Law Commons^™

Reasonable Expectations Of Privacy In An Era Of Drones And Deepfakes: Expanding The Supreme Court Of Canada’S Decision In R V Jarvis, Suzie Dunn, Kristen Mj Thomasen

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Perpetrators of Technology-Facilitated gender-based violence are taking advantage of increasingly automated and sophisticated privacy-invasive tools to carry out their abuse. Whether this be monitoring movements through stalker-ware, using drones to non-consensually film or harass, or manipulating and distributing intimate images online such as deep-fakes and creepshots, invasions of privacy have become a significant form of gender-based violence. Accordingly, our normative and legal concepts of privacy must evolve to counter the harms arising from this misuse of new technology. Canada’s Supreme Court recently addressed Technology-Facilitated violations of privacy in the context of voyeurism in R v Jarvis (2019). The discussion of …

The Gender Injustice Of Abortion Laws, Joanna Erdman

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This commentary is a response to Katarzyna Sękowska-Kozłowska’s article on the treatment of criminal abortion laws as a form of sex discrimination under international human rights law through a study of the communications, Mellet v. Ireland and Whelan v. Ireland. The commentary offers a reading of these communications, and specifically the sex discrimination analysis premised on inequalities of treatment among women, as an engagement with the structural discrimination that characterises abortion laws, and asa radical vision for gender justice under international human rights law.

The Door Has A Tendency To Swing Shut: The Saga Of Aboriginal Peoples' Equality Claims, Naiomi Metallic

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This paper tracks the history of Aboriginal peoples' equality complaints against the state. From the time Aboriginal people started to bring discrimination complaints before the courts, there have been significant obstacles that have operated to effectively — and sometimes even explicitly — prevent Aboriginal peoples from advancing pressing discrimination complaints against governments. Although there have been changes made in the law over time to attempt to eliminate such barriers, what we see is a pattern where new obstacles crop up to replace the old ones. Over and over, Aboriginal peoples see the door to equality open up only to have …

Law As An Ally Or Enemy In The War On Cyberbullying: Exploring The Contested Terrain Of Privacy And Other Legal Concepts In The Age Of Technology And Social Media, A. Wayne Mackay

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This article focuses on the role and limits of law as a response to cyberbullying. The problem of cyberbullying engages many of our most fundamental legal concepts and provides an interesting case study. Even when there is general agreement that the problem merits a legal response, there are significant debates about what that response should be. Which level and what branch of government can and should best respond? What is the most appropriate legal process for pursuing cyberbullies—traditional legal avenues or more creative restorative approaches? How should the rights and responsibilities of perpetrators, victims and even bystanders be balanced? Among …

Law As An Ally Or Enemy In The War On Cyberbullying: Exploring The Contested Terrain Of Privacy And Other Legal Concepts In The Age Of Technology And Social Media, A. Wayne Mackay

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This article focuses on the role and limits of law as a response to cyberbullying. The problem of cyberbullying engages many of our most fundamental legal concepts and provides an interesting case study. Even when there is general agreement that the problem merits a legal response, there are significant debates about what that response should be. Which level and what branch of government can and should best respond? What is the most appropriate legal process for pursuing cyberbullies—traditional legal avenues or more creative restorative approaches? How should the rights and responsibilities of perpetrators, victims and even bystanders be balanced? Among …

Twu Law: A Reply To Proponents Of Approval, Elaine Craig

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Trinity Western University has a Community Covenant that only permits sexual minorities to attend at considerable personal cost to their dignity and sense of self-worth. All student and staff applicants to TWU are required to sign this covenant pledging not to engage in same sex intimacy. On April 11, 2014, the Law Society of British Columbia accredited TWU’s law degree program despite the university’s formal policy of exclusion on the basis of sexual orientation. Later that month, the Law Society of Upper Canada and the Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society refused to approve that same program because of concerns regarding the …

The Door Has A Tendency To Swing Shut: The Saga Of Aboriginal Peoples' Equality Claims, Naiomi Metallic

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This paper tracks the history of Aboriginal peoples' equality complaints against the state. From the time Aboriginal people started to bring discrimination complaints before the courts, there have been significant obstacles that have operated to effectively — and sometimes even explicitly — prevent Aboriginal peoples from advancing pressing discrimination complaints against governments. Although there have been changes made in the law over time to attempt to eliminate such barriers, what we see is a pattern where new obstacles crop up to replace the old ones. Over and over, Aboriginal peoples see the door to equality open up only to have …

The Case For The Federation Of Law Societies Rejecting Trinity Western University's Proposed Law Degree Program, Elaine Craig

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Should Canada have a law school that discriminates against gays and lesbians? Would the governing bodies of the legal profession in Canada approve a law school that prohibited mixed race sexual intimacy? Should a self-regulating legal profession require that the policies of the institutions that produce this country's next generation of lawyers respect equality and academic freedom? Trinity Western University (TWU), a private Christian school in British Columbia is posed to become Canada’s first Christian law school. Trinity Western discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation in both its hiring and admissions policies. It has also been found to violate …

Virtual Inequality: Challenges For The Net's Lost Founding Value, Jonathon Penney

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Freedom, liberty, and autonomy are the ideals mainly associated with Internet's first generation of thinkers, writers and "netizens," those who helped forge the Internet and the early technological and intellectual foundations of the idea of “cyberspace.” These ideas were, says Lawrence Lessig, the “founding values of the Net” and inspired an entire generation of scholarship focused on preserving the free and open nature of the Internet’s culture and architecture. But what has anyone to say about equality? Few, if any, Internet scholars today focus on equality as a similar value to be promoted or achieved. Returning to some of the …

In The Back Alleys Of Health Care: Abortion, Equality And Community In Canada, Joanna Erdman

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The decriminalization of abortion in Canada ensured neither its availability nor accessibility as an integrated and publicly funded health service. While Canadian women are increasingly referred to or seek abortion services from single-purpose clinics, their exclusion from public health insurance often render these services inaccessible. This article considers denied funding for clinic abortion services from the perspective of the Canadian constitutional guarantee of sex equality. The article focuses on the 2004 Court of Queen's Bench's judgment in Jane Doe I v. Manitoba, which framed denied public funding for clinic abortion services as a violation of women's equality rights under the …

Family As Status In Doe V Canada: Constituting Family Under Section 15 Of The Charter, Elaine Craig

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The Ontario Court of Appeal recently released a decision rejecting a constitutional challenge to the Processing and Distribution of Semen for Assisted Conception Regulations. In this paper I argue that the Court's reasoning in Doe v. Canada is flawed and that certain provisions of the Semen Regulations constitute an unjustified infringement of section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. I also argue that the claimants in this case would have been better served by the jurisprudence of section 15 of the Charter had they premised their argument on the assertion that they were discriminated against on the …

In The Back Alleys Of Health Care: Abortion, Equality And Community In Canada, Joanna Erdman

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The decriminalization of abortion in Canada ensured neither its availability nor accessibility as an integrated and publicly funded health service. While Canadian women are increasingly referred to or seek abortion services from single-purpose clinics, their exclusion from public health insurance often render these services inaccessible. This article considers denied funding for clinic abortion services from the perspective of the Canadian constitutional guarantee of sex equality. The article focuses on the 2004 Court of Queen's Bench's judgment in Jane Doe I v. Manitoba, which framed denied public funding for clinic abortion services as a violation of women's equality rights under the …

The Elwood Case: Vindicating The Educational Rights Of The Disabled, A. Wayne Mackay

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The guarantees of the Charter of Rights affect the definition of education for the disabled. The case of Elwood v. Halifax County - Bedford District School Board, a landmark case in educational rights of disabled children in Canada, has major implications for educational practice.

One of the earliest and most controversial Charter of Rights challenges to the existing educational structure has come from parents of disabled children. Disabled children and their parents are blazing a trail to define educational rights in Canada, and the process is giving some shape to the the elusive concept of equality enshrined in the …