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Osgoode Hall Law Journal

Equality before the law

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Equality Before The Law? Evaluating Criminal Case Outcomes In Canada, Michael Trebilcock, Albert Yoon Jan 2016

Equality Before The Law? Evaluating Criminal Case Outcomes In Canada, Michael Trebilcock, Albert Yoon

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

One of our most strongly held ideals is that individuals receive equal treatment under the law. Incidents of wrongful conviction or wide disparities in sentencing, however, challenge this premise. While legal scholars have recently examined this premise, our understanding remains largely normative or anecdotal. Scholars have begun to identify factors that influence legal outcomes, yet this question has remained largely unexplored in Canada. This article seeks to advance this inquiry. Using unique data from both the Ontario courts and Legal Aid Ontario during 2007–2013, we find that outcomes in routine criminal cases vary in ways not summarily explained by differences …


Substantive Equality As Equal Recognition: A New Theory Of Section 15 Of The Charter, Anthony Robert Sangiuliano Jan 2015

Substantive Equality As Equal Recognition: A New Theory Of Section 15 Of The Charter, Anthony Robert Sangiuliano

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

This article presents a novel theory of the concept of substantive equality under section 15(1) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms called Substantive Equality as Equal Recognition. This contribution is timely in light of the Supreme Court of Canada’s recent disagreement over the proper jurisprudential approach to interpreting section 15(1) in the 2013 case of Quebec v A. Substantive Equality as Equal Recognition holds that the purpose of section 15(1) is to ensure that the law’s application does not reflect, through its impact or effects, hierarchies of status that exist between citizens within Canadian society. The article argues …


Lessons In Access To Justice: Racialized Youths In Ontario's Safe Schools, Janet E. Mosher Oct 2008

Lessons In Access To Justice: Racialized Youths In Ontario's Safe Schools, Janet E. Mosher

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

Access to justice is often equated with access to institutionalized dispute resolution processes, and the objective barriers that hinder such access-costs and delay most particularly-are commonly identified as the primary objects of reform efforts. In sharp contrast, when interviews and focus groups were conducted with racialized youths in Toronto regarding their experiences of access to justice in the context of school disciplinary matters, accounts of access to dispute resolution processes being impeded by costs and delay did not figure prominently. The interviews and focus groups revealed that many racialized youths scarcely ever considered accessing institutionalized dispute resolution processes largely because …