plains: The First Nations And The First Criminal Court In The North-West Territories, 1870 - 1903, Shelley A. M. Gavigan
Criminal Law On The Aboriginal Plains: The First Nations And The First Criminal Court In The North-West Territories, 1870 - 1903, Shelley A. M. Gavigan
Shelley A. M. Gavigan
This study undertakes an in-depth analysis of the relationship between the First Nations and the criminal law in the 'Saskatchewan' region of the North-West Territories, taking as its temporal point of departure the creation of the Territories in 1870. Through data derived from criminal court records from Hugh Richardson's tenure on the territorial bench (1876 - 1903), this study analyses the role of Canadian criminal law in a watershed period of social and legal transformation in and for the lives of the First Nations.The dissertation critically engages with discourses of criminalization in the historiography and calls for greater precision in …
The Generative Structure Of Aboriginal Rights, Brian Slattery
The Generative Structure Of Aboriginal Rights, Brian Slattery
Articles & Book Chapters
Are aboriginal rights historical rights -- rights that gained their basic form in the distant past? Or are they generative rights -- rights that, although rooted in the past, have the capacity to renew themselves, as organic entities that grow and change? Section 35(1) of the Constitution Act, 1982 provides little guidance on the point, referring ambiguously to "existing aboriginal and treaty rights". In the Van der Peet case, decided in 1996, the Supreme Court of Canada characterized aboriginal rights primarily as historical rights, moulded by the customs and practices of aboriginal groups at the time of European contact, with …