There is little scholarship on museums and heritage sites that memorialize courts, judges, and law. Engaging with literatures on penal history and law and culture, we explore representations of law and power in court museums across Canada. Based on observations and interviews, we examine the meanings of the artifacts curated at court museum sites. In a post-Truth and Reconciliation Commission context, where heritage sites have been called upon to account for the atrocities experienced by Indigenous peoples in colonial institutions, we show how court museums in Canada continue to be curated in ways that naturalize the Canadian state and law, deny colonialism, and reproduce myths regarding the Canadian penal system. In our discussion, we reflect on the implications of our findings for literatures on representations of penality and law. We contend penal history museums must learn from critical, decolonizing trends in museological studies.

This article examines the emotional terrain and discursive frames that govern the constitution of those subject to the “dangerous offender” (DO) designation in Canada. Focusing on the emotion of remorse, we discuss four narratives involving individuals who went through the DO hearing process, gaining significant media attention. Asking what role Indigeneity and other factors play in how the media discuss the emotional comportment of DOs, we examine the persistence of particular discursive frames in these narratives, and the counter-frames that challenge or disrupt dominant understandings of what it is appropriate to feel. The expression of emotion, and its interpretation, can be critical to the outcome of cases, criminalized people/survivor stigmatization, and normalization of punishment and may also motivate community mobilization and prompt policy change. Yet, emotion, and how it may be performed and interpreted differently, is not well understood or discussed in these narratives.

Since 2017, four provincial legislatures have introduced bills invoking the controversial notwithstanding clause. We present an original dataset of news articles from 10 different outlets that discussed the clause while these bills were being debated in Saskatchewan and Ontario. Empirically, although the clause is typically portrayed accurately, we find over one-fifth of articles about the clause did not indicate that it must be included in legislation. Normatively, the clause was twice as likely to be portrayed negatively as it was positively, and the type of portrayal was strongly associated with the ideological orientation of the news outlet. The rate of negative portrayals was similar across the two provinces, which suggests that attitudes toward the clause may endure beyond the policy issue itself or the level of media visibility.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the use of the term multiculturalism by Canadian justices. The goal is twofold. First, identify the context in which it has been used and delineate the meaning given to multiculturalism by Canadian Courts. Second, contrast the Federal State’s conception of multiculturalism with the courts’ implicit understanding. Although Canadian courts often refer to multiculturalism, their conception is much less unequivocal and its scope quickly widened, going beyond what had been planned at the time of its adoption in 1971.

Over the past fifteen years, substantive equality and the idea of positive measures to tackle the structural roots of gender inequality have increasingly gained currency in Europe. Focusing on the case of Greece, this article explores the factors that promote constitutional and statutory reforms to promote substantive equality, and examines the effect of such reforms on gender equality rights and policy. It argues that domestic legal and social mobilization by feminists, who participated in transnational networks, were instrumental in the diffusion of the relevant EU and international norms, leading to a shift in the courts’ jurisprudence and to a constitutional amendment recognizing substantive equality. At the same time, the paper also underscores the ambivalent and limited effects of constitutionalizing substantive equality and positive measures in the absence of ongoing actions aimed at raising awareness and pushing for effective implementation.

From the time when suicide was considered equivalent to premeditated murder by the Canadian justice system to the decriminalization of attempted suicide in 1972, there was a dramatic reversal in how suicidal behaviors were viewed by society. Through an analysis of cases involving suicide attempts in Quebec between 1892 and 1972, we will examine the shift in the legal interpretation of attempted suicide. The law and medical science occasionally compete with one another to impose their own explanations of attempted suicide. These views are not mutually exclusive, though they are, at times, mutually reinforcing. Furthermore, the social reaction toward suicidal behaviors began to migrate from the criminal to the medical within the context of the courts, resulting in de facto decriminalization before such measures were inscribed into law.