Law Commons^™

The Language Question In A Rainbow Nation: The South African Experience, Albie L. Sachs

Dalhousie Law Journal

In this, the twenty-second annual Horace E. Read Memorial Lecture, Mr. Justice Albie Sachs reviews the efforts to resolve problems of multilingualism in the new Constitution of South Africa. Writing from experience in the constitution-making process, he reflects on the reality of eleven different languages in South Africa. He discusses the consequent problems of legislative strategy and linguistic rights and the appropriate balance amongst language rights, policy and practice.

Guilty Plea Revocation, Constitutional Waiver, And The Charter: "A Guilty Plea Is Not A Trap", John Dr Craig

Dalhousie Law Journal

The entry of a guilty plea has significant constitutional ramifications. It relieves the Crown of its obligation to prove the elements of an offence beyond a reasonable doubt and constitutes a waiver by the accused of various rights including the right to put the Crown's case to the test of a trial, the right to confront Crown witnesses through cross-examination and the right to remain silent in relation to the determination of legal guilt. In light of these constitutional dimensions, the article considers an issue which has received little academic attention: the revocation of a guiltyplea. The authorassesses the existing …

Beyond The Right To Offend: Academic Freedom, Rights And Responsibilities In The Canadian University Classroom, Judith Macfarlane

Dalhousie Law Journal

The principle of academic freedom accords a wide latitude to professorial speech in the classroom setting. This article argues that there are principles and sources of law which are imported into the professorial employment contract and which place limits on the exercise of that speech. These include contractual obligations of competence and non-discriminatory behaviour, as well as terms drawn from human rights legislation. Drawing on an examination of case law and labour arbitral awards, the author outlines ways in which the right of academic free speech might be balanced against these limiting considerations.

Intellectual Property In The Era Of The Creative Computer Program, Ralph D. Clifford

Faculty Publications

Computer scientists, using artificial intelligence techniques such as neural networks, are enabling computers to independently create works that appear to qualify for federal intellectual property protection. In at least one case, the creator of this kind of program has registered its output, a series of musical compositions, under his name as author with United States Copyright Office. Whether the output of the computer satisfies the statutory and constitutional requisites for protection is questionable, however. The author of this Article argues that the output of an autonomously creative computer program cannot be protected under the current copyright and patent laws. Further, …

Relativism, Reflective Equilibrium, And Justice, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

THIS PAPER IS THE CO-WINNER OF THE FRED BERGER PRIZE IN PHILOSOPHY OF LAW FOR THE 1999 AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE BEST PUBLISHED PAPER IN THE PREVIOUS TWO YEARS.

The conflict between liberal legal theory and critical legal studies (CLS) is often framed as a matter of whether there is a theory of justice that the law should embody which all rational people could or must accept. In a divided society, the CLS critique of this view is overwhelming: there is no such justice that can command universal assent. But the liberal critique of CLS, that it degenerates into …

Toward A Conceptual Framework For Assessing Police Power Commitment Legislation, Eric S. Janus

Faculty Scholarship

Recent litigation and scholarship have begun to focus on the substantive limits of the state's power to use civil commitment as a social control tool. Courts and commentators describe civil commitment as grounded on two powers of the state: the parens patriae interest and the police power. This Article seeks an analytical framework for defining the boundaries of police power commitments in which justification rests on the interests of the public rather than on the interests of the committed individual.

Rights And Freedoms Under The State Constitution: A New Deal For Welfare Rights, Helen Hershkoff

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Limits On Regulating Private Militia Groups, Thomas B. Mcaffee

Scholarly Works

Read in a historical context, the Second Amendment provides clear answers to only a few of the questions regarding the appropriate limits of state regulatory power to restrict organizing and training private militia groups. Moreover, a basic analysis of the original materials yields conclusions that may be disappointing to both critics and sympathizers of the private militia movement. Critics may be unhappy with the conclusion that the individual right to bear arms offers important protection to at least some activities of private militia members. Sympathizers may be equally disappointed with the conclusion that activities which include full-scale preparation for a …

Doing Justice: A Challenge For Catholic Law Schools Essay., Grace M. Walle

St. Mary's Law Journal

The numerous allegations of misconduct against high-ranking United States political figures and the associated attorneys are disheartening, but even more disconcerting is the general public’s acquiescence to these ethical deviations. The common assumption that “all lawyers are crooks” fails to outrage anyone. The fact most, if not all, recent ethical violators attended law schools and began their political careers as lawyers prompts questions of the legal education process. Understanding what justice encompasses may begin in books and the classroom, but justice in legal practice requires far more. The aspiration of “doing justice” may stem from religious belief, but this goal …

Freeing The Parties From The Law: Designing An Interest And Rights Focused Model Of Landlord/Tenant Mediation, Joel Kurtzberg, Jamie Henikoff

Journal of Dispute Resolution

In this article, we point out two fundamental flaws of the critique. First, the critique compares mediation to an idealized view of adjudication instead of comparing mediation to its real-life alternatives. Second, it takes a narrow view of the role of law in mediation, erroneously assuming that mediators must either ignore the law or impose it on the parties. Part I of this article spells out the critics' claim that mediation generally harms the poor and disempowered by failing to adequately incorporate formal legal protections into the process. Part II examines the critique as it is applied to the landlord-tenant …