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This book brings together Indigenous, Third World and Settler perspectives on the theory and practice of decolonizing law. Colonialism, imperialism, and settler colonialism continue to affect the lives of racialized communities and Indigenous Peoples around the world. Law, in its many iterations, has played an active role in the dispossession and disenfranchisement of colonized peoples. Law and its various institutions are the means by which colonial, imperial, and settler colonial programs and policies continue to be reinforced and sustained. There are, however, recent and historical examples in which law has played a significant role in dismantling colonial and imperial structures set up during the process of colonization. This book combines usually distinct Indigenous, Third World and Settler perspectives in order to take up the effort of decolonizing law: both in practice and in the concern to distance and to liberate the foundational theories of legal knowledge and academic engagement from the manifestations of colonialism, imperialism and settler colonialism. Including work by scholars from the Global South and North, this book will be of interest to academics, students and others interested in the legacy of colonial and settler law, and its overcoming.

Jochen von Bernstorff and Philipp Dann’s ‘The Battle for International Law: South-North Perspectives on the Decolonization Era’ (Battle for International Law) is an ambitious undertaking. The editors along with their gathered authors explore ‘the battle’ waged by the newly formed independent states, as they arrived on the international scene from prolonged periods of colonization. What […]

This chapter examines the role of the judiciary, the Registry, and defence counsel at the International Criminal Court with a view to assessing whether defendants’ rights are adequately protected at the Court. Part I examines the critical role played by the judges of the Court as those ultimately responsible for safeguarding the fairness of all judicial proceedings. Part II considers the role of the Registry in protecting defendants’ rights. While potentially less apparent to those unfamiliar with the Court, the Registry plays an integral role in this task by, inter alia, facilitating the appointment of legal representation, managing the Court’s legal aid program, and managing the Court’s detention centre. Part III then reviews the structure and provision of defence counsel of the Court, including the guaranteed right to counsel, competency requirements for counsel, ethical obligations of defence counsel, the unique Office of the Public Counsel for Defence, and the Court’s legal aid regime. Finally, section IV assesses whether defendants’ rights are adequately protected. The Rome Statute, Rules of Procedure and Evidence, Regulations of the Court and the Registry, the Chambers Practice Manual, Code of Judicial Ethics, and Code of Professional Conduct for Counsel together define a comprehensive regime for protection of the rights of defendants at the Court. Many have lauded this as an improvement over prior courts and tribunals. Nonetheless, many critiques have been levied regarding insufficient resources for defence counsel and inadequate legal aid funding as well as institutional inequality between the defence and prosecution. Actual, robust implementation of this regime is critical for true equality of arms and full guarantee of defendants’ rights.

Ontario’s recent order-in-council adopting the IHRA’s definition of antisemitism has been lauded by some. However, critics fear that it could be used to curtail criticism of the Israeli government.

Semi-colonialism is a perplexing concept in international legal scholarship that has more often than not been conflated with colonialism proper. To remedy this analytic confusion, I propose a shift from a focus on the ideological aspects of the imperialism of international law to the semi colonial practices of informal domination on the ground. To do this, I revisit the understudied concept of the ‘protectorate’ in international law, and analyze its geopolitical uses. The geopolitical dimensions of protection illustrate the importance of geopolitics in the history of international law. After examining the connections between geopolitics and international law, the second part of the article looks into the origins of the strategic region of the ‘Middle East,’ focusing on the history of the protected states of the Trucial treaty system in the Persian Gulf. Finally, I turn to the ‘Question of Oman’ at the United Nations (1957-1965) to illustrate how the practices of informal domination operated through semi-colonial techniques of veiling imperial domination, the legal obfuscation of power relations, the legitimization of unilateral treaty breaking and geopolitical maneuvering with international legal arguments.

The deadly fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the landlocked region could spiral into broader war – and Canada has a role to play in intervening

A vast literature has considered the proactive use of law as a tool by progressive social movements, but far less attention has been paid to the way activists respond to involuntary engagement with law as a result of repression and criminalization. This dissertation explores the legal support infrastructure of grassroots protest movements in Canada and the US by tracing the evolution of contemporary activist legal support through two periods. The tactic of jail solidarity and an emerging legal collective model are highlighted as the key features of the global justice organizing era (1999-2005) while in the second age of austerity era (2008-2018), I discuss evolving approaches to law collective work in various protest movements and highlight a renewed focus on anti-repression as a framing praxis of both organizing and legal support. Grounded in my own activist legal support work over more than two decades, this research rests on data arising from detailed interviews and analysis of more than 125 archival documents. I develop two areas of inquiry. First, I trace critiques of movement lawyering in the legal literature to demonstrate that those critiques are often shared by legal support organizers. Divergent opinions on the appropriate role of lawyers and norms of professional ethics in law collective practice reflect long-standing contradictions in progressive lawyering practice. Accordingly, I argue that the legal work of non-lawyer activists ought to be understood as a complementary if also sometimes disruptive model of movement lawyering. Second, I demonstrate that an analysis of radical legal support speaks to the post-arrest experiences of protesters and the impact of such repression on mobilization phenomena largely absent from the literature on state repression of social movements. I consider this dynamic through the lens of legal mobilization, arguing that the pedagogical work of law collectives, understood as a site of social movement knowledge production, plays a significant role in mediating the complex relationship between repression and mobilization. I conclude by exploring the legal consciousness of activist legal support organizers and argue that the education and organizing praxes of law collectives are evidence of a form of prefigurative, counter-hegemonic legality.

We live in a moment of renewed and highly visible action on the issue of sexual violence. Rape culture is a real and salient force that dominates campus climates and student experiences. Canada has drafted a national framework, provincial legislation, and institutional policy to address incidences of sexual violence, and students have demanded that their universities respond. Yet rape culture persists on campuses throughout North America. Violence Interrupted presents different ways of thinking about sexual violence. It draws together multiple disciplinary perspectives to synthesize new conceptual directions on the nature of the problem and the changes that are required to address it. Analyzing survey data, educational programs, participatory photography projects, interviews, autoethnography, legal case studies, and existing policy, contributors open up the conversation to illustrate sexual violence on campus as a structural, cultural, and complex social phenomenon. The diversity of methodologies sets this study apart: a problem as complex and far-reaching as rape culture must be approached from a multitude of angles. Decades have passed since student advocates first called for "no means no" campaigns, but universities are still struggling to evolve. Violence Interrupted answers the call by bridging the gap between advocacy, research, and institutional change.

Critical race theory (CRT) is a helpful theoretical lens to understand the origins and practices of five ethno-racial legal clinics in the province of Ontario. Both the development of a distinctly Canadian CRT scholarship and the day-to-day work of ethno-racial legal clinics would be mutually enriched by a much closer and robust union between scholarship and praxis. In particular, the praxis of Ontarian ethno-racial legal clinics is put into conversation with Amna A. Akbar’s vision in “Toward a Radical Imagination of the Law,” which outlines a profoundly transformative standard of CRT that broadens the analysis of racial power to look at how the law, capitalism, and the state may operate in tandem to produce intersectional inequality. Based on the theoretical tenets of CRT, this article traces the development of ethno-racial legal clinics and their unique praxis and, using the insight of “looking to the bottom” as an epistemological approach to law, demonstrates that ethno-racial community legal clinics provide a useful vehicle to understand structural racism. CRT can therefore offer a robust theoretical framework to support the cause of advancing racial justice through legal practice. Ethno-racial legal clinics embrace a democratic approach to the law that has the potential to transform traditional forms of legal representation by engaging in systemic advocacy and community outreach and aligning advocacy efforts with social movements to help build community power and facilitate broader social change. However, they also face institutional pressures that pull their practice of the law back towards traditional models—pressures that they must delicately navigate in their day-to-day work.

Intellectual property (IP) generation and protection have become essential components of entrepreneurial management. The nimble project case study examines students and professors from business, law, and engineering, faculties and a client who participated in a unique management training collaboration. Our qualitative research explores how multi-disciplinary teams working together from the inception of a business idea provide robust capacity for knowledge transfer and the development of IP literacy. Such collaboration develops resilience in both IP strategic skills development and the ability to respond to adversity. We identify four management learning outcomes related to the Nimble experience: 1) communication and knowledge exchange, 2) importance of IP literacy, 3) resilience, and 4) recognition of the professional differences between disciplines. We build new knowledge and context regarding the development of resilience and skills and the development of IP literacy through learning by doing."

The passage of laws in Alberta and Saskatchewan granting police greater powers and weapons are seen as a direct attempt to stifle protests by Indigenous Peoples.

The National Indigenous Justice Summit was held online on 7 – 8 July, 2020. Indigenous thinkers, community leaders and grassroots activists convened to call for justice reform in Canada. In this panel, Professor Beverly Jacobs (Mohawk Nation of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy, former President of the Native Women’s Association of Canada) provided a keynote address on Community-Based Calls for Action and Community Safety. This panel also includes Professor Niigaanwewidam Sinclair (Implementing the TRC Calls to Action and Indigenous Law), Michelle Audette (Reflections on the National Inquiry into Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women) and Paula Marshall (The Experiences of the Mi’kmaw Legal Support Network and over-representation of Mi’kmaq people in the criminal legal system in Nova Scotia). This panel was chaired by Drew Lafond and Kekinusuqs Dr Judith Sayers.

’Inquisitorial processes’ refers to the inquiry powers of administrative governance and this book examines the use of these powers in administrative law across seven jurisdictions. The book brings together recent developments in mixed inquisitorial-adversarial administrative decision-making on a hitherto neglected area of comparative administrative process and institutional design. Reaching important conclusions about their own jurisdictions and raising questions which may be explored in others, the book's chapters are comparative. They explore the terminology and scope of the concept of inquisitorial process, justifications for the use of inquiry powers, the effectiveness of inquisitorial processes and the implications of the adoption of such powers. The book will set in motion continued dialogue about the inherent challenges of balancing policy goals, fairness, resources and institutional design within administrative law decision-making by offering theoretical, practical and empirical analyses. This will be a valuable book to government policy-makers, administrative law decision-makers, lawyers and academics.

Vasanthi Venkatesh and Fahad Ahmad reflect on the BJP’s insidious use of legitimate state power through administrative regulation, constitutionalism, citizenship determination, adoption of internat…

The paper sheds light on India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) insidious use of legitimate state power through administrative regulation, constitutionalism, citizenship determination, adoption of international law and neoliberal economic policies, to further its ‘Hindutva’ ideology. This reflection focuses on two aspects. First, we show how, by implementing the National Registry of Citizens (NRC) along with other national documentation regimes, the government is using facially neutral administrative regulations to construct the ‘documented’ Indian citizen. This ‘citizen’ is made to fit with Hindutva ideals by disenfranchising Muslims and threatening the de facto and de jure citizenship of nondominant caste Hindus and other groups that challenge the ideology. While these state actions may seem distinct, they resemble traditional colonial practices that the BJP is skilfully adopting to advance its discriminatory political ends. Second, we show that, with the CAA, the BJP is perversely using the humanitarian principles of refugee law to construct neighbouring Muslim states as savage, and whose victims have to be protected by the Hindutva state. Thus, India is replicating the practices of liberal, democratic states of the Global North that continue to use logics of coloniality, exceptionalism and racism to maintain systemic inequities and embed oppressions.