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Land Claim Settlement In Canadian Arctic: Pragmatism And Instrumentalism At Work, Diana Ginn

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In Canada, comprehensive land claims based on Aboriginal title can be pursued through either litigation or negotiation. Generally, the relationship between litigation and negotiation of these claims is understood as one where the Supreme Court of Canada initially prodded the Canadian state to action, and then in a series of decisions developed the legal parameters within which the political realities of negotiation occur. Thus, settlement tends to follow and be shaped by the contours of the legal doctrine. However, settlement of land claims in Canada’s Arctic moved ahead of the case law in two key areas, as manifested in: (a) …

The High Cost Of Transferring The Dream, Kim Brooks

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This paper is part of a larger project where I use the facts in tax decisions to reveal something about who we are. It looks through a small window into the lives of the people who find themselves caught between our collective and their individual expenditure aspirations. More specifically, it explores the circumstances in which individuals find that their outstanding tax debts pose a threat to their ability to maintain ownership of their home.

In this paper I use the facts of tax cases for two ends. First, I am interested in disrupting legal knowledge hierarchies. We choose cases to …

The Law Of Stigma, Travel, And The Abortion-Free Island, Joanna Erdman

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In 1988, the Supreme Court of Canada decriminalized abortion in R. v. Morgentaler. Almost immediately thereafter, the Maritime province of Prince Edward Island ("P.E.I.") passed a legislative resolution opposing the provision of abortion services on the Island except to save the life of a pregnant woman. P.E.I. is a small pastoral province of rolling hills and ocean coves in the St. Lawrence Gulf, and since 1988, through various regulatory actions, its government has honored this policy promise to keep the Island abortion-free and to preserve its moral landscape.

The same year that abortion was banished from P.E.I., Prince Edward Islanders …

From The Octagon To The Courtroom: The Right To Fight, Subaltern Cosmopolitanism, And Public Interest Litigation As Tool For Mixed Martial Arts As A Community/Cultural Normative System, Sara Gwendolyn Ross

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As a new sport, mixed martial arts (“MMA”) has grown wildly in popularity. Yet MMA faces hurdles in legitimization and acceptance through legal, regulatory, and political means. While the MMA community has gone to great lengths to change its image, its internal rules, and regulatory framework—and while most American states and Canadian provinces now legally regulate MMA—certain states, such as New York, continue to ban live professional MMA events.

MMA suffers from a lack of scholarship across many disciplines, including legal scholarship. While the available literature on MMA gradually develops, the minimal legal scholarship related to the matter has concentrated …

From Integrity Agency To Accountability Network: The Political Economy Of Public Sector Oversight In Canada, Jamie Baxter

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The federal integrity agencies that are delegated collective responsibility for public sector oversight in Canada face a common challenge to stabilize their ongoing independence from political control. While Parliament has delegated to these agencies key oversight functions that demand some degree of structural independence, they remain vulnerable to shifting political preferences and to an increasingly partisan national politics. This Article uses a political economy framework to theorize the objectives that shape political preferences for agency independence in Canada, and to suggest that structural innovations in the form of 'accountability networks' may provide one strategy to help stabilize those preferences over …

Legal Ethics Versus Political Practices: The Application Of The Rules Of Professional Conduct To Lawyer-Politicians, Andrew Martin

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Canadian legal ethics has paid little attention to how the rules of professional conduct for lawyers apply to lawyer-politicians – that is, politicians who happen to be lawyers. This article addresses this issue with reference to what Canadian case law and commentary do exist, supplemented by more plentiful American materials. It proposes a distinction between conduct that is politically expedient and conduct in which lawyer-politicians’ duties as lawyers come into apparent conflict with their duties of office. Canadian case law reveals three conflicting approaches to this latter category: that the duties of a lawyer prevail, that the duties of a …

Power, Parliament And Prorogation: A Canadian Political Drama, A. Wayne Mackay

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Rarely have Canadians (or Americans!) been so riveted by political life in Ottawa as during the late days of November and the early days of December, 2008. The nature of this focus on Canada’s Parliament was not the kind of positive energy that surrounded American President-elect Obama’s historic election victory a few weeks before, but rather a negative and nervous energy characterized by disbelief, disgust and surprise. In a time of economic crisis rivaled only by the Great Depression of the 1930s, Canada was being plunged into a political crisis not seen since 1926, when then-Governor General Byng denied then-Prime …

Envisioning The Future Of Aboriginal Health Under The Health Transfer Process, Constance Macintosh

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The Canadian government, and many Aboriginal communities, are committed to formally transferring varying aspects of governance responsibilities from federal hands to Aboriginal ones. These transfers take various forms, from creating Aboriginal political bodies with broad sets of governance powers, as was the case with the Nisga'a Treaty of 2000, to more partial transfers of specific powers or responsibilities, or types of responsibilities. One core transfer area is public health programming, for which there are specific and highly developed initiatives dating back to around 1989. Although it is expected that these initiatives will, overall, have very positive effects for improving the …

Relational Theory And Health Law And Policy, Jennifer Llewellyn, Jocelyn Downie

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Relational theory starts from an understanding of human selves as relational. This theory informs some significant current developments in the areas of philosophy, ethics and legal theory that re-envision key concepts including autonomy, equality, rights, justice, memory, trust, judgment and identity. In this paper we introduce relational theory and begin to explore some of its implications for health law and policy. In doing so, we hope to show the relevance of each field to the other and to persuade those interested in health law and policy to take up the challenge to pursue the transformative potential of relational theory through …

Let My People Go: Human Capital Investment And Community Capacity Building Via Meta/Regulation In A Deliberative Democracy - A Modest Contribution For Criminal Law And Restorative Justice, Bruce P. Archibald

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Globalization and the new information economy are putting great stress on western high-wage economies of which Canada is an exemplar. As individuals and together as a society, Canadians are being forced to become more flexible and strategic in adjusting to changing employment opportunities and economic challenges. Meanwhile, governments have shifted from being purveyors of welfare to being supervisors of both markets and decentralized/ privatized public services. Key roles for the government in this new political environment are the sponsorship of mechanisms for autonomous, individual human capital investment as well as for community responses to these emerging economic and social challenges. …

The Challenges Of Institutionalizing Comprehensive Restorative Justice: Theory And Practice In Nova Scotia, Jennifer Llewellyn, Bruce Archibald

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The Nova Scotia Restorative Justice Program ("NSRJ") is one of the oldest and by all accounts the most comprehensive in Canada. The program centres on youth justice, and operates through referrals by police, prosecutors, judges and correctional officials to community organizations which facilitate restorative conferences and other restoratively oriented processes. More than five years of NSRJ experience with thousands of cases has led to a considerable rethinking of restorative justice theory and practice in relation to governing policies, standards for program implementation and responses to controversial issues. The purpose of this paper is to explore the significance of the Nova …

Religious Discourse In The Public Square, David Blaikie, Diana Ginn

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Full, open, and civilized discourse among citizens is fundamental to the life of a liberal democracy. It seems trite to assert that no discourse should be prohibited or excluded simply because it is grounded in religious faith or employs religious beliefs to justify a particular position. Yet there are those who contend that it is improper for citizens to use religious arguments when debating or deciding issues in the public square, that metaphorical arena where issues of public policy are discussed and contested. In this article we challenge this position, examining the various arguments that are put forward for keeping …

Feminists, Angels, Poets, And Revolutionaries: What I'Ve Learned From Ruthann Robson And Nicole Brossard On What It Means To Be A Law Teacher, Kim Brooks

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This short piece was written as a tribute to the contributions Ruthann Robson has made to legal pedagogy, and was presented at a Symposium in her honor held at CUNY.

Depriving Law Reform Of Its Potential? New Perspectives On The Public-Private Divide Law Commission Of Canada, Ed. (Vancouver: University Of British Columbia Press, 2003), Richard Devlin Frsc

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New Perspectives on the Public-Private Divide is the second installment in a new series, Legal Dimensions, sponsored by the Canadian Association of Law Teachers, the Canadian Law and Society Association, the Canadian Council of Law Deans and the Law Commission of Canada. The ambitions of this series are large: to "examine various issues of law reform form a multidisciplinary perspective [and]... to advance our knowledge about law and society through the analysis of fundamental aspects of law."

The focus on the public-private divide is an excellent choice for the Legal Dimensions Series for no matter how one conceptualizes the relationship, …

Queering Legal Education: A Project Of Theoretical Discovery, Kim Brooks, Debra Parkes

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The article has two parts. Part II discusses the materials we reviewed to inform the development of a queer legal pedagogy. In particular, it examines the categories of queer legal scholarship and highlights the contributions of other outsider scholars to legal education debates. Early in our research, we found limited material on queer legal pedagogy, and we discovered nothing that posited a theoretical approach. We did, however, find rich resources written by other outsiders to law from which some design principles for queer legal pedagogy might be drawn. We should note at the outset that our goal in this Part …

The Charter And Anglophone Legal Theory, Part I, Richard F. Devlin Frsc

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The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms has generated not only new terrain over which discursive positions are mobilized, but it has catalysed theoretical reflection about law, society, state, and the self. Examining the implications of the Charter for Anglophone legal theory, the author conducts both a qualitative and quantitative survey of jurisprudential work on the Charter and concludes that the Charter's impact on legal theory has been significant. The Charter has prompted expansion of the range of interdisciplinary influences, contextualized theoretical reflection, and made jurisprudence more engaged with and relevant to Canadian social life. The Charter also has facilitated …

The Charter And Anglophone Legal Theory, Part Ii, Richard F. Devlin Frsc

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The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms has generated not only new terrain over which discursive positions are mobilized, but it has catalysed theoretical reflection about law, society, state, and the self. Examining the implications of the Charter for Anglophone legal theory, the author conducts both a qualitative and quantitative survey of jurisprudential work on the Charter and concludes that the Charter's impact on legal theory has been significant. The Charter has prompted expansion of the range of interdisciplinary influences, contextualized theoretical reflection, and made jurisprudence more engaged with and relevant to Canadian social life. The Charter also has facilitated …

Some Recent Developments In Canadian Constitutional Theory With Particular Reference To Beatty And Hutchinson, Richard F. Devlin Frsc

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This article provides a critique of recent books by two prominent Canadian constitutional theorists - David Beatty's Constitutional Law in Theory and Practice and Allan Hutchinson's Waiting for CORAF: A Critique of Law and Rights. Devlin begins with a brief overview of the various positions that have been staked out in writing on the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freed oms during the last decade. He identifies three broad constituencies: Charter advocates who assume that rights are an "unqualified human good" and that judicial review is an important check on majoritarian zealotry; Charter critics who emphasize the undemocratic nature of …

A Feminist Exploration Of Issues Around Assisted Death, Jocelyn Downie, Susan Sherwin

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Although a great deal of public attention has recently been focused on issues around assisted death remarkably little of it has come from an explicitly feminist perspective. This is a serious omission at a time when legislators are feeling pressure to review and perhaps revise existing policies on assisted death, and when the policies they contemplate may have a significant negative and disproportionate impact on women. We think it is essential that there be some discussion of these issues from an explicitly feminist perspective in order to ensure that concerns about the oppression of women become part of the public …

Doubting Donald: A Reply To Professor Donald Galloway's 'Critical Mistakes', Richard F. Devlin Fsrc

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In a recent article Professor Galloway has argued that supporters of the Critical Legal Studies perspective make five fundamental errors in their analyses of liberal theory and as a result have failed in their deconstructive agenda. In this essay Professor Devlin replies to these criticisms and posits that Galloway's essay in retrieval is itself subject to the very same errors of which he accuses the "crits". Moreover, it is argued that the nature of Galloway 's partial defence of liberalism confirms rather than denies the accuracy of critical assessments.

On The Road To Radical Reform: A Critical Review Of Unger's Politics, Richard F. Devlin Frsc

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Two aims drive this essay. The first is to provide the reader with an accessible, yet relatively comprehensive, introduction to Roberto Mangabeira Unger's social and legal theory. The second aim is to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of Unger's most recent scholarship and to make some suggestions as to where he goes awry. In particular, the author draws several parallels between the Ungerian enterprise and that of some feminists. The central motivation of the essay is to keep the critical conversation between male radicals and feminists open. To this end, the author posits the possibility of mutually beneficial contributions.

Nomos And Thanatos (Part A), The Killing Fields: Modern Law And Legal Theory, Richard F. Devlin Frsc

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The essay is to be published in two parts. Part A, "The Killing Fields .. . ", is a criticai inquiry into the way in which the "disciplines" of law and legal theory rationalize violence. I begin my discussion with a Celtic triptych - a series of three narratives - that is designed to provide the reader with some background information in order that he or she may acquire a sense of the perspective and experiential context from which this essay emerges.

Next, I briefly outline the central role which violence has played in structuring our received tradition of jurisprudential …

Twisting The Tourniquet Around The Pulse Of Conventional Legal Wisdom: Jurisprudence And Law Reform In The Work Of Robert A Samek, Richard F. Devlin Frsc

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Despite some lingering reservations, after a reading and re-reading, analysis and counter-analysis, critique, reflection and synthesis of over thirty articles and two books, I now feel comfortable with Samek's work and confident enough to present this reconstruction of his theory in order that his thoughts will be more accessible to those who might be interested

Book Review Of Passion: An Essay On Personality , Richard F. Devlin Frsc

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Passion is a cogently structured, compel Jingly argued and seductively enthralling masterpiece which, in years to come, will undoubtedly stand out as an inspirational source for many who seek social transformation. Unger's style, in this essay at least, is lucid and inviting. Substantively, Passion demonstrates not only the depth of his penetrating intellect but also his command of an array of' disciplines. Unger's polymathy is all the more impressive when we remember that ours is an era in which idiosyncratic specialization is the norm.