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Full-Text Articles in Law
Constitutionalizing Abortion Rights In Canada, Joanna Erdman
Constitutionalizing Abortion Rights In Canada, Joanna Erdman
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This article endeavours to understand the feminist activism from which constitutional abortion rights in Canada were born in the landmark Supreme Court case of R v Morgentaler 1988, and the influence of these rights on continued feminist activism for reproductive justice. Part I reviews abortion practice in the ‘back-alley’ prior to and immediately after the 1969 criminal reform with attention to the direct service activism of liberation feminists in their campaign to repeal the abortion law as a matter of constitutional justice. Part II turns to adjudication in the courts to study how judicial reasoning channelled these constitutional claims, exploring …
‘And Miles To Go Before I Sleep’: The Future Of End Of Life Law And Policy In Canada, Jocelyn Downie
‘And Miles To Go Before I Sleep’: The Future Of End Of Life Law And Policy In Canada, Jocelyn Downie
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This paper reviews the legal status of a number of end-of-life law and policy issues that have, to date, been overshadowed by debates about medical assistance in dying. It suggests that law reform is needed in relation to palliative sedation without artificial hydration and nutrition, advance directives for the withholding and withdrawal of oral hydration and nutrition, unilateral withholding and withdrawal of potentially life-sustaining treatment, and the determination of death. To leave the law in its current uncertain state is to leave patients vulnerable to having no access to interventions that they want or, at the other extreme, being forced …
Agonizing Identity In Mental Health Law And Policy (Part I), Sheila Wildeman
Agonizing Identity In Mental Health Law And Policy (Part I), Sheila Wildeman
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In this two-part paper, the author explores the significance of identity in mental health law and policy. In this as in other socio-legal domains, identity functions to consolidate dissent as well as to effect social control. The author asks: where do legal experts stand in relation to the identity categories that run so deep in this area of law and policy? More broadly, she asks: is “mental health” working on us — on the mental health disabled, legal scholars, all of us — in ways that are impairing our capacity for social justice? In the first part of the paper, …
Agonizing Identity In Mental Health Law And Policy (Part Ii): A Political Taxonomy Of Psychiatric Subjectification, Sheila Wildeman
Agonizing Identity In Mental Health Law And Policy (Part Ii): A Political Taxonomy Of Psychiatric Subjectification, Sheila Wildeman
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This is the second part of a two-part essay exploring the function of identity in mental health law and policy, or more broadly, the function of identity in the politics of mental health. Part one began with the Foucauldian exhortation to undertake a “critical ontology of ourselves,” and adopted the methodology of autoethnography to explore the construction or constructedness of the author’s identity as an expert working in the area of mental health law and policy. That part concluded with a gesture of resistance to identification on one or the other side of the mental health/ illness divide (the divide …
Is It Time To Adopt A No-Fault Scheme To Compensate Injured Patients?, Elaine Gibson
Is It Time To Adopt A No-Fault Scheme To Compensate Injured Patients?, Elaine Gibson
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The tort system is roundly indicted for its inadequacies in providing compensation in response to injury. More egregious is its response to injuries incurred due to negligence in the provision of healthcare services specifically. Despite numerous calls for reform, tort-based compensation has persisted as the norm to date. However, recent developments regarding physician malpractice lead to consideration of the possibility of a move to “no-fault” compensation for healthcare-related injuries. In this paper, I explore these developments, examine programs in various foreign jurisdictions which have adopted no-fault compensation for medical injury, and discuss the wisdom and feasibility of adopting an administratively-based …
Protecting Rights And Building Capacities: Challenges To Global Mental Health Policy In Light Of The Convention On The Rights Of Persons With Disabilities, Sheila Wildeman
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The World Health Organization (WHO) has in the last decade identified mental health as a priority for global health promotion and international development, to be targeted through promulgation of evidence-based medical practices, health systems reform, and respect for human rights. Yet these overlapping strategies are marked by tensions as the historical primacy of expert-led initiatives is increasingly subject to challenge by new social movements — in particular, disabled persons’ organizations (DPOs). These tensions come into focus upon situating the WHO’s contributions to the analysis of global mental health in light of the negotiation and early stages of implementation of the …
Consent Requirements For Pelvic Examinations Performed For Training Purposes, Elaine Gibson, Jocelyn Downie
Consent Requirements For Pelvic Examinations Performed For Training Purposes, Elaine Gibson, Jocelyn Downie
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In 2010, The Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada (SOGC) and The Association of Professors of Obstetrics and Gynaecology of Canada (APOG) released an updated policy statement regarding pelvic examinations performed on women under anesthesia. The updated statement, unlike the previous 2006 guideline that applied to “medical trainees” (explicitly including students and residents), for the most part only applies to “medical students”. Pelvic examinations conducted for training purposes presumably constitute a battery in law, subject to the defence of consent. Residents need to be covered by an SOGC and APOG policy statement regarding pelvic examinations for training purposes with …
Understanding 'Elder Abuse And Neglect': A Critique Of Assumptions Underpinning Responses To The Mistreatment And Neglect Of Older People, Joan Harbison, Steve Coughlan, Marie Beaulieu, Jeff Karabanow, Madine Vanderplaat, Sheila Wildeman, Ezra Wexler
Understanding 'Elder Abuse And Neglect': A Critique Of Assumptions Underpinning Responses To The Mistreatment And Neglect Of Older People, Joan Harbison, Steve Coughlan, Marie Beaulieu, Jeff Karabanow, Madine Vanderplaat, Sheila Wildeman, Ezra Wexler
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This article provides an overview of the ways in which the mistreatment and neglect of older people have come to be understood as a social problem, one which is underpinned by a variety of substantive and theoretical assumptions. It connects the process of conceptualizing elder abuse and neglect to political-economic and social evolution. The authors draw on a review of the literature, government sources, interest group websites, and their own research to provide a critical commentary illustrating how these understandings have become manifest in legislation, policies, and programs pertaining to "elder abuse and neglect" in Canada. Suggestions are provided for …
Restorative Justice, Euthanasia, And Assisted Suicide: A New Arena For Restorative Justice And A New Path For End Of Life Law And Policy In Canada, Jennifer Llewellyn, Jocelyn Downie
Restorative Justice, Euthanasia, And Assisted Suicide: A New Arena For Restorative Justice And A New Path For End Of Life Law And Policy In Canada, Jennifer Llewellyn, Jocelyn Downie
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This article examines the current Canadian legal approach to euthanasia and assisted suicide, highlights some of the problems with it, and offers a novel alternative to the current traditionally criminalized prohibitive regime. The authors first describe a restorative justice approach and explain the differences between such an approach and the traditional approach currently in use. They then explain how a restorative justice approach could be implemented in the arena of assisted death, acknowledging the potential challenges in implementation. The authors conclude that taking a restorative justice approach to euthanasia and assisted suicide could enable movement in the seemingly intractable public …
Law And Mental Health: A Relationship In Crisis? (Introduction), Sheila Wildeman
Law And Mental Health: A Relationship In Crisis? (Introduction), Sheila Wildeman
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An Introduction to the Lectures of Supreme Court of Canada Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin and Nova Scotia Provincial Court Judge Anne Derrick. What is the significance of the rule of law to the area of professional knowledge and practice that is “mental health”—or to the interaction of those two aspirational, one might say euphemistically-named social systems: the mental health and justice systems? This question centres upon the rule of law—specifically, I suggest (as I relate further in closing), a thick conception of the rule of law grounded in an ideal of state-subject reciprocity1 —and not, or not directly, upon the …
Protecting Human Research Subjects: A Jurisdictional Analysis, Jennifer Llewellyn, Jocelyn Downie, Robert Holmes
Protecting Human Research Subjects: A Jurisdictional Analysis, Jennifer Llewellyn, Jocelyn Downie, Robert Holmes
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The most recent speech from the throne contained a pledge from the federal government to "work with provinces to implement a national system for the governance of research involving humans, including national research ethics and standards." This commitment signals a desire on the part of the federal government to address concerns about the inadequacies of the current governance of health research involving humans (RIH). To this end, Health Canada's Ethics Division is currently exploring the ways in which such a national governance system for RIH might be implemented. It is important for the federal government, as it moves toward making …
Genetic And Metabolic Screening Of Newborns: Must Health Care Providers Seek Explicit Parental Consent?, Sheila Wildeman, Jocelyn Downie
Genetic And Metabolic Screening Of Newborns: Must Health Care Providers Seek Explicit Parental Consent?, Sheila Wildeman, Jocelyn Downie
Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press
In this paper, we provide some background on the history of newborn screening and the legal context within which questions regarding consent must be answered, and then turn to the various arguments that can be made for and against the current approach to parental consent to genetic and metabolic tests administered as part of provincial/territorial newborn screening programs. In the end, we conclude that either practice should be changed to align it with current law such that explicit parental consent is sought for the established tests, or that advocates for maintaining current practices should lobby for legislation permitting newborn screening …