Addressing criticism that bail blurs the line between prevention and punishment, the Supreme Court of Canada unanimously agreed “it is time to ensure that bail provisions are applied consistently and fairly” (R v Antic 2017 SCC 27, [2017] 1 SCR 509). Rather than reform bail, this decision simply reaffirmed the existing legal mandate: using the ladder principle, accused must be released with the fewest conditions necessary to prevent them from absconding, reoffending/interfering with the administration of justice, and/or bringing the criminal justice system into disrepute. We analyze 480 bail hearings in Ontario, Canada, that occurred pre- and post- the R v Antic decision. Our results reveal that justices are more attentive to the ladder principle post-Antic, such that more accused are released on their own recognizance than in the past. While post-Antic trends show a reduction in the use of certain behaviour-modifying conditions, bail supervision programs are used more frequently. We discuss the implications of these findings in light of Canada’s “broken bail system.”

In addition to standard parole conditions, parolees under federal community supervision may be subject to special conditions as determined by the Parole Board of Canada; such conditions are intended to manage factors associated with criminogenic risk and need. One set of special conditions places restrictions on parolees’ social relationships and associations, which can include general restrictions (e.g., non-association with individuals involved in crime) or specific restrictions (e.g., no contact with one’s victim or co-accused). Drawing on case files of women under community supervision (n = 43), we explore how non-association and no contact orders shape community release experiences. We suggest that such conditions can have wide-reaching effects on women’s social lives and reintegration (e.g., in the areas of social support, employment, and housing), thereby, at times, complicating women’s attempts to construct post-institutional lives and identities. We consider how association conditions illustrate the broader tension between parole requirements and reintegration.

Following Japan’s 1941 attacks on Hawai’i and Hong Kong, Canada relocated, detained, and exiled citizens and residents of Japanese ancestry. Many interracial families, however, were exempted from this racial project called the internment. The form of the exemption was an administrative permit granted to its holder on the basis of their marital or patrilineal proximity to whiteness. This article analyzes these permits relying on archival research and applying a critical race feminist lens to explore how law was constitutive of race at this moment in Canadian history. I argue that the permits recategorized interracial intimacies towards two racial ends: to differentiate the citizen from the “enemy alien”; and to regulate the interracial family according to patriarchal common law principles. This article nuances received narratives of law as an instrument of racial exclusion by documenting the way in which a new inclusive state measure sustained old exclusions.

Le contrôle excessif est considéré par différents organismes communautaires et institutions du Québec comme une des représentations des violences basées sur l’honneur (VBH) au même titre que les mariages forcés, les mutilations génitales féminines (MGF) et les violences physiques ou psychologiques. En 2016, pour la première fois, le législateur québécois a ajouté le contrôle excessif à la liste des mauvais traitements psychologiques explicitement reconnus par la Loi sur la protection de la jeunesse (LPJ). Toutefois, aucune définition juridique, jurisprudentielle, politique ou même doctrinale du contrôle excessif n’accompagne cette reconnaissance juridique. Pourtant, il existe, sur le terrain et dans différentes décisions judiciaires, des situations où l’existence du contrôle excessif est reconnue par divers intervenants du système. L’objectif du présent article est d’appréhender le phénomène du contrôle excessif à partir, d’abord, d’un examen doctrinal et juridique, autant fédéral que provincial, concernant les VBH en général, et ensuite, d’une analyse jurisprudentielle des décisions de la Chambre de la Jeunesse de la Cour du Québec associées particulièrement au contrôle excessif. Le tout permettra de proposer une définition du contrôle excessif dans le contexte des VBH, dans le but de mieux identifier cette violence intrafamiliale spécifique et de mieux intervenir auprès des victimes et de leur famille.

Public support is a critical component of any court’s institutional legitimacy. Understanding the roots and durability of such support is therefore crucial. This article uses survey data to explore public attitudes towards Canadian courts from 2008 to 2019. This time period is especially relevant given the comparatively tumultuous relationship between the Supreme Court and the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper (2006–2015). Notably, partisanship now appears to be a defining characteristic of court support in Canada, with Conservative Party supporters being less likely to support the courts. While institutional trust is also found to be a strong predictor of court support, this suggests public attitudes towards Canadian courts may no longer be as well shielded from the effects of changing political circumstances as they once were.

The Assisted Human Reproduction Act seeks to protect egg donors’ health and well-being and prevent trade in their reproductive capabilities. In order to fulfill these objectives, the Act prohibits the buying and selling of ova, and only allows for egg donors to be reimbursed for their expenses. However, no regulations setting out what expenses can be reimbursed were promulgated. Sixteen years later, these long-awaited regulations finally came into force in June 2020. In this study, I rely on data from interviews with sixteen egg donors in order to assess how the new regulations might help or hinder concerns that egg donors have with how egg transactions are regulated in Canada. I argue that the new regulations might hinder, more than help with, addressing current concerns related to egg transactions in Canada. The most likely result is that they will not change the current state of affairs.

This paper argues that patterns of pervasive police violence can and should be treated as organizational crime in Canada. It uses the documented events of police violence in Val d’Or, Quebec, that emerged in 2015 to show how a similar fact pattern might fit all of the elements of organizational crime as defined in the Criminal Code. The article also suggests that this is an example where legal imagination is important, in order to shift our collective understanding of what organizational crime is and where it occurs.

This paper argues that analytical jurisprudence has been insufficiently attentive to three significant puzzles highlighted by the legal pluralist tradition: the existence of commonalities between different types of law, the possibility of a distinction between law and non-law, and the explanatory centrality of the state. I further argue that the resolution of these questions sets the stage for a renewed agenda of analytical jurisprudence and has to be considered in attempts for reconciliation between the academic traditions of analytical jurisprudence and legal pluralism, often called “pluralist jurisprudence.” I also argue that the resolution of these problems affects the empirical, doctrinal, and politico-moral inquiries about legal pluralism.