For over half a century, it has been axiomatic that environmental claims are particularly well suited for class actions. This paper examines this notion in the context of Ontario’s regime and finds that environmental class actions have been limited in the extent to which they have promoted access to justice. Starting with a brief overview of class action history in Canada and the economics of mass litigation at a general level, the paper then analyzes barriers specific to environmental claims. A series of representative case studies is then offered to substantiate the central contention on the limits of environmental class actions. In so doing, the paper takes a holistic approach, incorporating empirical, economic, political, and procedural factors and dynamics to provide an integrated assessment about the type of access to justice that is presently achieved and achievable for environmental claims in Ontario.

Journalists routinely live-tweet high-profile criminal trials, a practice that raises questions about access to justice and the principle of open court. Does social media open up the justice system? There is a normative debate in the literature about the use of Twitter and social media in the courtroom. This paper takes on this debate by exploring the relationship between digital technologies and criminal justice. Through a systematic examination of journalists’ tweets during two key trials (Ghomeshi and Saretzky), we ask to what extent can the live-tweeting of court proceedings achieve greater access to justice in Canada? We argue that while the live-tweeting does provide more access to court, potentially furthering the principle of open court, the nature of this access provides little in the way of increased engagement with the public and its understanding of the legal system. This paper makes contributions to both the legal studies and digital politics literatures.

This paper argues that lower courts have used their discretionary powers provided within legislation and St-Cloud to infuse a predominantly retributive interpretation into the public confidence in the administration of justice ground of pre-trial detention. This is illustrated notably by their choice of and weight afforded to the various aggravating and mitigating factors, the circumstances that relate to the commission of the offence, as well as their analysis of the length of imprisonment. This transfer of sentencing rationales, and to a greater extent, retributivism, into the third ground of pre-trial detention is used, in part, to justify pre-trial detention and can partially explain the rates of pre-trial detention. Finally, the underlying sentencing logic within the bail process can be understood within a sociological perspective, which examines the wider social functions of institutions and suggests that the bail process is an extension of punishment that serves to reinstate social order and public confidence.

In Canada, there are persistent allegations and some empirical evidence suggesting racialized police bias; certain (non-White) groups appear to face over-enforcement as criminal suspects and under-enforcement as victims. Yet, it is challenging to prove or disprove these claims. Unlike other countries, where governments routinely publish police-reported crime and criminal court data identifying the race/ethnicity of criminal suspects and victims, Canada maintains a ban on the publication of such data. In this article, using an intersectional and critical analysis, we examine 127 prosecuted (predominantly domestic sex) trafficking cases and explore related claims of racial and gender bias together with sensationalism in the enforcement of Canadian anti-trafficking in persons laws. Our findings align with other empirical research observing the racially selective identification and prosecution of sex trafficking cases through a heteronormative and gender binary lens. Whether real or perceived, racial—alongside gender, sexuality, economic, citizenship, and occupational—bias has significant adverse consequences for the equality, liberty, security, mobility, labour, and access to justice rights of the Indigenous, Black, Arab/Muslim and other racialized communities being policed. Our data reveal a clear and pressing need to publish race-disaggregated crime and criminal court data and to challenge deeply ingrained stereotypes using various means.

Cet article traite du concours « Le bon juge que j’aime le plus » organisé par la Cour Populaire Suprême de Chine (CPS) en 2017. Nous expliquerons l’importance du concours et les fins véritables qu’il sert dans le contexte judiciaire chinois marqué entre autres par l’exode des juges de la profession et la campagne anti-corruption du Parti Communiste Chinois. Les dossiers des dix juges modèles lauréats seront analysés afin de dégager certaines des attentes qui pèsent sur les juges chinois et le regard de la CPS sur divers enjeux de la justice. Le concours s’inscrit dans une tradition chinoise qui a traversé les siècles, le recours aux personnages modèles.

In June 2019, the Supreme Court of Canada pronounced judgment in the case of R v Stillman, upholding the military justice system’s ability to try serious civil offences. The Stillman decision highlighted one key mechanism of military justice reform: court judgments. This article argues, however, that military legal experts have overlooked Parliamentary debate as a key driver of military reform. By drawing on analysis of Hansard from past decades, this article argues that the Canadian Parliament has historically pushed for radical reform to the military justice system. This reformist consensus continues to shape Parliamentary discussions on military justice in the twenty-first century.

La relativisation de la souveraineté est à la fois au cœur de la critique du pluralisme juridique et le résultat concret de la globalisation néolibérale. Cet article propose ainsi la notion d’écosystème normatif comme milieu pour la structuration des communautés politiques. Il énonce trois hypothèses concernant la configuration de l’écosystème normatif extractif canadien : 1) des enjeux constitutionnels y sont traités par le biais de relations contractuelles entre entreprises et communautés autochtones; 2) la responsabilité sociale des entreprises y fait office de régime de véridiction; et 3) l’impératif d’efficacité y prend préséance sur les visées téléologiques en présence. Ces hypothèses configurent une gouvernementalité moralisante peu amène aux communautés politiques. Cet article propose donc de renouveler la charge critique du pluralisme juridique en insistant sur l’hétéronomie de la norme comme condition de possibilité de la liberté politique.

The following is an edited transcription of the keynote presentation at the SSHRC-funded conference On the Margins of Trans Legal Change. This public conference was hosted by McGill University’s Faculty of Law and Institute for Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies, in partnership with Thompson Rivers University’s Faculty of Law. The keynote presentation was a conversation between Dr. Viviane Namaste and Dalia Tourki, where they asked each other questions.

This paper reviews the history of Bill 53, the Freedom of Informed Choice (Abortions) Act. A private member’s bill introduced in the Saskatchewan Legislative Assembly in 1985, Bill 53 would have imposed additional consent requirements on women seeking abortions. After concerns about its constitutionality were raised, the Bill was referred to the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal, which found it fell outside provincial jurisdiction. This paper explores the connection between Bill 53 and its more well-known cousins, Morgentaler and Borowski, and examines judicial and political decision-making in the early Charter era.

L’objectif de cet article est de divulguer des résultats de recherches exploratoires sur le rapport entre le système judiciaire canadien et les victimes d’actes criminels dans le contexte de la détermination de la peine. De manière plus précise, l’auteur s’intéresse au processus de mise en forme des attentes des victimes qui opère à ce stade des procédures judiciaires. Pour observer ces mises en forme, l’auteur s’appuie sur des décisions judiciaires qui ont été rendues par les tribunaux canadiens. À partir de son corpus empirique, l’auteur décrit comment certaines attentes victimaires sont plus audibles que d’autres et comment leur intégration dans le processus de détermination de la peine varie en fonction du type d’attente et des circonstances à l’intérieur desquelles elles émergent.

Le texte qui suit est une transcription révisée du discours principal présenté au colloque On the Margins of Trans Legal Change (En marge des changements juridiques à l’égard des droits des personnes trans) financé par le Conseil de recherches en sciences humaines du Canada (CRSH). Cette conférence publique a été organisée par la faculté de droit et l’Institut Genre, sexualité et féminisme de l’Université McGill, en partenariat avec la faculté de droit de l’université Thompson Rivers. La prestation principale était une conversation entre Viviane Namaste, Ph. D., et Dalia Tourki où les deux intervenantes se questionnaient mutuellement.

The Islamic legal enterprise forms an inherently plural system that can appear puzzling to commentators looking for faithfulness to principle or precedent. When one looks at it, instead, as an ongoing search for correspondence between divine guidance, rooted in the foundational sources of Islam, and the singularity of concrete circumstances, Islamic law is revealed as a practice of discernment against the grain of the particular. This article unfolds this approach to understanding Islamic law by entering the conversation where it is currently most heated, namely in connection with the development of Islamic financial products. A case study of takāful regulation in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) helps substantiate the import of our proposal for attuning to the voice of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), in the face of contemporary questions arising from the design of financial products in correspondence with the Sharī’ah.

Trinity Western University’s Community Covenant has been the subject of public and legal attention with specific reference to a proposed law school. At the heart of much of the contention about the law school, opponents have expressed concern about the provisions in the Covenant that restrict the rights of LGBTQI+ students—their identities and relationships. While much of the focus has been on the potential harm for LGBTQI+ students, and the expectation that law schools uphold Charter values—the voices of queer students and allies have largely been sidelined. This article offers space for LGBTQI+ students, staff and allies to discuss their lived experiences of sexual diversity and the harm facing the queer community at Trinity Western University. As they state, the Covenant is only a part of the issue; the culture it supports is what needs to change.

This article draws on our qualitative study of trans unemployment to introduce considerations of the relationship between trans unemployment and the demands for workers across economic sectors to perform affective labour as integral to industrial service relations. Affective dimensions of labour are often unspoken and unconscious, rendering it challenging for anti-discrimination laws to accommodate. We demonstrate the ways that recent cases grounded on unconscious bias open spaces for further consideration of the ways that trans employment discrimination rooted in demands for affective labour can be dealt with by anti-discrimination law.

For Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, writing is predominantly about articulating their cultural belonging and identity. Published creative writing, which is a relatively new art form among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners, has not been used as an outlet to the same extent as other forms of art. This is, however, changing as more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander rappers and story-writers emerge, and as creative writing is used as a way to express Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander empowerment and resistance against discriminatory and oppressive government policies. This article explores the use of poetry and stories written by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander male prisoners in a correctional facility located in southern New South Wales, Australia, to understand how justice is perceived by people who are (and have been) surrounded by hardships, discrimination, racism, and grief over the loss of their culture, families, and freedom.

L’Union des artistes a conclu des dizaines d’ententes collectives avec des producteurs dans le cadre de la Loi S-32.1. En vertu des Règlements généraux de l’Union, il est interdit aux membres d’accepter un contrat de travail en marge de ces ententes sous peine de sanction disciplinaire. Pour l’artiste rarement sollicité, soit la grande majorité des membres, ces offres de travail posent un dilemme : privilégier son intérêt individuel à court terme ou respecter la collectivité. Dans ce contexte, le discours des artistes est marqué par une certaine ambivalence dans leur sentiment de solidarité. Le présent article tente de dépeindre cette ambivalence par le biais d’un monologue théâtral qui étaye ce vécu. Après avoir exposé le contexte juridique et la méthodologie retenue, inspirée de la création, l’article présente un monologue afin de faire vivre au lecteur ce que les artistes ont exprimé et leurs émotions telles que la chercheure les a interprétées.

This paper analyses policy documents and interviews conducted in federal prisons to trace the emergence and early effects of Canada’s recent wave of groundbreaking trans correctional reforms. I show that prison authorities were forced to adopt more inclusive policies due to the legal, financial, and reputational risks generated by new trans rights protections. Yet, by examining what rights both enabled and foreclosed once they materialized in the everyday of prison life, I argue that reform’s implementation was fraught with ambivalence. Namely, this ambivalence was felt by the correctional administrators tasked with translating nebulous policy principles into concrete guidelines; by staff, whose front-line duty involved weighing rights against risks; and by trans prisoners, who grappled with how to balance their new entitlements with risks and uncertainties. What trans correctional reforms reveal, then, is that rights and risks are caught in an ambivalent and co-constitutive relationship in Canada’s regime of prison governance.