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Explores the interplay between law and religion in the area of hate speech, whether religion is the target or source

Joshua Sealy-Harrington, Jonnette Watson Hamilton, 2018 7-1 Canadian Journal of Human Rights 1, 2018 CanLIIDocs 106

Workers with temporary immigration status have become the economic reality in several countries, as these workers provide a temporally mobile, cheap workforce that is responsive to economic vicissitudes and anti-immigration sentiment. Temporary foreign workers (TFWs) in low-wage sectors such as agriculture are tied to a single employer, have no access to their family and to permanent residence, and face overwhelming barriers in accessing justice. TFWs spend years residing and working outside of their country of nationality and are unable to be self-sovereign agents either in their countries of origin (because of lack of residence) or in their countries of sojourn (because of lack of nationality). While there have been instances where TFWs were able to make individual legal claims for labor violations in the country of sojourn, collective mobilization against the TFW program itself is exceptional. Collective mobilization represents acting as (partial) citizens, as the claims resemble self-determination claims on behalf of the entire TFW collectivity. How do TFWs and their allies, against all odds, mobilize the law to make collective claims and produce citizenship from below?In this research, I critically examine Israel and Canada, countries that have very similar TFW programs in agriculture but represent two contrasting types of legal mobilization against these programs. Israel is a case of “top-down” constitutional litigation where the results were court-ordered changes to the TFW program. Canada represents a case of legal mobilization “from below” where law is used subversively as a tool for larger political action. What explains the different pathways to legal mobilization in Israel and Canada?In addition to contributing new empirical data and theoretical conceptualizations of the different ways in which the law can be mobilized, my dissertation combines legal mobilization and social movement theories to offer an analytical framework to understand what affects the type of legal mobilization. TFW mobilization is situated in two broad social movements, labor movements and migrant rights/citizenship movements. I frame legal mobilization in the TFW context as a form of anti-hegemonic, contentious collective action and show the complex interactions between the political and discursive environment (political opportunity structure), the legal environment, and the support structure for mobilization (resource organizations).I show that despite barriers to access and courts' unwillingness to overturn immigration law, the law can be collectively mobilized on behalf of TFWs. The pathways to legal mobilization depend on legal opportunities and type of resource support. Constitutional litigation is initiated by cause-driven lawyers or legal organizations, but their framing of issues is constrained. Grassroots, solidarity organizations, in contrast, use the law as a tool for the broader goals of worker mobilization and social change. With the support of such organizations, TFWs are able to articulate their demands collectively, engage in direct action and political mobilization, and demand changes to the TFW program. My comparative historical analysis of Israel and Canada shows that legal and discursive strategies, however, depend on the historical political legacies and current political and economic environments. Elite power and ideological discourses are entrenched and distributed in the context of TFW programs. Political contestation impacts constitutional challenges as well as grassroots mobilization. My dissertation further adds to citizenship theory in three ways. First, it disrupts prevalent myths about the agency of TFWs and their lack of rights consciousness. Second, it offers the possibilities for meaningful change to TFW programs and advances an agentic theory on access to citizenship. Lastly, it adds grist to the conception of “citizenship from below” through the evidence of jurisgenerative practices of TFWs.

The crisis of a failing system of judicial interim release disproportionately disadvantages Aboriginal accused persons. Rather than ameliorating this crisis, the principles articulated in R v Gladue and re-affirmed in R v Ipeelee are being interpreted at the bail phase in a manner that exacerbates the problem. A review of Gladue bail jurisprudence reveals the ways in which Aboriginal people in Canada are improperly being sentenced via bail proceedings. The courts have failed to identify the relevant legal principles that should animate bail. Instead, judicial interim release is being utilized as a diagnostic tool and Aboriginal people are inappropriately being subjected to “treatment” via the over-use of sureties and conditions of release. The relevant systemic factors are not properly considered and should play a far greater role in the assessment of risk and the interpretation of Gladue. The paper concludes with a proposal for how Gladue can more appropriately be interpreted and applied in the context of judicial interim release, including an alternate understanding of what systemic factors should animate Gladue bail proceedings.

Global administrative law scholars have argued that global administrative law’s principles and normativity can bring about legitimacy to global governance institutions, and subsequently benefit the people of the Global South. I challenge these recent arguments that suggest global administrative law has managed to incorporate the concerns of the Third World. I caution international lawyers’ attempts to theorize global governance as administration to fill the democracy gap within the global space. My arguments are premised on the history of domestic administrative law and its uses to facilitate the settler colonial project in places like North America. I first examine the two animating claims within global administrative law and then focus, based on taxonomies available within the current literature, on procedural administrative law. The procedural argument has been developed by American legal scholars who want to deploy their common law based notions of administrative law within the global space. Based on this analysis, I develop and deploy a case study from the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda as illustration of judicial review within an international criminal institution set up by the UN Security Council. In the final section, I challenge global administrative lawyers’ arguments that global administrative law can be a tool of emancipation for the people of the Global South based on the ICTR case study.

For the government’s statement Tuesday to have substance, it needs to be accompanied by meaningful reforms that continue to improve the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Canadians everywhere

Canadian colleges and universities must respect gender equality and fair process in adjudicating cases of sexual violence.

This paper analyzes the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Quebec (Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse) v. Bombardier Inc. (Bombardier Aerospace Training Center). Almost 12 years after Captain Javed Latif’s ordeal began, the Supreme Court of Canada affirmed a decision by the Quebec Court of Appeal overturning a finding by a Quebec Human Rights Tribunal that Bombardier had discriminated against him. While there is much to celebrate in the Court’s reasons, the decision ultimately exposes and perpetuates a deep unwillingness to challenge the stereotyping of Muslims as terrorists in Canada. In response, this paper seeks to excavate Latif’s fuller story largely through a reading of silences. The Tribunal advanced two discrete but intersecting theories in its finding of discrimination. The Court focused, artificially, on one and found “no evidence” of discrimination. The Supreme Court not only ended Captain Latif’s quest for a remedy, it re-wrote his narrative by moving attention away from key facts involving his interactions with Bombardier. The Court’s chosen narrative also regulated the collective fears and aspirations of Muslim communities in Canada to the realm of the unsaid. At a time when Muslims are struggling to counter popular and official stereotypes that construct them as incorrigible barbarians and outsiders who are prone to terrorism and violence, it is important to create spaces for counter-narratives to be heard and lived experiences to be validated. Moreover, litigants who dedicate years of their lives to advancing social justice causes deserve the dignity of recognizing their own stories when relayed back to them by the legal process. The comparison of the Court’s reasons with that of the Tribunal thus represents a political act of hearing counter-narratives while also critically analyzing the Supreme Court’s claim that the Tribunal had little or no evidence before it to ground its finding of discrimination.

A historical and evidence-based perspective, however, suggests that sidewalk riding is a sideshow to bigger issues of safety for all road users.

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Tremendous confusion has revolved around the theory and application of the doctrine of essential elements in Canadian patent law ever since the Supreme Court of Canada first introduced the doctrine in Free World Trust c. Électro Santé Inc. In recent years, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office’s (CIPO) interpretation and application of the doctrine in its patent application examination guidelines has been the subject of considerable criticism from the Canadian patent profession. However, CIPO’s misapplication of the doctrine in recent years’ Patent Agent Qualifying Examination has received relatively little attention. This paper examines the application of the doctrine of essential elements in recent years’ Canadian Patent Agent Qualifying Examination. The analysis begins with a thorough and comprehensive review of the doctrine of essential elements under Canadian patent law. The analysis reviews the last ten years’ Canadian Patent Agent Examination, with a focus on recent years’ emphasis on the doctrine of essentiality. Despite the fact that the doctrine itself is still unsettled under Canadian law, the approach taken on recent years’ Patent Agent Exams is at best an ambiguous, and at worst an inaccurate application of the doctrine. This paper concludes by demonstrating that the concerns surrounding the doctrine of essentiality may be significant contributing factor to invalidity issues surrounding recent years’ Patent Agent Exams.

One of the greatest controversies in contemporary copyright law is the introduction of technological protection measures (TPMs) at the international and national level. By creating a separate parallel regime for digital copyright works, TPMs shifted the paradigm by redefining the rules of engagement of how users would increasingly access and experience digital copyright works.

What are some of the challenges and possibilities animating modern Canadian clinical and experiential learning in law? This question was the starting point for our research, which examined two sets of data. In the first part of this project, we analyzed available information on existing clinical and experiential learning programs in Canadian law schools. This data revealed a growing quantity and variety of programs across the country. We then held qualitative interviews with deans, professors, and clinicians across Canada regarding their views of clinical and experiential learning. While the interviews suggested that many of the same financial and curricular challenges that dominated early debates remain stubbornly entrenched, there are also significant promising views and practices. No longer regarded by most as a legal education outlier, clinical and experiential learning has come out of the curricular shadows and taken a prominent place in most law schools in Canada. Nuanced questions now dominate thinking around this generation of clinical and experiential learning. What is the role of community in the creation, decision making, and continuity of clinical programs? How can students balance an increasingly intensive set of learning, professional, and financial challenges? How can clinical and experiential learning be better aligned with the rest of the curriculum, and as accessible as possible? As all respondent law schools but one are expanding their clinical and experiential learning options, these and other questions will continue to animate programs in the foreseeable future.

English Abstract: The law has historically granted damages for some forms of non-pecuniary losses. In doing so, courts have freely admitted that there is imprecision in quantifying such losses and that there is no quantitative and objective calculus on pain and suffering. Against this background, new research on how hedonic losses are experienced by a victim provide an opportunity to review how non-pecuniary losses should be compensated. Some of this research suggests that experiences of anxiety, frustration and suffering may not affect a victim’s happiness as great as is presupposed in current models of compensation, and further, that its impact may also be ameliorated by the offering of an apology. In this essay, the author asks whether the law can incentivize tortfeasors to offer an apology as an element in mitigating compensatory damages for non-pecuniary loss.

Article Book Review of J.A.M. A. Sluysmans, S. Verbist, and E. Waring, eds., Expropriation Law in Europe (Deventer: Wolters Kluwer, 2015) was published on August 28, 2017 in the journal European Property Law Journal (volume 6, issue 2).