This article presents first, a summary of the findings of the first phase of the human dignity and social exclusion initiative (HDSE) of the Council of Europe and second, an analysis of the implications for social policy of the four themes identified in the report's conclusions. These four themes are: i) trends in risk, ii) the changing role of the state in relation to risk, iii) convergence in social policy approaches in Europe and iv) the challenge confronting social NGOs in defending the least advantaged in risk society. Thus, the article uses the framework of risk, social exclusion and social rights to explore the implications of social policy trends for the lives of the least advantaged people and to comment on effective strategies for combating poverty and exclusion in the changing environment identified by the HDSE report.

Antidiscrimination legislation is the vehicle most commonly used by communities to demand equality, but how should such law best be employed? In this article, the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal decision in Hogan v. Ontario (Health and Long-term Care) is examined in relation to the removal of sex reassignment surgery from the Alberta Healthcare Insurance Plan in order to better understand the legal strategies designed to remedy different kinds of discrimination. This article argues that trans issues (involving people who identify as transgender, transsexual, or trans) ought not to be seen as additions to gay and lesbian issues legally or politically. Moreover, this article demonstrates that the fight for formal inclusion in legislation as a discrete or insular minority should be rejected by trans activists, as other legal strategies are better positioned to combat the processes of transphobia, thus potentially offering important steps towards substantive equality.

In 1942, 22,000 people of Japanese origin were expelled from their homes in British Columbia and moved to numerous incarceration sites. The expulsion, incarceration, dispossession, displacements, and deportations of Japanese Canadians were accomplished through Canadian law. In this article, I examine some of the spaces of incarceration and displacement produced through the law and the systems of power mobilized through these carceral spaces. I argue that in mapping out the spaces of the Internment, we begin to see how the nation of Canada was made through racial exclusion and processes of violence. As the spaces of incarceration and displacement become visible, so too do the subjects of these laws and processes. Their accounts of the incarcerations and displacements reveal the long-term effects of the violence of the Internment.

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 failure of the Supreme Court of Canada to give more than lip service to “context” when considering claims under s. 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms arises largely from the Court's analytic framework, which resists recognizing the social relations of power inherent in complex cases of oppression. The precise nature of the flaws in the Court's analysis is demonstrated in a number of thoughtful feminist critiques that received recognition in the recent decision in R. v. Kapp. While it is too soon to tell whether the Court intends to depart completely from the past decade of s. 15 jurisprudence, equality-seeking groups now have greater opportunities to advance alternative theoretical frameworks for Charter interpretation. This article discusses one such framework, multidimensionality theory, which focuses on the interaction of systems of oppression, conceptualized as an invisible matrix—a vast network of complex, overlapping, interactive, and mutually reinforcing systems. The operation of the systems obscures their effects, and their complexity renders outcomes difficult to predict when they interconnect at sites of subordination and privilege. One can expose the operation of the systems by looking at particular sites of oppression/privilege and considering the contradictions or “inexplicability” of the circumstances based on one system alone. The author argues that the failure of the Charter claim at the heart of the Supreme Court's decision in Native Women's Association of Canada v. Canada demonstrates the need for courts to employ multidimensionality theory in cases of complex oppression. In NWAC, multidimensionality theory reveals that the “dominant” Aboriginal groups were involved in the negotiation/performance of hegemonic masculinities within a racial/colonial context that provided them with justification to suppress NWAC's independent promotion of the interests of Aboriginal women in constitutional negotiations with the government, and that the government was complicit in this performance. By framing the freedom of expression issue as whether NWAC had a “special” right to a speaking platform, and the equality issue as exclusively one of determining whether NWAC could prove the other groups were “male dominated,” the Court fragmented considerations of patriarchy from those of racism and colonization, distorting the synergistic effect of the systems of oppression and reinforcing colonial ideology.

In the great majority of cases, the proper exercise of investigative or prosecutorial discretion presents little challenge and evokes little controversy. In a very small number of “high-profile” cases, however, such discretionary decisions become highly controversial and the subject of intense political, public, and media debate. It is such relatively rare cases that are the focus of this article. In such cases, two critical questions are typically at the forefront of debate: What does “the public interest” in such cases require? And who should have the final say as to what the public interest in such cases requires? The first of these questions typically reveals disagreements as to how the various commonly accepted “public interest” considerations should be applied to the case at hand; the second goes to the heart of the concept of “independence,” alleged to be a fundamental and constitutionally essential attribute of police and prosecutors in making such decisions. This article is concerned less with the details of discretionary decisions themselves than with the “political economy” of prosecutorial discretion, with particular reference to controversial high-profile cases that raise significant “public interest” considerations. Specifically, the article considers who currently does, and should, have the ultimate authority to exercise prosecutorial discretion in such cases, and why, and what such arrangements imply for the prevailing concept of prosecutorial “independence.” The author draws on four recent high-profile cases in the United Kingdom and in South Africa to illustrate the different ways in which these issues have arisen and the controversies that have developed out of attempts to resolve them.

This paper contends that the chaos and uncertainty characteristic of the administration of the civil law in Lower Canada resulted fundamentally from the impact of the change in legal metropolis on the process of transfer and adaptation of a European legal system to a colonial setting, in a context of ethnic or national struggle for hegemony. After a brief look at the situation existing under the Quebec Act and the explanations previously offered, the paper examines the functioning of the two major mechanisms of legal adaptation or reform--legislation and jurisprudence--in order to analyse their failure to reduce judicial chaos between 1791 and 1840. Ethnic conflict combined with the change of metropolis acted to prevent any modernization of the law not inspired by English legal principles and thus effectively eliminated the possibility of legislative reform of the laws. In this context, a predominantly British judiciary became the prime avenue for anglicizing Canadian law and thereby increasing rather than decreasing the existing uncertainty and confusion in the administration of the civil law.

After a judge declared its parentage regime violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, in 2016, Ontario passed the All Families Are Equal Act (AFAEA), which recognized LGBTQ families and parents of children born through assisted reproduction. This article analyzes the legislative hearings on the AFAEA, and highlights three factors that shaped the final policy outcome: a coordinated group of progressive witnesses with legal expertise; the presence of “rights talk” to inflate the scope of the judicial ruling; and the government’s use of the Charter as both “shield” and “sword” to minimize conservative opposition. This highlights how the Charter can shape policy outcomes not just in the courtroom, but also during the lawmaking process. It also demonstrates that activists are now using the Charter—particularly the equality rights provisions—to change policy for two groups facing discrimination: trans parents and individuals using assisted reproduction.

In 2019, the province of Quebec and the canton of Geneva passed bills establishing their states as “secular.” While each law is, to a certain extent, context specific, both present noteworthy similarities. First, neutrality (the cornerstone of laïcité) is articulated around two elements: (1) restrictions that affect the religious practices of public servants belonging to minority religions and (2) protections for Christian symbols constructed as “cultural.” The article questions the implications for inclusive citizenship of formalizing regulatory regimes that differentiate between “religion” and “culture.” Second, a comparative lens enables an analysis of how, through whom, and why similar regimes of regulation travel from one area of the world to another. The article argues for the importance of considering transnational influences when analyzing the regulation of religion to better (1) understand why particular models of secularism gain traction and (2) capture power dynamics structuring these processes of traction.

In music copyright infringement cases, forensic musicologists are often called to testify as to whether or not two songs are ‘substantially similar.’ While it is standard practice to rely on experts to dissect the works in question, this is a fairly recent phenomenon. Until the 1950s, it was not the scientific analysis of the pieces, but the impressions they left on the ‘untrained ears’ of everyday listeners that was used to determine copyright infringement. This paper presents an overview of American music copyright infringement cases to document this shift in how the question of substantial similarity has been approached. We argue that the courts’ inability to objectify what listeners hear created the need for experts who could translate music into legal evidence that could be visually witnessed. This practice of judging plagiarism according to how songs look on paper may account for why the courts have viewed musical sampling as copyright violations.

This article puts forward an analytical canvas for studying the effects of a divide between normality and exception in the institutionalization of power-attributing rules. The question is raised through the study of the coordination of institutional agents around issues pertaining to the specification of exceptions. The initial canvas is enriched by the re-examination of examples taken in the field of the legitimate intervention of the State against the backdrop of uncertainties about the meaning of European rules which are central to the policy of competition.

This paper argues that the effort to teach law critically from the external viewpoint reinforces the ideological and social function of a professional law school in a modern state. One should realize that law is a language, a secondary language that conceals suffering as it parasitically assimilates all primary discourses. The professional law school of a modern state aids in the production of such concealment. Examples are offered from different areas of legal discourse as well as from the author's experiences. The suffering arises from the concealment of the languages of embodied subjects, whose harm can only be recognized through the chains of authoritative signifiers that the professor pro-fesses. The secondary legal language either excludes the primary languages or redefines the subject's experience. Further, the legal language is inculcated into the subject's language to the point that the citizen must identify with the secondary legal language or, if not, may be authoritatively en-forced to do so. The second sense of suffering aggravates the first.

This article explores arguments for and against proposals for statutory changes that would require Canadian judges to consider partner or “spousal” abuse when making decisions about child custody and access, in terms of the likely implications for women. The author discusses, in historic context, the relationships of social change to the evolution of social ideology and professional “knowledge” about gender and family and the influences of these on the evolution of family law, in order to demonstrate that legal changes alone are unlikely to produce positive benefits for abused women and their children. Moreover, an analysis of the legal discourse of judges as reported in the Canadian Reports on Family Law between 1983 and 1996 suggests the need for caution. Instead of judicial sensitivity to the special vulnerabilities of women in abusive situations, the case law indicates that judges are applying an “objective” incidents-based approach to assessments of abuse. Because this approach ignores the special vulnerabilities of women and makes it appear that abuse is symmetrical by gender, women may be disadvantaged if judges are required to deny or limit abuser's access to, or custody of, their children. The author concludes that, if what is intended is the protection of abused women and children, the solution lies less in giving more power to judges than in promoting social change through collective action, the evolution of professional “knowledge” that ultimately will find reflection in law, and the allocation of tangible resources for the benefit of abused women and their children.

This article analyzes women’s contemporary use of rights to mobilize and pursue claims for gender equality and gender justice in the United Kingdom. Empirically, the paper explores the growth of rights discourse and activity against the backdrop of a stronger constitutionalization of women’s rights at national, European, and international levels. It does this through an exploration of individual and collective lobbying and litigation strategies in relation to violence against women. The paper first examines this in the context of the right to bodily integrity through examples of the ways in which sexual violence and domestic abuse are addressed within the criminal justice system. The paper then addresses the right to be free from violence for women seeking refuge and asylum. The research reveals the need for varied strategies that target all aspects of the legal and political systems in order to ameliorate the protection and implementation of women’s rights.

This paper outlines the history of employment equity and human rights legislation with regard to disabled persons in both the U.S. and Canada. It compares the two countries' statutory and judicial approaches to the problem of achieving equality for disabled citizens in the workplace. In drawing the comparison, it draws attention to both the positive and negative aspects of the two jurisdictions. In conclusion, it suggests that Canada draw on the “universal” and “holistic” approaches embodied in the environmental portions of the American ADA and in Canadian judicial decisions to create a novel legislative solution. It suggests that Canadian statutes aimed encouraging equality for disabled persons should echo existing occupational health and safety laws, by requiring all employers to abide by a proscribed standard for universal accessibility in all workplaces, regardless of the presence or number of disabled employees.

Harry Arthurs' Law & Learning report, conceived by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and carried to fruition in 1983 by a ten-person Consultative Group and a twenty-three person Advisory Panel, was a formative document in the history of Canadian legal education. My recollection of the release of the report is probably intensified because of the circumstances in which I experienced it the following year - a seminar room filled with cranky faculty members at the Faculty of Law at the University of Western Ontario, as stony terrain as any venue one might have imagined for the reception of such a report. I was then a relatively junior untenured professor, hoping to build a scholarly record in the field of feminist legal history, who had unwittingly found myself in a law school in which most faculty were devoted to building its reputation as a professionally conservative, black letter law institution. Into such a milieu strode my former professor and mentor, Harry Arthurs, whose habit of describing Osgoode Hall Law School as the “best law school in the Commonwealth” had not particularly endeared him to the Western professoriate previously. I felt like a deer in the headlights, and my sense was that Harry Arthurs himself was very ill at ease in a room that exuded defensiveness and hostility, as well as both latent and overt anger.

The dominant story of matrimonial property law reform in English Canada treats the farming family case of Murdoch v. Murdoch as the great catalyst for change, but there are persistent inequalities affecting farm women, even in provinces that have made progressive changes in the law of relationship breakdown. The farm is the quintessential family business and is both place of residence and source of income. Since the farm is not readily divisible, it is not surprising that all the major marital property law cases to reach the Supreme Court of Canada have involved farm property. What is surprising is that most provincial property reforms, though inspired by the Murdoch case, explicitly exclude farms from division, and those that include farms in the property to be divided still have mechanisms that tend to favour husbands. This article examines Canadian courts' gendered conceptualization of what constitutes a family business by examining the cases on farm property and the related legislative reforms. Feminists, and all women who have benefited from matrimonial property law reform, have an obligation to recognize the problems created by our persistent failure to understand the farm as simultaneously home and place of business.