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The Peter A. Allard School of Law

2014

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Articles 1 - 30 of 32

Full-Text Articles in Law

The Supreme Court Of Canada: Policy-Maker Of The Year, Benjamin Perrin Nov 2014

The Supreme Court Of Canada: Policy-Maker Of The Year, Benjamin Perrin

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Each year, the Macdonald-Laurier Institute for Public Policy recognizes a “Policy-Maker of the Year”. Past recipients have included former Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney and Foreign Minister John Baird, who have had a tremendous impact on our country’s economic stability and international stature, respectively. One could argue that, while people in such positions are undoubtedly influential, there is another entity that is rarely acknowledged for its influence on policy, but in the last year has changed Canadian public policy in wide-reaching and long-lasting ways – the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC). This paper examines the Court’s 10 most significant …

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More Than Words: Enhancing The Proposed Canadian Victims Bill Of Rights (Bill C-32), Benjamin Perrin Jun 2014

More Than Words: Enhancing The Proposed Canadian Victims Bill Of Rights (Bill C-32), Benjamin Perrin

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This brief Commentary provides an evaluation of the proposed Canadian Victims Bill of Rights (a key part of Bill C-32), and recommendations aimed at ensuring that it meets the objective of meaningfully enhancing the rights of victims within the criminal justice system. Part 2 provides a synopsis of victimization in Canada, including both self-reported crime and police-reported crime. Groups of victims suffering disproportionately high levels of violent victimization are highlighted and reasons for under-reported crime related to the justice system are identified. Part 3 summarizes the key components of the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights. Part 4 evaluates this proposed …

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Organizational Fields, Transnational Business Governance Interactions And The Diffusion Of Csr, Melanie Coni-Zimmer Jan 2014

Organizational Fields, Transnational Business Governance Interactions And The Diffusion Of Csr, Melanie Coni-Zimmer

Transnational Business Governance Interactions Working Papers

The paper analyzes the process of global diffusion of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in the oil industry and how interactions between different actors have contributed to this outcome. It starts from the empirical puzzle that CSR has spread globally among transnational corporations since the mid 1990s (diffusion of CSR as a dependent variable). To explain this phenomenon, the paper presents a theoretical argument based on insights from sociological neo-institutionalism. It uses the concept of organizational fields as social spaces where organizations interact with one another. The structuration of an organizational field leads to processes of homogenization among the organizations belonging …

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Business And Human Rights: Understanding The Un Guiding Principles From The Perspective Of Transnational Business Governance Interactions, Karin Buhmann Jan 2014

Business And Human Rights: Understanding The Un Guiding Principles From The Perspective Of Transnational Business Governance Interactions, Karin Buhmann

Transnational Business Governance Interactions Working Papers

This article analyses the United Nations (UN) Guidelines on Business and Human Rights adopted in 2011 by the UN Human Rights Council from the perspective of Transnational Business Governance Interactions (TBGI) analytical framework (Eberlein et al. 2014). The article identifies and discusses dimensions of interaction and components of regulatory governance which characterise the Guiding Principles, focusing in particular on the rule formation and implementation. The article notes that the Guiding Principles actively enrolled other actors for the rule-making process ensuring support in a politically and legally volatile field. It identifies mutual 'piggy-backing' by the Guiding Principles and other TBGI Schemes, …

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The Rise Of Transnational Private Meta-Regulators, Paul Verbruggen, Tetty Havinga Jan 2014

The Rise Of Transnational Private Meta-Regulators, Paul Verbruggen, Tetty Havinga

Transnational Business Governance Interactions Working Papers

In recent years scholars from various disciplines have turned their attention to transnational regimes of regulation that are chiefly developed outside state-driven frameworks. The rise of such "transnational private regulation" has also led to the emergence of private meta-regulation. The term 'meta-regulation' commonly refers to processes through which a regulatory body oversees another and sets standards for its activities or performance of regulation. In the public domain, meta-regulation has been associated with the devolution of regulatory activities by a statutory body to private actors with the view to enhance voluntary rule compliance, awareness of responsibilities among the regulated and reduce …

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National And Coordinated Approaches To Securities Regulation: The Latest Initiatives In Historical Context, David L. Johnston, Kathleen Rockwell, Cristie Ford Jan 2014

National And Coordinated Approaches To Securities Regulation: The Latest Initiatives In Historical Context, David L. Johnston, Kathleen Rockwell, Cristie Ford

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If securities regulation is any indication, few countries in the world take their federalism as seriously as Canada does. Notwithstanding an increasingly globalised world, the central reality of Canadian federalism will continue to influence the enactment and enforcement of effective capital markets regulation. In the latest development, on September 8, 2014 the federal government and four participating provinces announced draft legislation, including a new uniform provincial act and new federal legislation, to establish a new Cooperative Capital Markets Regulator (CCMR). Some provinces are strongly opposed, including Québec, which has promised to challenge the proposed regime on constitutional grounds. This chapter …

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Administrative Decentralization And Tax Compliance: A Transactional Cost Perspective, Wei Cui Jan 2014

Administrative Decentralization And Tax Compliance: A Transactional Cost Perspective, Wei Cui

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A common phenomenon in tax administration in developing countries is that tax is collected not according to the rules of law but according to informal agreements between taxpayers and tax collectors. This article offers a novel explanation of this phenomenon in the Chinese context in terms of administrative decentralization. Administrative decentralization is defined as the concentration of government functions at the lowest ranks of a geographically-dispersed bureaucracy. Decentralization increases communication costs associated with the implementation of law, and changes the structure of taxpayers’ costs in obtaining knowledge about the law. As a result, a “semi-compliant” type of behavior, involving many …

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The Turn To Corporate Criminal Liability For International Crimes: Transcending The Alien Tort Statute, James G. Stewart Jan 2014

The Turn To Corporate Criminal Liability For International Crimes: Transcending The Alien Tort Statute, James G. Stewart

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In November 2013, Swiss authorities announced a criminal investigation into one of the world’s largest gold refineries on the basis that the company committed a war crime. The Swiss investigation comes a matter of months after the US Supreme Court decided in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. that allegations like these could not give rise to civil liability under the aegis of the Alien Tort Statute (“ATS”). Intriguingly, however, the Swiss case is founded on a much earlier American precedent. In 1909, the U.S. Supreme Court approved the novel practice of prosecuting companies. Unlike the Court’s position in Kiobel …

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Judicial Review And Parliamentary Debate: Enriching The Doctrine Of Due Deference, Liora Lazarus, Natasha Simonsen Jan 2014

Judicial Review And Parliamentary Debate: Enriching The Doctrine Of Due Deference, Liora Lazarus, Natasha Simonsen

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Recent cases in the European Court of Human Rights have placed greater emphasis on the quality of legislative debate when determining whether to apply the margin of appreciation to the decisions of member States. This paper explores how courts in general might go about assessing the quality of legislative debate about rights, and presents a set of criteria against which such debate can be assessed. While pushing at the boundaries of constitutional orthodoxy, this paper looks ahead to a framework of democratic dialogue where sovereignty is shared between courts, Parliament and other constitutional organs. In this context, it argues that …

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Sexual Assault And The Meaning Of Power And Authority For Women With Mental Disabilities, Janine Benedet, Isabel Grant Jan 2014

Sexual Assault And The Meaning Of Power And Authority For Women With Mental Disabilities, Janine Benedet, Isabel Grant

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The sexual assault of persons with mental disabilities (also described as cognitive, intellectual and developmental disabilities) occurs at alarmingly high rates worldwide. These assaults are a form of gender-based violence intersecting with discrimination based on disability. Our research on the treatment of such cases in the Canadian criminal justice system demonstrates the systemic barriers these victims face at the level of both substantive legal doctrine and trial procedure. Relying on feminist legal theory and disability theory, we argue in this paper that abuses of trust and power underlie most sexual assaults of women with mental disabilities. We argue that existing …

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Title Registration And The Abolition Of Notice In British Columbia, Douglas C. Harris, May Au Jan 2014

Title Registration And The Abolition Of Notice In British Columbia, Douglas C. Harris, May Au

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Systems of land law must balance competing goals of securing title for existing interests in land with facilitating their transfer. Title registration systems operate to facilitate transfers of interests in land. They reflect a choice to enhance the security of transfers of interests, providing what has been characterized as dynamic security at the expense of the static security of existing interests. One of the cardinal principles of title registration is the abolition of the doctrine of notice. In equity, if purchasers of a legal interest have notice of a prior equitable interest, then they take their interest subject to that …

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Transnational Business Governance Interactions: Conceptualization And Framework For Analysis, Burkard Eberlein, Kenneth W. Abbott, Julia Black, Errol Meidinger, Stepan Wood Jan 2014

Transnational Business Governance Interactions: Conceptualization And Framework For Analysis, Burkard Eberlein, Kenneth W. Abbott, Julia Black, Errol Meidinger, Stepan Wood

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This article demonstrates the value of studying interactions in transnational business governance (TBG) and proposes an analytical framework for that purpose. The number of TBG schemes involving non-state authority to govern business conduct across borders has vastly expanded in a wide range of issue areas. As TBG initiatives proliferate, they increasingly interact with one another, and with state-based and other normative regimes. The key challenge is to understand the implications of TBG interactions for regulatory capacity and performance – the most fruitful initial focus – and ultimately for the impacts of regulation on social and environmental problems. To gain purchase …

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A Canadian Model Of Corporate Governance: Where Do Shareholders Really Stand?, Carol Liao Jan 2014

A Canadian Model Of Corporate Governance: Where Do Shareholders Really Stand?, Carol Liao

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This feature article in the Director Journal summarizes the findings from the report, "A Canadian Model of Corporate Governance: Insights from Canada's Leading Legal Practitioners," produced for the Canadian Foundation for Governance Research and the Institute of Corporate Directors (also available on SSRN).

In the report, interviews were conducted with 32 leading senior legal practitioners across Canada to opine on the fundamental principles that are driving the development of Canadian corporate governance. The report found that Canadian common law has made the process of considering stakeholders in the "best interests of the corporation" more overt, well beyond what is assumed …

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Translating Religious Principles Into German Law: Boundaries And Contradictions, Pascale Fournier, Régine Tremblay Jan 2014

Translating Religious Principles Into German Law: Boundaries And Contradictions, Pascale Fournier, Régine Tremblay

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First we present the basic rules of Islamic and Jewish law and the German state law that regulates them. Next we contend that the boundaries for shaping and applying religious norms are blurry. We argue that the conflicting outcomes might be explained by boundless discretion and informality in the religious adjudication process, but that this structure is not foreign to so-called secular family law. Thus, if the project of recognizing religious principles when it comes to family law is to be maintained, it must take stock of the conceptual and practical conflicts that inhere to the sphere of family law, …

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Gendered Border Crossings, Efrat Arbel Jan 2014

Gendered Border Crossings, Efrat Arbel

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Nine years after the implementation of the Canada-US Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA), this chapter examines the STCA while asking the question: what about gender? How have initial concerns about the STCA’s adverse gender impact mapped onto the current, much-altered landscape of Canadian refugee law? The chapter revisits findings made in Bordering on Failure, a recent report I co-authored about the STCA, in an effort to read gender into its absence. I begin by charting an overview of the STCA’s operation and effect to provide context for discussion. I then revisit the central findings made in Bordering on Failure, paying …

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Cooking Up A Deal: Negotiation Recipes For Success, Jim Coben, Robert Dingwall, Dan Druckman, Noam Ebner, Howard Gadlin, Chris Honeyman, Sanda Kaufman, Michelle Lebaron, Roy Lewicki, David Matz, Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Michael Moffitt, Jen Reynolds, Andrea Kupfer Schneider, John Wade, Nancy Welsh Jan 2014

Cooking Up A Deal: Negotiation Recipes For Success, Jim Coben, Robert Dingwall, Dan Druckman, Noam Ebner, Howard Gadlin, Chris Honeyman, Sanda Kaufman, Michelle Lebaron, Roy Lewicki, David Matz, Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Michael Moffitt, Jen Reynolds, Andrea Kupfer Schneider, John Wade, Nancy Welsh

All Faculty Publications

If forced to be concise and pithy, what would a room full of negotiation scholars cook up? The compilation of recipes was in response to the request for each person’s own definition of negotiation effectiveness put in the form of a recipe. Not only is this interesting in terms of seeing the similarities and differences among this leading and diverse group of scholars, the exercise itself is one that can easily be replicated in negotiation or dispute resolution classes. It forces each participant to think about (a) ingredients; (b) amount of each; and (c) the order in which each skill …

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China's Business-Tax-To-Vat Reform: An Interim Assessment, Wei Cui Jan 2014

China's Business-Tax-To-Vat Reform: An Interim Assessment, Wei Cui

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The reform to replace the Business Tax (BT) with the VAT is the largest tax reform initiative in China since 1994. This article assesses the first two years of the reform from a tax policy perspective. It shows that the government has tried to preempt resistance to reform through highly unusual tax design and by allowing local governments to retain revenue from pilot sectors. The VAT for pilot sectors is characterized by two new reduced rates that apply to a wide range of business-to-business transactions as well as consumer services (such as internet and mobile data services) not generally regarded …

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The Ideology Of Temporary Labour Migration In The Post-Global Era, Catherine Dauvergne, Sarah Marsden Jan 2014

The Ideology Of Temporary Labour Migration In The Post-Global Era, Catherine Dauvergne, Sarah Marsden

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In this chapter, we seek to explore the potential of new temporary labour migration programs to yield different outcomes than earlier guestworker programs in the 1980s and 1990s. By looking at key elements of temporary labour migration we assess the potential for an alternative trajectory for understanding and reframing the discussion in terms which are capable of responding in a more emancipatory way to the lived experiences of migrant workers. We have identified three concepts central to most analyses of temporary migration policies and programs: temporariness, the labour market, and rights. Our central contention is that these concepts function ideologically, …

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Deprivative Recognition, Erez Aloni Jan 2014

Deprivative Recognition, Erez Aloni

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Family law is now replete with proposals advocating for the legal recognition of nonmarital relationships: those between friends, relatives, unmarried intimate partners, and the like. The presumption underlying these proposals is that legal recognition is financially beneficial to partners. This assumption is sometimes wrong: Legal recognition of relationships can be harmful to unmarried partners — a reality whose impact on policy concerning regulation of nonmarital unions has not been explored. As this Article shows, a significant number of people benefit financially from nonrecognition of their relationships. While in most cases the state turns a blind eye to this financial gain, …

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Financial Innovation And Flexible Regulation: Destabilizing The Regulatory State, Cristie Ford Jan 2014

Financial Innovation And Flexible Regulation: Destabilizing The Regulatory State, Cristie Ford

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The author examines the regulatory failures leading up to the financial crisis, the rise of “flexible regulation,” the effects of financial innovation on regulation, and three different case studies that illuminate the drastic effects of that innovation: the Basel II banking regulations, the Canadian Asset-Backed Commercial Paper market, and the process for writing the Volcker Rule. Finally, she examines the underlying assumptions that should be re-examined in order to create more effective regulatory policies.

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The Legal Maladies Of 'Federalism, Chinese-Style', Wei Cui Jan 2014

The Legal Maladies Of 'Federalism, Chinese-Style', Wei Cui

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In the study of Chinese law, the theme of “central-local relations” has rarely been the focus of theoretical, empirical, or even doctrinal analysis. Instead, scholars have privileged judicial institutions, general discourses about the rule of law, and their relations to authoritarianism as themes for inquiry. This is of course not unlike the study of legal systems elsewhere: the literatures on federalism and on the rule of law, while each vast in themselves, rarely overlap. In this chapter, I summarize arguments I make elsewhere that the allocation of power and responsibilities among different tiers of government has in fact had major …

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What Jurors Want To Know: Motivating Juror Cognition To Increase Legal Knowledge And Improve Decisionmaking, Sara Gordon Jan 2014

What Jurors Want To Know: Motivating Juror Cognition To Increase Legal Knowledge And Improve Decisionmaking, Sara Gordon

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What do jurors want to know? Jury research tells us that jurors want to understand the information they hear in a trial so they can reach the correct decision. But like all people, jurors who are asked to analyze information in a trial—even jurors who consciously want to reach a fair and accurate verdict—are unconsciously influenced by their internal goals and motivations. Some of these motives are specific to individual jurors; for instance, a potential juror with a financial interest in a case would be excluded from the jury pool. But other motivations, like the motive to understand the law …

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The Punishment Agenda In The Courts, Debra Parkes Jan 2014

The Punishment Agenda In The Courts, Debra Parkes

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This paper critically examines the potential of prisoner litigation in Canada to shed light on what U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy has called “the hidden world of punishment.” It considers whether prisoner’s rights litigation can act as a meaningful legal check on the growing punishment agenda in Canada. The paper begins with a brief description of some aspects of the punishment agenda before moving on to consider case law under the section of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms which speaks directly to punishment and its limits, the section 12 right to be free from “cruel and unusual …

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The Precautionary Principle And Its Application In The Intellectual Property Context: Towards A Public Domain Impact Assessment, Graham Reynolds Jan 2014

The Precautionary Principle And Its Application In The Intellectual Property Context: Towards A Public Domain Impact Assessment, Graham Reynolds

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This chapter considers whether the precautionary principle - a central element of contemporary environmental law and policy - can be usefully applied in the intellectual property context as a means through which the public domain can be protected. Assuming the importance of the public domain, and arguing that expansions in intellectual property protection risk harming the public domain, this chapter contends that it is appropriate to apply the precautionary principle in the intellectual property context in order to guard against harm to the public domain; suggests several ways in which a precautionary principle (or a precautionary approach) could be applied …

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The Rule-Of-Law Underpinnings Of Endangered Species Protection: Minister Of Fisheries And Oceans V. David Suzuki Foundation, 2012 Fca 40, Jocelyn Stacey Jan 2014

The Rule-Of-Law Underpinnings Of Endangered Species Protection: Minister Of Fisheries And Oceans V. David Suzuki Foundation, 2012 Fca 40, Jocelyn Stacey

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Environmental organizations have experienced a string of recent courtroom successes enforcing the federal Species At Risk Act. This case comment examines one of these cases, Minister of Fisheries and Oceans v. David Suzuki Foundation (“Killer Whales”), to expose the rule-of-law underpinnings of the Federal Court of Appeal’s decision. It argues that, while the decision is on its face an ostensible victory for endangered species protection, the conception of the rule of law on which the court relies is incapable of providing meaningful legal constraints for much environmental decision-making.

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Juries, Lay Judges, And Trials, Toby S. Goldbach, Valerie P. Hans Jan 2014

Juries, Lay Judges, And Trials, Toby S. Goldbach, Valerie P. Hans

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“Juries, Lay Judges, and Trials” describes the widespread practice of including ordinary citizens as legal decision makers in the criminal trial. In some countries, lay persons serve as jurors and determine the guilt and occasionally the punishment of the accused. In others, citizens decide cases together with professional judges in mixed decision-making bodies. What is more, a number of countries have introduced or reintroduced systems employing juries or lay judges, often as part of comprehensive reform in emerging democracies. Becoming familiar with the job of the juror or lay citizen in a criminal trial is thus essential for understanding contemporary …

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Legal Instrumentalism And The Lsa: A 'Movie Treatment', Toby S. Goldbach Jan 2014

Legal Instrumentalism And The Lsa: A 'Movie Treatment', Toby S. Goldbach

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In the 2nd half century, LSA should entertain the death/rebirth of “law as a tool for social change.” We innovate by examining the artifacts of an instrumental genre of knowledge and by investigating our impulse to invent varieties of normative technologies.

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A Canadian Model Of Corporate Governance, Carol Liao Jan 2014

A Canadian Model Of Corporate Governance, Carol Liao

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What is Canada’s actual legal model to govern its corporations? Recent landmark judicial decisions indicate Canada is shifting away from an Anglo-American definition of shareholder primacy. Yet the Canadian securities commissions have become increasingly influential in the governance sphere, and by nature are shareholder-focused. Shareholders’ rights have increased well beyond what was ever contemplated by Canadian corporate laws, and the issue of greater shareholder vs. board control has now become the topic of live debate. The future of Canada's overall model seems to rest on what will be more compelling: the constancy of the corporate statutes and trajectory of the …

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Disruptive Innovation And The Global Emergence Of Hybrid Corporate Legal Structures, Carol Liao Jan 2014

Disruptive Innovation And The Global Emergence Of Hybrid Corporate Legal Structures, Carol Liao

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There is considerable legal scholarship focused on reforming the shareholder primacy model of governance embodied within the modern day corporation. While these efforts are worthwhile and must continue, there are certain ideological and practical limitations that make true reformation of this model difficult. It is important, therefore, that in the midst of ongoing efforts, one does not lose sight of available alternatives.

This article promotes a novel perspective that does not spring from traditional-style efforts of corporate reform, but rather, on how a growing trend in corporate law may create 'disruptive innovations' in the marketplace and foster an environment where …

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Complicity, James G. Stewart Jan 2014

Complicity, James G. Stewart

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Complicity is responsibility for helping. This essay provides a comparative overview of the criminal law and theory pertaining to complicity. Instead of taking a strong prescriptive position on the best way to construct accomplice liability, it charts a series of recurrent normative problems in this area and points to various solutions these problems have generated in practice. The essay begins by considering structural questions that inform the shape accomplice liability is given in different criminal systems, then discusses the conduct required to establish accomplice liability, before plotting the various static and dynamic mental elements that are frequently allocated to the …

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