Family policies in France and various European countries, like pension schemes, involve mechanisms to compensate for inequality between women and men associated with the organization of the family. The compensation is sometimes tied directly to the marriage, or more broadly to the couple, and sometimes to parental investment and time devoted to the maintenance and welfare of family members. In this article, we examine the principles of compensation applied in the legislation of five European countries characterized by different social protection systems. We use the concept of familialization to characterize the rationales underlying women’s social rights in different systems, and to understand their processes by connecting the developments in family/social policies with the dual process of de-familialization of parental activities and de-specialization of gender roles.

For the past four years, two instructors and approximately one hundred students have participated in a novel experiment in liberal arts legal education. Legal Inquiry, an upper-year course in the Arts & Science Program at McMaster University, seeks to “demystify legal knowledge for the curious student of the world.” It brings together two kindred yet previously isolated academic traditions: an open-ended inquiry approach to knowledge and a critical pluralist understanding of law.

To explore the compatibility of “law” and “inquiry,” the instructors wanted students to gain confidence and skills in engaging with formal legal sources, apply critical thinking to law, and appreciate informal and everyday law. These objectives were met with surprising success given the brevity of the course. Students achieved a basic understanding of formal law and legal reasoning, generated a vocabulary of what it means to think critically about law, and began to identify the continuity of formal and informal law.

In 1996, the Madagascan state enacted Law 96-025 (the GELOSE Law), which transferred the management of certain renewable natural resources to local populations by means of negotiated contracts. This legal strategy was innovative in many ways, namely by prescribing the use of Dina, a local traditional convention, in management-transfer contracts. By using Dina, the state claimed to reconcile the “legal” with the “legitimate” and to favour a sustainable management of these resources. This article focuses on the conditions of legitimacy of environmental norms in a pluralistic legal context marked by globalization. The use of Dina has not in fact contributed to an increased legitimacy of environmental norms, thanks to significant differences between its use and local regulatory procedures, insufficient governmental coordination in the implementation of Law 96-025, and a lack of resonance of sustainable development.

In September, 1999, the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) released its decision in R v. Marshall. Donald Marshall Jr., no stranger to Canadian law, had been convicted of catching eels out of season, without a licence, and selling them, contrary to the federal Fisheries Act. He admitted the offences, but appealed his conviction to the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal and then to the SCC on the grounds that the 1760–61 treaties between the Mi'kmaq and the British recognized his right, as a Mi'kmaq, to catch and sell fish, and that this right was protected under the guarantee of Aboriginal and treaty rights in the Canadian constitution. Justice Binnie, writing for the majority of the SCC, overturned the convictions. The Mi'kmaq, he held, did have treaty rights based on the 1760–61 treaties to catch and sell fish, including eels.

The Mi'kmaq were delighted. After many years and many appearances before Canadian judges (R. v. Syliboy, R. v. Issac, and R. v. Simon), it appeared that the courts were finally prepared to recognize what the Mi'kmaq had long believed: that the eighteenth century treaties were the foundation of their relationship with Canada, that the treaties were still in force, and that they guaranteed commercial hunting and fishing rights in their traditional territories.

Traditional legal method continues to be one of the most unexplored aspects of the gendered nature of legal discourse. In this paper, I outline a number of problems legal method creates in relation to women's experiences, more specifically the ways in which legal method works, as part of legal discourse, to exclude abused women's stories. Expanding the conceptualization of legal method as a process which includes the more mundane and insidious aspects of the daily practice of law, this paper examines aspects of legal method which are often overlooked in feminist legal theory and research. The paper is intended as a beginning point for future discussion and empirical research and as such suggests the possible depth of the exclusionary practices of legal method and the harm suffered by women as a result. I conclude with a discussion of how women can subvert traditional legal method through the formulation of local solutions based on their own experiences.

This paper deals with a crucial problem in feminist theory and in law, namely the issue of the “Woman/Women” category. Does the presence of a single man invalidate the label and remove the issues from the field of equality between the sexes? Moreover, in order to avail oneself successfully of the non-discrimination provision of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, does one necessarily have to prove prejudice towards all women, or seek a remedy likely to improve the situation of all women? Is the category “Woman” necessarily universal and all-embracing? To answer these questions, the author deals with the relationship between women and men and concludes that this relationship is not one of absolute binary opposition, but rather of secular domination. The author then analyzes the category of Women in relation to society as a whole where women are often subsumed into minorities, absorbed into the family or collapsed into “Universal” Woman. Fully recognizing the arbitrary and artificial character as well as the deceptive and reductionist aspects of categories per se, the author observes nonetheless that the law obliges us to keep the category of “Woman” for as long as women will not have collectively attained an economic, legal, political, symbolic, etc. status equal to that of men collectively.

In the debate over the legitimacy of judicial review, Jürgen Habermas put forward two justifications for the role of constitutional judges within deliberative democracy. Judicial review must examine the procedural conditions of the legislative process and participate within a learning process that would ensure the continuous redefinition of the Constitution. This procedural concept of constitutional justice remains subject to the scrutiny of the other procedural theories. Whereas the theory of contextual proceduralization questions the concept of the legal judgment and more specifically the habermassian conception of the application of a legal norm, the systemic theory offers the conceptual framework required to explain this learning process and the function of judicial review in the legal system. Therefore, Habermas' procedural theory is extended in line with alternative theories of the proceduralization of law.

This article examines the role of internet service providers (ISPs) as guardians of personal information and protectors of privacy, with a particular focus on how telecom companies in Canada have historically negotiated these responsibilities. Communications intermediaries have long been expected to act as privacy custodians by their users, while simultaneously being subject to pressures to collect, utilize, and disclose personal information. As service providers gain custody over increasing volumes of highly-sensitive information, their importance as privacy custodians has been brought into starker relief and explicitly recognized as a core responsibility.

Some ISPs have adopted a more positive orientation to this responsibility, actively taking steps to advance it, rather that treating privacy protection as a set of limitations on conduct. However, commitments to privacy stewardship are often neutralized through contradictory legal obligations (such as mandated surveillance access) and are recurrently threatened by commercial pressures to monetize personal information.

Bail decisions are largely shaped by private, out-of-court negotiations between Crown attorneys and defence lawyers. While accused persons rely on the professional expertise of defence lawyers to navigate bail negotiations and secure them the best possible outcome, much remains unknown about how lawyers prepare for and negotiate bail. This study examines the process of bail preparations and negotiations from the defence’s perspective based on data from 18 semi-structured interviews with defence lawyers. The findings show that, while defence lawyers argue for reasonable bail terms, their ultimate goal is to obtain a release for their client. Defence lawyers also prioritize collecting and strategically using information about the case and the Crowns and justices with whom they work. They often adopt a risk-averse and cooperative approach with Crowns to avoid delaying or preventing their client’s release, even if that means agreeing to additional conditions. Our findings inform efforts to reform bail processes.