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Articles 1 - 29 of 29
Full-Text Articles in Law
The Impact Of The Honour Of The Crown On The Ethical Obligations Of Government Lawyers: A Duty Of Honourable Dealing, Andrew Flavelle Martin, Candice Telfer
The Impact Of The Honour Of The Crown On The Ethical Obligations Of Government Lawyers: A Duty Of Honourable Dealing, Andrew Flavelle Martin, Candice Telfer
Dalhousie Law Journal
The honour of the Crown is recognized as a Canadian constitutional principle that is essential to reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians. As part of the process of reconciliation, this article argues that the honour of the Crown imposes a special ethical obligation on government lawyers in specific circumstances, which we call the duty of honourable dealing. We situate this duty in the divided literature and case law about whether government lawyers have special ethical obligations and in the two dimensions in which the honour of the Crown applies: the Crown as an institution and the Crown as a collection …
Government Lawyering: Duties And Ethical Challenges Of Government Lawyers, Andrew Flavelle Martin
Government Lawyering: Duties And Ethical Challenges Of Government Lawyers, Andrew Flavelle Martin
Dalhousie Law Journal
Are government lawyers different than lawyers in private practice? If so, why does it matter? While these questions have been addressed piecemeal in the Canadian legal ethics literature, Elizabeth Sanderson's Government Lawyering: Duties and Ethical Challenges of Government Lawyers is the first comprehensive and long-form answer to them.1 As Adam Dodek hints in the foreword 2 and has noted elsewhere,3 the degree to which government lawyers have been overlooked in the Canadian legal literature is incongruent with their sheer numbers as a proportion of the legal profession in Canada. The need for this book is pronounced.
Legal History And Rights For Nonhuman Animals: An Interview With Steven M. Wise, Angela Fernandez
Legal History And Rights For Nonhuman Animals: An Interview With Steven M. Wise, Angela Fernandez
Dalhousie Law Journal
This article offers a window into the recent work of the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) and its quest to secure legal personhood for cognitively advanced nonhuman animals (chimpanzees, elephants, and orcas). Law& History Professor Angela Fernandez interviews Nonhuman Rights Project founder Steven Wise about the work of his organization, setting the litigation strategy of the NonHuman Rights Project against the background of Wise's historical work on the 1772 British case that ended slavery in England, Somerset v. Stewart. The conversation Fernandez has with Wise ranges across the most recent decisions of the Nonhuman Rights Project cases, what has happened since …
On Being A Second: Grace Wambolt, Legal Professionalism And 'Inter-Wave' Feminism In Nova Scotia, Elizabeth Legge
On Being A Second: Grace Wambolt, Legal Professionalism And 'Inter-Wave' Feminism In Nova Scotia, Elizabeth Legge
Dalhousie Law Journal
Grace Wambolt was the fifth female graduate of Dalhousie Law School and the second woman to practise law in Nova Scotia. She was one of the relatively few female lawyers in Canada (up to the influx of the nineteen-seventies) who practiced law following the push by the first female lawyers for the elimination of formal barriers to practice. This paper examines the similarities and differences between the "firsts" and those who followed them, primarily by looking at the life of Wambolt and her letters and speeches preserved in the Wambolt fonds located in the Nova Scotia Archives and donated by …
Of Lodestars And Lawyers: Incorporating The Duty Of Loyalty Into The Model Code Of Conduct, Colin Jackson, Richard Devlin, Brent Cotter
Of Lodestars And Lawyers: Incorporating The Duty Of Loyalty Into The Model Code Of Conduct, Colin Jackson, Richard Devlin, Brent Cotter
Dalhousie Law Journal
The "conflicts quartet" ofcases decided by the Supreme Court of Canada can be understood as part of a long-standing tension in Anglo-Canadian jurisprudence between two competing conceptions of a lawyer's professional identity In the most recent of these cases, C.N. Railway v. McKercher, the Supreme Court conclusively preferred the loyalty-centred conception of the practice of law over the entrepreneurial conception. While the Federation of Law Societies of Canada amended its Model Code of Professional Conduct in 2014 in response to the Supreme Court's decision in McKercher, this article argues that those amendments did not go far enough. The authors propose …
Indigenous Lawyers In Canada: Identity, Professionalization, Law, Sonia Lawrence, Signa Daum Shanks
Indigenous Lawyers In Canada: Identity, Professionalization, Law, Sonia Lawrence, Signa Daum Shanks
Dalhousie Law Journal
For Indigenous communities and individuals in Canada, "Canadian" law has been a mechanism of assimilation, colonial governance and dispossession, a basis for the assertion of rights, and a method of resistance. How do Indigenous lawyers in Canada make sense of these contradictory threads and their roles and responsibilities? This paper urges attention to the lives and experiences of Indigenous lawyers, noting that the number of self-identified Indigenous lawyers has been rapidly growing since the 1990s. At the same time, Indigenous scholars are focusing on the work of revitalizing Indigenous law and legal orders. Under these conditions, Indigenous lawyers occupy a …
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 …
"The Harshness And Injustice Of The Common Law Rule... Has Frequenly Been Commented Upon": Debating Contributory Negligence In Canada, 1914-1949, R Blake Brown, Noelle Yhard
"The Harshness And Injustice Of The Common Law Rule... Has Frequenly Been Commented Upon": Debating Contributory Negligence In Canada, 1914-1949, R Blake Brown, Noelle Yhard
Dalhousie Law Journal
In the early twentieth century many legal professionals damned the law of contributory negligence as complicated and unfair to plaintiffs barred from recovery, while businesspeople often complained thatjudges and juries refused to find sympathetic plaintiffs contributorily negligent. Elite Canadian lawyers, through their work in the Canadian Bar Association and the Commission on Uniformity of Legislation in Canada, proposed model contributory negligence legislation that a number of provinces subsequently adopted. Reviews of these statutes were mixed however The large body of existing case law, despite its complications, encouraged some lawyers and judges to fall back on older jurisprudence in interpreting the …
The Impeachment Of The Judges Of The Nova Scotia Supreme Court, 1787-1793: Colonial Judges, Loyalist Lawyers, And The Colonial Assembly, Jim Phillips
Dalhousie Law Journal
In 1790 the Nova Scotia House of Assembly passed seven "articles of impeachment" against two ofthe colony's Supreme Courtjudges, the firstattempt bya British North American assembly to remove superior courtjudges. Although the impeachment failed when the British government rejected the charges, it is noteworthy nonetheless. The product of a dispute between newly arrived loyalist lawyers and a local elite of "old inhabitants, " it was at one and the same time a political struggle between the Assembly and the executive branch, and one that involved concerns about judicial competence. The impeachment crisis also demonstrates the close links between the judiciary …
Lawyering At The Intersection Of Public Law And Legal Ethics: Government Lawyers As Custodians Of The Rule Of Law, Adam M. Dodek
Lawyering At The Intersection Of Public Law And Legal Ethics: Government Lawyers As Custodians Of The Rule Of Law, Adam M. Dodek
Dalhousie Law Journal
Government lawyers are significant actors in the Canadian legal profession, yet they are largely ignored by regulators and by academic scholarship. The dominant view of lawyering fails to adequately capture the unique role of government lawyers. Government lawyers are different from other lawyers by virtue of their role in creating and upholding the rule of law Most accounts of government lawyers separate public law duties of government from ethical duties of lawyers; for example, acknowledging the "public interest" role ofgovernment lawyers but asserting that this has no impact on their ethical duties as lawyers. Instead of this compartmentalized approach, this …
Service To The Nation: A Living Legal Value For Justice Lawyers In Canada, Josh Wilner
Service To The Nation: A Living Legal Value For Justice Lawyers In Canada, Josh Wilner
Dalhousie Law Journal
Lawyers working within a living government require a living ethics, an approach to ethics that accounts for their day-to-day professional lives within the Department of Justice Canada. There are different archetypes of Justice lawyers, and thus a living ethics is also an ethics of place, one which is sensitive to the government institutions within and for which lawyers work and the functions they accomplish. The focus of this paper, which employs a virtue ethics methodology, is primarily civil litigators. Distinguishing between values (enduring beliefs that influence action) and ethics (the application of values in practice), the paper proposes "service to …
Executive Branch Lawyers In A Time Of Terror: The 2008 Fw. Wickwire Memorial Lecture, W Bradley Wendel
Executive Branch Lawyers In A Time Of Terror: The 2008 Fw. Wickwire Memorial Lecture, W Bradley Wendel
Dalhousie Law Journal
This article discusses the ethical responsibilities of the lawyers who advise executive branch officials on the lawfulness ofactions taken in the name of national security. To even talk about this subject assumes that there is some distinction -betweena government that does all within its power to protect its citizens, and one that does all within its lawful power If there are good normative reasons to care about maintaining this distinction, then we have the key to understanding the ethical responsibilities of government lawyers. The Bush administration took the position that the role oflawyers is to get out of the way …
Law's Ambition And The Reconstruction Of Role Morality In Canada, David M. Tanovich
Law's Ambition And The Reconstruction Of Role Morality In Canada, David M. Tanovich
Dalhousie Law Journal
There is a growing disconnect and alienation between lawyers and the legal profession in Canada. One cause, which is the focus ofthe article, is philosophical in nature. There appears to be a disconnect between the role lawyers want to pursue (i.e., a facilitator of justice) and the role that they perceive the profession demands they play (i.e., a hired gun). The article argues that this perception is a mistaken one. Over the last fifteen years, we have been engaged in a process of role morality reconstruction. Under this reconstructed institutional role, an ethic of client-centred zealous advocacy has slowly begun …
The Criminal Defence Lawyer's Role, David Layton
The Criminal Defence Lawyer's Role, David Layton
Dalhousie Law Journal
Defence lawyers often fight to prevent the conviction of people who have committed serious crimes. How can this role be justified? In providing his answer the author generally accepts the traditional view of criminal lawyering according to which defence counsel "does good" by ensuring that the state does not obtain a conviction in the absence of proof beyond a reasonable doubt based on admissible and reliable evidence Ethical advocacy in the criminal context is thus heavily influenced by a conception of justice that includes not only the search for truth but also due process rights for accused persons. The author …
Multi-Disciplinary Professional Practices: A Consumer Welfare Perspective, Michael Trebilcock, Lila Csorgo
Multi-Disciplinary Professional Practices: A Consumer Welfare Perspective, Michael Trebilcock, Lila Csorgo
Dalhousie Law Journal
Multi-disciplinary professional practices (MDPs) involving lawyers, accountants and otherprofessionals, have been the subject of considerable industrystudyand controversy in Canada and abroad. In this article, the authors evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of MDPs strictly from a consumer welfare perspective. They argue that, although MDP critics' concerns surrounding such issues as solicitor-client privilege, independence, conflicts of interest, and unauthorized practice are valid, they are often overstated and are, in many cases, encountered even today by professionals outside the MDP context. The advantages to consumers of permitting the evolution of such practices would, in any event, significantly outweigh such disadvantages. The authors'analysis …
Brightening The Covenant Chain: Aboriginal Treaty Meanings In Law And History After Marshall, Mark D. Walters
Brightening The Covenant Chain: Aboriginal Treaty Meanings In Law And History After Marshall, Mark D. Walters
Dalhousie Law Journal
The decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. Marshall raises some difficult questions about the interpretation of Crown-Aboriginal treaties, especially treaties dating from the eighteenth century. The Court acknowledged that the treaty context is important to establishing the meaning of treaty texts, and Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal perspectives must be considered. As a result, judges must have regard to historical analyses of Crown-Aboriginal relations when interpreting these old treaties. In this article, the author explores some of the complex theoretical problems that such legal-historical analyses create, focusing in particular upon the possibility that lawyers and judges may reach …
States Of Emergency - Moderating Their Effects On Human Rights, Venkat Iyer
States Of Emergency - Moderating Their Effects On Human Rights, Venkat Iyer
Dalhousie Law Journal
There has been a runaway proliferation of emergency regimes worldwide in recent decades. This, coupled with the high incidence of human rights abuses which accompany them, has made states of emergency a matter of increasing concern among human rights policymakers and monitors. The author evaluates the various measures that have been taken by the international community to moderate the effects of emergencies, and outlines possible future strategies to increase the effectiveness of such measures.
Reputational Review I: Expertise, Bias And Delay, Robert E. Hawkins
Reputational Review I: Expertise, Bias And Delay, Robert E. Hawkins
Dalhousie Law Journal
Expertise, bias and delay arguments are shifting the focus of judicial review from the legality of administrative decisions to the reputation of administrative decision- makers. These grounds measure the skill, objectivity and efficiency characteristics that define administrators' reputations. They make it possible for courts to consider these reputations, even if only by way of unarticulated judicial notice, when deciding judicial review applications. After setting out the theory of expertise, bias and delay implicit in recent Supreme Court of Canada decisions, the author concludes that courts must use less impressionistic measures in judging these concepts, lawyers must present more concrete reputational …
What's The Difference? Interpretation, Identity And R. V. R.D.S., Allan Hutchinson, Kathleen Strachan
What's The Difference? Interpretation, Identity And R. V. R.D.S., Allan Hutchinson, Kathleen Strachan
Dalhousie Law Journal
Lawyers hanker after authority. Whether it be in enforcing the law or justifying law's institutional power, there is an almost desperate yearning to establish and maintain the legitimacy of law and, therefore, of themselves, in a social world in which the whole notion of authority is challenged and undermined. When it comes to matters of legal interpretation, jurists and judges still crave some method that will ground or trace back an interpretation to a foundational or ultimate source that can confer authority on one particular interpretation over another. However, recent jurisprudential debate has done fatal damage to the notion that …
Lights, Camera, Litigate: Lawyers And The Media In Canada And The United States, Charles W. Wolfram
Lights, Camera, Litigate: Lawyers And The Media In Canada And The United States, Charles W. Wolfram
Dalhousie Law Journal
Drawing on recent high profile cases in Canada and the United States, the author examines the different extent to which lawyers in those two countries comment to the media about ongoing litigation. He investigates various formal constraints upon lawyer comment, such as court-imposed publication bans and rules of professional responsibility. He also looks at the way in which lawyer behaviour is attributable to non-formal, cultural determinants.
Framing The Issues For Cameras In The Courtrooms: Redefining Judicial Dignity And Decorum, A Wayne Mackay
Framing The Issues For Cameras In The Courtrooms: Redefining Judicial Dignity And Decorum, A Wayne Mackay
Dalhousie Law Journal
This article examines the role of s. 2(b) of the Charter of Rights in determining the role of cameras in Canadian courtrooms. The discussions reveal that arguments in opposition to cameras are largely unfounded and in contradiction to the freedom of expression guarantee. The denial of the right is in reality based on judges' and lawyers' fear of loss of control of the courtroom environment. Cameras should only be banned from courtrooms as part of a total publication ban, and then only after a careful s. 1 analysis
A Lot Of Knowledge Is A Dangerous Thing: Will The Legal Profession Survive The Knowledge Explosion?, H W. Arthurs
A Lot Of Knowledge Is A Dangerous Thing: Will The Legal Profession Survive The Knowledge Explosion?, H W. Arthurs
Dalhousie Law Journal
Professor Arthurs argues that with the growth and diversification of knowledge, the common body of knowledge that underpins a unified profession is becoming more difficult to sustain. The desire to know, the need to know and the resources to know have divided lawyers into subprofessions, increasingly defined by the non-lawyers with whom they work and the clienteles they serve, bound togetherif at all-only by nostalgia and some residuum of self-interest.
Law Reform Error: Retry Or Abort?, Audrey Macklin
Law Reform Error: Retry Or Abort?, Audrey Macklin
Dalhousie Law Journal
The void left by the demise of the Law Reform Commission of Canada (LRCC) in 1991 presents an opportunity to rethink the scope and legitimacy of law reform as it has been conceptualized and practised by academic lawyers. I am concerned that the dominant meaning ascribed to the term "federal law reform" under the tenure of the LRCC was partial, inadequate, and ultimately conservatizing in its influence. In reviewing past commentary on law reform in Canada, I have been struck by the recurring themes that emerged from the literature. I was particularly impressed by an exceptional piece written by the …
Equality And Access To Justice In The Work Of Bertha Wilson, Hester Lessard
Equality And Access To Justice In The Work Of Bertha Wilson, Hester Lessard
Dalhousie Law Journal
Increasingly, Canadians have sought to understand themselves as a community through the language of equality rights. There are several practical and theoretical consequences to this choice of language. One of the practical consequences is that a formal commitment to equality raises public consciousness with regard to material and social disparities and to some extent gives those who are excluded or marginalized at least a rhetorical claim to participation and a share in resources. However, another consequence is that while promoting a rhetoric of respect and individual dignity, equality discourse also places a disproportionate amount of power in the hands of …
The Theory And History Of Ocean Boundary Making, Elizabeth Maruma Mrema
The Theory And History Of Ocean Boundary Making, Elizabeth Maruma Mrema
Dalhousie Law Journal
Over the years, Douglas Johnston has written and edited a large body of literature on the subject of ocean boundary making. The "functionalist" approach to ocean boundary which he presents in this book is obviously the result of his careful accumulation of knowledge and experience over many years' involvement with the topic as researcher and writer. While at Dalhousie University in Halifax he had significant and direct involvement with the Ocean Studies Program.
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.
Of Persons And Property: The Politics Of Legal Taxonomy, David Cohen, Allan C. Hutchinson
Of Persons And Property: The Politics Of Legal Taxonomy, David Cohen, Allan C. Hutchinson
Dalhousie Law Journal
To talk of law without politics or history is nonsensical. All lawyers must concede that what they do takes place in historical circumstances and has political consequences. Every piece of law-making and law-application is a governmental act; it relies on political authority and claims binding force. Moreover, all legal activity occurs within a particular historical context; it is intended to respond to or influence a past, existing or anticipated state of affairs. This means that the study of law must concern itself with politics and history generally: it must not confine itself to only the politics and history of law. …
Canadian Criminal Jury Instructions, James P. Taylor
Canadian Criminal Jury Instructions, James P. Taylor
Dalhousie Law Journal
Canadian Criminal Jury Instructions ("CRIMJI") is an ambitious project. The authors, the Honourable Mr. Justice John Bouck (of the Supreme Court of British Columbia) and Professor Gerry Ferguson (of the Faculty of Law, University of Victoria) set out to provide a book that will "assist Canadian judges and Canadian lawyers in drafting and delivering a charge to a jury in a criminal case". The authors' twovolume work handily accomplishes this objective.
Lawyers, Courts, And The Rise Of The Regulatory State, R. C. B. Risk
Lawyers, Courts, And The Rise Of The Regulatory State, R. C. B. Risk
Dalhousie Law Journal
In 1883, when Dalhousie Law School was created, lawyers in England, the United States, and Canada stood at the edge of a watershed. Massive changes in the law began during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries - changes in doctrine, institutions, practice, and ways of thinking. I cannot imagine how I might describe these changes in one short paper, even if I understood them all. Instead, I have chosen to talk about one large strand, regulation, because it is an important feature of law in the twentieth century and because it offers an opportunity to consider some distinctive characteristics …