In this paper I consider the image of the reasonable person in criminal law and its relationship to larger theoretical controversies concerning abstract universal principles and the particularities of individual experience under conditions of diversity. Using Seyla Benhabib's dichotomy of the concrete and generalized other as an illustration of this conflict, I argue that the image of the reasonable person in criminal law lies at the juncture of the abstract and the concrete, and of normative and empirical reasoning. As a result, the image of the reasonable person is often the focal point of critiques of the marginalizing effect of abstract universalism in criminal law. However, in some cases the image of the reasonable person acts not as a universal standard of conduct but as a site within which claims for recognition of various types of concrete experience can be made. While the reasonable person is sometimes a general normative standard against which concrete actions are evaluated, concrete reality also acts as a normative standard against which various assumptions about the reasonable person are evaluated.

Psychiatric expertise is necessary to the courts in many legal situations, both in criminal and in civil matters, and is subject to the same rules as any other expertise. However, psychiatry and its object are unique. The relationship between the judge and the psychiatric expert can be affected by many social or professional factors, or by legal or procedural matters.

While jurists speak of this relationship as a usurpation of the role of the judge by the psychiatric expert, psychiatrists believe that, on the contrary, their expertise is completely distorted by the judiciary process. In reality, however, this is not always the case; while psychiatric expertise is, generally speaking, one piece of evidence among many, it can also occupy a central place in the decision-making process.

Since the 1960s, Canada's Indigenous peoples have sought to rebuild their nations as well as their economic, political, social, and cultural systems, advancing their claims domestically through political and legal avenues and pressing their agendas internationally. Yet despite the constitutional entrenchment of Aboriginal rights and the Canadian state's choice to engage in a discourse of the inherent rights of Aboriginal peoples, domestic avenues have been marked by a state of “paradigm paralysis,” with Canadian authorities holding steadfast to the colonial paradigm. As a result, courts and politicians alike have failed to question the authority of Canadian governments over First Nations or to affirm the nation-to-nation relationship that once governed the Crown's dealings with Indigenous peoples. Instead, while political avenues have resulted in the recognition of inferior forms of self-government by “superior” Canadian governments, the constitutionally protected rights of Aboriginal peoples have been interpreted by the Supreme Court of Canada in a most limiting way, undermining claims to Aboriginal sovereignty, constraining the cultural autonomy of Aboriginal peoples, and precluding the creation of modern Aboriginal economies. This being the case, the question that arises is, Do global avenues offer greater promise for Indigenous peoples and their aspirations? By examining Indigenous peoples' engagement with trade liberalization mechanisms and intellectual property rights, the authors conclude that while, the international arena and multilateral trade organizations certainly are not predicated on protecting Indigenous peoples or their interests, they can be used to advance the political, social, cultural, and economic aspirations of Indigenous peoples.

The Inuit of Nunavik were recently granted the power to determine themselves, according to their “traditions and customs,” who is an Inuk according to the benefits granted by the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement. This appeal to the indigenous legal order may seem quite intriguing, as the Canadian state normally keeps a tighter rein on rules pertaining to membership in the Indigenous Peoples. From the point of view of legal pluralism, this article seeks to discern the potential sources of such Inuit “traditions and customs” and the reasons why the Canadian legal order is now willing to defer to the Inuit legal order, but also to bring to light the subtle limits of such deference.

This article develops research strategies designed to access and record the narratives of women within a plural marriage society, with a view to enhancing legal and popular knowledge about polygamy in Canada. It achieves this end through reliance on scholarship that explores methods for conducting reflexive research from a feminist viewpoint. Two particular research strategies explored in the feminist scholarship are considered here with particular reference to Bountiful, British Columbia, a community where plural marriage is openly practised. These strategies require the researcher to (1) hear and give credence to the narratives of women regarding their experiences as polygamous wives; and (2) engage in critical self-reflection about her own cultural and normative reference points and assumptions. These strategies are relied on here to formulate a distinctly juridical inquiry that rejects any presumed preference of state over cultural “law” while at the same rigorously testing claims about gender and tradition grounded in cultural norms. Applying this inquiry to the study of polygamy in Bountiful should serve to enrich our understanding of how women are affected by plural marriage, and by law's response to this practice, in this distinct place.

This paper reports on the perceptions and practices of men who have frequent unprotected sex with men in a socio-legal environment defined by the 1998 decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. Cuerrier. HIV-positive people are increasingly finding themselves in court since Cuerrier, and many are trying to take account of legal reasoning in their own conduct. The judicial construction of behaviour likely to transmit HIV relies on a set of presumptions concerning individual responsibility, rational and contractual interaction, and consenting adults that raises a series of ambiguities and uncertainties among HIV-positive people attempting to implement them in everyday life. While some express support for the reasoning in Cuerrier, others struggle with practical dilemmas in sexual interaction, and a minority strand of ethical reasoning advances a “buyer beware” principle. This latter view occurs in a social environment where HIV-positive people experience strong disincentives to disclose in the face of potential rejection or discrimination once their sero-status is known. Examination of the social consequences of Cuerrier raises questions about the viability of relying on the enforcement of disclosure, through threat of criminal prosecution, as an effective method of HIV prevention, especially when most practical, day-to-day HIV prevention occurs when safer sex is practised consistently regardless of disclosure.

The Ottawa Needle Hunter Program was developed to clean up after the City of Ottawa's needle exchange. Needle hunters themselves are sometimes street involved and/or former intravenous drug users. Whereas harm reduction attempts to diminish overtly moralizing problematization of drug users, with awareness of wayward needles in urban areas the syringe is re-moralized, creating a moral terrain inhospitable to harm reduction. Needle hunting is not exactly harm reduction but, rather, a form of entrepreneurialism that harm-reduction programs must take on to manage their public reputation in unreceptive moral terrains. This study shows how the more entrepreneurial dimensions of harm reduction materialize at two levels: the needle-hunting project coordinator is made to govern possible risks on behalf of her needle-hunting workers, and the needle hunters become responsible for governing wayward needles. To conceptualize the work locations and knowledge networks involved in needle hunting, I draw from writings on nodal governance. Nodal governance scholars focus on a plurality of regulatory agencies, of which “the state” is only one, but often assume a levelling of hierarchy among these agencies. Supplementing the nodal governance approach through more attention to hierarchy within and among work nodes, as well as through attention to the role of objects in governance processes, I inquire into the risk-knowledge networks that draw together agencies that account for and collect used needles around Ottawa, Canada.