Law Commons^™

Revisiting The Defence Of Diminished Responsibility, Andrew Botterell

Law Publications

My goal in this article is to revisit the defence of diminished responsibility. There are three things that, taken together, suggest to me that a defence of diminished responsibility ought to be made available to certain individuals accused of certain criminal offences. The first is that Canadian criminal law already recognizes a number of defences that reflect ideas about diminished responsibility. The second is that despite the availability of these specific defences to criminal liability, no general defence of diminished responsibility is formally recognized in Canadian criminal law. And the third is that given the Supreme Court of Canada’s ongoing …

Do Securities Commission Debts Survive A Bankruptcy Discharge? An Analysis Of Poonian V. British Columbia (Securities Commission) (Bcca), Jasmine Girgis, Thomas G.W. Telfer

Law Publications

The Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act1 (“BIA”) allows certain debts to be discharged at the end of the bankruptcy process.2 This discharge achieves one of the BIA’s objectives by offering individual debtors a “fresh start” to rehabilitate and become productive members of society.3 However, the fresh start is not an absolute right. Parliament has enacted a series of exceptions to the discharge in section 178(1) of the BIA. As a counterweight to the fresh start principle, these exceptions ensure that debtors who engage in certain wrongful conduct do not benefit from the protections afforded by the bankruptcy regime. Interpreting these exceptions …

Indigenous Legal Orders In Canada - A Literature Review (Updated To August 2022), Michael Coyle

Law Publications

This is a literature review of publications concerning Indigenous legal orders in Canada, funded by a SSHRC knowledge synthesis grant. This is an update to my 2017 report of the same name.

The suppression of Indigenous legal orders was an integral part of the colonial project to assimilate Indigenous peoples, a project exemplified by Canada’s now notorious experiment with Indian Residential Schools. Long marginalized by the Canadian state, the importance of Aboriginal peoples’ own legal systems has recently been recognized by the Supreme Court of Canada, by academics (including prominent Indigenous scholars) and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, who all …

Bankruptcy And Insolvency As An Expanding Field: An Historical Analysis Of Reference Re Debt Adjustment Act, 1937 (Alta.), Virginia Torrie, Thomas G. W. Telfer

Law Publications

The drought of the early 1920s and the economic collapse of the 1930s caused unprecedented problems for farmers in Alberta. Low prices and poor markets caused farmers to become overindebted. Parliament’s response to the situation was the Farmers’ Creditors Arrangement Act, 1934 (“FCAA”), which was intended to create an alternative mechanism to bankruptcy through which farmers could negotiate debt compromises with their creditors. Parliament viewed the situation as a temporary issue, and the FCAA reflected this assumption. In contrast, the prairie provinces sought long-term debt adjustment legislation for farmers and other debtors affected by the Great Depression. In Alberta, two …

Equitable Subordination Redux? Section 183 Of The Bankruptcy And Insolvency Act And Respecting The 'Legislative Will' Of Parliament, Thomas G. W. Telfer

Law Publications

The Supreme Court of Canada has yet to rule on whether the American doctrine of equitable subordination is part of Canadian law. In Re US Steel, the Ontario Court of Appeal suggested in obiter that section 183 of the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act (BIA) conferred upon courts the power to equitably subordinate a claim. This article focuses on the specific point of whether section 183 of the BIA provides the court jurisdiction in equity to subordinate a claim and alter the statutory priority scheme. Equitable jurisdiction found in section 183 of the BIA does not represent a broad power to …

The New Bankruptcy ‘Detective Agency’? The Origins Of The Superintendent Of Bankruptcy In Great Depression Canada, Thomas G. W. Telfer

Law Publications

No abstract provided.

Diverse Perspectives On Interdisciplinarity From Members Of The College Of The Royal Society Of Canada, Steven J. Cooke, Vivian M. Nguyen, Dimitry Anastakis, Shannon D. Scott, Merritt R. Turetskyd, Alidad Amirfazli, Alison Hearn, Cynthia E. Milton, Laura Loewen, Eric E. Smith, D. Ryan Norrisd, Kim L. Lavoie, Alice Aiken, Daniel Ansari, Alissa N. Antle, Molly Babel, Jane Bailey, Daniel M. Bernstein, Rachel Birnbaum, Carrie Bourassa, Antonio Calcagno, Aurélie Campana, Bing Chen, Karen Collins, Catherine E. Connell, Myriam Denov, Benoît Dupont, Eric George, Irene Gregory-Eaves, Steven High, Josephine M. Hill, Philip L. Jackson

Law Publications

Various multiple-disciplinary terms and concepts (although most commonly "interdisciplinarity," which is used herein) are used to frame education, scholarship, research, and interactions within and outside academia. In principle, the premise of interdisciplinarity may appear to have many strengths; yet, the extent to which interdisciplinarity is embraced by the current generation of academics, the benefits and risks for doing so, and the barriers and facilitators to achieving interdisciplinarity, represent inherent challenges. Much has been written on the topic of interdisciplinarity, but to our knowledge there have been few attempts to consider and present diverse perspectives from scholars, artists, and scientists in …

Causation And Incentives In Updating Courts: Comment, Alan Miller

Law Publications

This paper examines the negligence standard in the presence of intervening causal factors. The court observes the evidence and assigns a probability to the intervening factor in the course of evaluating the injurer's negligence. The court must, under the law, put a substantial weight on the facts in estimating the intervention probability. We allow the court to also put some weight on its own prior. Under such an adaptive approach to assessing negligence, incentives for care are affected by the court's inference process in addition to the usual factors. Courts can generate efficient incentives for care through the choice of …

A Copyright Board For Canada At 150, Margaret Ann Wilkinson

Law Publications

Recognition and protection of the role of copyright in Canadian society goes back as far as Confederation. But just as the need to pursue the appropriate balances among competing values is a constant part of our nation-building, so too is the need to occasionally re-examine and rebalance interests related to copyright.

Great Expectations: The Treatment Of Expectations In Wto And International Investment Law, Chios Carmody, Chios Carmody

Law Publications

A continuing issue in many areas of law is the treatment of “reasonable” or “legitimate” expectations. This contribution posits that a doctrine of expectations is vital to both the law’s stability and flexibility, functioning as a kind of ‘shock absorber’ that accommodates divergent pressures within a legal system. Expectations may arise subjectively, but what the law protects in most instances is determined objectively. This contribution goes on to examine the treatment of expectations in WTO and international investment law. Their treatment in WTO law has been to read them out as a matter of pleading in WTO dispute settlement, apart …

Obligations Versus Rights: Substantive Difference Between Wto And International Investment Law, Chios Carmody

Law Publications

WTO law remains relatively uncontentious whereas international investment law elicits much more debate. This article posits that the differences in reception are attributable to deeper substantive differences about what is protected under each regime. In WTO law what is protected is the sum total of all commitments and concessions under the WTO Agreement, something that can be thought of as a “public” good. When a country injures that good, the remedy is for the country to cease the injury, a requirement that naturally places emphasis on obligation. In international investment law, by contrast, what is protected is individualized to a …

Abductive Reasoning In Wto Law, Chios Carmody

Law Publications

Law is about many things, but at base it is about rights and obligations. That jural correlation is established and sustained by means of reasoning. We hold that an actor has a right or obligation by virtue of reasoning that classically occurs in one of two forms. An obligation creates a right by means of inductive logic that rests on the conviction of similar instances in the past and the need for proof. It can also create an obligation by means of deductive logic, that is, the process of reasoning from one or more statements (premises) that are used to …

Review Of The Development Of World Trade Organization Law, Chios Carmody

Law Publications

No abstract provided.

Rediscovering The Bankruptcy And Insolvency Power: Political And Constitutional Challenges To The Bankruptcy Act, 1919-1929, Thomas G. W. Telfer

Law Publications

No abstract provided.

Tension And Reconciliation In Canadian Contract Law Casebooks, David Sandomierski

Law Publications

Canadian common law contract law casebooks are beset with a tension. On the one hand, they all reveal a sustained commitment to the “wholesale assault on the jurisprudence of forms, concepts, and rules” that typifies American Legal Realism and its intellectual descendants. Concern with underlying values, functional reasoning, social realities, and policy thinking pervades the explicit messages of Canadian contract law casebooks and their editors’ related writings. On the other hand, the two casebooks most frequently assigned embody an allegiance to rules and courts that has a close kinship with the classical attitudes purportedly rejected. They convey a monolithic image …

Theory And Theoretical Approaches To Wto Law, Chios Carmody

Law Publications

This article examines the role of theory in relation to the law of the World Trade Organization (WTO), and more broadly, international economic law. It posits that an absence of agreement about an underlying theory of WTO law can be traced to lack of clarity about what a ‘theory’ is as well as the fact that the current vogue for interdisciplinary approaches to law means that WTO law, in particular, is analyzed through non-normative frameworks that are removed from the law’s legality. The article goes on to examine three theoretic frameworks – textual, political, and economic – that have been …

Licensing Parents In International Contract Pregnancies, Andrew Botterell, Carolyn Mcleod

Law Publications

The Hague Conference on Private International Law currently has a Parentage/Surrogacy Project, which evaluates the legal status of children in cross‐border situations, including situations involving international contract pregnancy (or ‘surrogacy’). Should a convention (or other legal instrument) focusing on international contract pregnancy emerge from this project, it will need to be consistent with the Hague convention on Intercountry Adoption. The latter convention prohibits adoptions unless, among other things, ‘the competent authorities of the receiving State have determined that the prospective adoptive parents are eligible and suited to adopt’ (Article 5a). Included in it, therefore, is a parental vetting or licensing …

Tate & Lyle: Pure Economic Loss And The Modern Tort Of Public Nuisance, Andrew Botterell, Jason Neyers

Law Publications

Professor Lewis Klar criticizes the Canadian approach to the tort o f public nuisance for being illogical and incoherent. The authors agree with Klar's assessment o f the current state of public nuisance law, but argue that insights drawn from the House o f Lords decision in Tate & Lyle Industries Ltd. v. Greater London Council offer a way forward. By conceptualizing the tort o f public nuisance as a cause o f action that protects subjects from suffering actual loss that is consequential on the violation of their passage and fishing rights over public property, Tate & Lyle offers …

Copyright In Photographs In Canada Since 2012, Margaret Ann Wilkinson, Carolyn Soltau, Tierney Gb Deluzio

Law Publications

Photographs perform a unique function because they capture moments in time and that capture is contemporaneous with the subject of the photo: “[a] writer doesn’t necessarily have to be there to produce a story. A photographer, on the other hand, must be at the event when the event happens.”

In 2012, the Copyright Modernization Act changed the Copyright Act in terms of application to photographs. This column will first discuss how copyright now applies to photographs in Canada (who owns copyright and how long it lasts) and then describe the new users’ right now available in respect of commissioned photographs.

Fairness As Appropriateness: Some Reflections On Procedural Fairness In Wto Law, Chios Carmody

Law Publications

No abstract provided.

Independence And Wto Law, Chios Carmody

Law Publications

No abstract provided.

Rights, Loss And Compensation In The Law Of Torts, Andrew Botterell

Law Publications

No abstract provided.

Of Banks, Federalism And Clear Statements: Comment On Bank Of Montreal V. Marcotte, Wade Wright

Law Publications

Federalism-based clear statement rules require governments to use clear statutory language when they pursue initiatives with certain implications for the division of powers. This article makes the case for altering the analytical approach in relation to two of the key federalism doctrines (the doctrine of interjurisdictional immunity and the doctrine of federal paramountcy) by adopting a federalism-based clear statement rule. It makes this case in the context of a discussion of the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Bank of Montreal v. Marcotte (2014), an important federalism case that rejected the arguments of several banks invoking both doctrines to avoid …

From Law Grad To Better Citizen, David Sandomierski

Law Publications

No abstract provided.

Copyright Users' Rights In International Law, Margaret Ann Wilkinson

Law Publications

No abstract provided.

Gendering Processes Of Institutional Design: Activists At The Negotiating Table, Sheila Meintjes, Alice Brown, Valerie Oosterveld

Law Publications

No abstract provided.

Constructive Ambiguity And The Meaning Of “Gender” For The International Criminal Court, Valerie Oosterveld

Law Publications

No abstract provided.

Sexual Violence Directed Against Men And Boys In Armed Conflict Or Mass Atrocity: Addressing A Gendered Harm In International Criminal Tribunals, Valerie Oosterveld

Law Publications

No abstract provided.

Procedural Steps Addressing Sexual And Gender-Based Violence: The Legacy Of The International Criminal Tribunal For Rwanda And Its Application In The Special Court For Sierra Leone, Valerie Oosterveld

Law Publications

This paper examines certain procedural strategies adopted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) to encourage and support victims of, and witnesses to, sexual and gender-based violence and traces their application in the Special Court for Sierra Leone. First, the paper explores specific methods used to protect the identity of victims and witnesses. Second, this paper considers steps taken by the ICTR to provide courtroom support to victims and witnesses. Finally, this paper surveys evidentiary approaches meant to reduce the retraumatization of sexual violence victims. The ICTR indeed has a legacy in these respects, somewhat positive and somewhat flawed.

Modes Of Reasoning In Wto Law, Chios Carmody

Law Publications

How the law reasons is central to its legitimacy. This article examines how legal reasoning is characterized by two types of logic, deductive and inductive, which are apparent in the legal system of the World Trade Organization (WTO). The article goes on to suggest that the interaction of deductive reasoning in the form of presumptions and inductive reasoning in the form of proof give rise to a third type of logic, abductive logic, defined as the ‘best’ estimate on current knowledge. It then examines how this three-fold combination of ideas is displayed in WTO law and explores what implications this …