Your search

This article explores the relationship between legal ethics and restorative justice. It argues that the legal profession should be reoriented around restorative justice as the moral foundation of a more progressive approach to legal ethics and professional responsibility. It translates concepts from restorative justice into ethical terms, grounding ideas about interdependence, community involvement, and public accountability into a list of restorative principles that can be readily applied in the practice of law, and recommending a series of practices and regulatory measures that are consistent with a restorative principles-based approach. Ultimately, the article shows that such an approach has the potential to raise the moral consciousness of lawyers, facilitate collaboration within communities and across systems, and redefine the role of lawyers in the administration of justice, transforming conditions of law and society in a more equitable direction.

Creative Commons Attribution license (reuse allowed)

Police are reanimating years-old injunctions to threaten activists, casting a chill over protests and free speech

"Blockchain Technology and the Law: Opportunities and Risks was one of the first texts to offer a critical analysis of Blockchain and the legal and economic challenges faced by this new technology. It offered those who are unfamiliar with Blockchain an introduction as to how the technology works and demonstrates how a legal framework that governs it can be used to ensure that it can be successfully deployed. This second edition features a discussion of issues that did not exist at the time the first edition was published, presenting new topics will help to reinforce the central premise of the book that the acceptability of Blockchain-based applications will depend on whether they can enhance efficiency and lower transactions costs. Significant new content added to this edition includes an examination of the proliferation of new applications of distributed ledger technology, such as Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) and, in the payments realm, Stablecoins and proposals that relate to Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). High-profile incidents in the payments realm (for instance, the DAO case and a new case currently working its way through the Canadian and American Courts, the Cicada case, as well as Celsius and FTX) and also in the securities realm have forced regulators around the globe to take a hard look at enforcing existing regulations more vigorously, and promulgating new ones where existing regulations may be found lacking. There have also been new changes on the privacy law side (with respect to open banking proposals) and in the emergence of what is referred to as "big data" generally. These and other developments have led to a consideration of new legal issues that had not been considered at the time of the original book; as a result the second edition is greatly expanded throughout and features two new chapters. The book is written for practicing lawyers, jurists and academics. It should be found on the shelves of libraries of law firms and law faculties, business schools and universities in general"-- Provided by publisher

"Cybersecurity is often examined through the lens of national security and organizational risks, focusing on data breaches and the technical and legal measures to prevent, address, and mitigate them. However, another critical dimension is the impact on individual security and dignity. This edited collection explores the legal and technical aspects of self-security, addressing issues such as technology-facilitated abuse, social media, the sharing culture, and reputational harm. With a distinct Canadian focus, it examines how the country’s policies, laws, and practices shape cybersecurity and individual protection. By providing insights into safeguarding personal security in a rapidly evolving digital landscape, this collection serves as a valuable resource for researchers, policymakers, and individuals alike."-- Provided by publisher

"Written and edited by leading health law scholars and featuring contributions from legal and health experts from across the country, this book provides a comprehensive overview of Canadian public health law and policy. In this new edition, the text has undergone a thorough revision to align with the post-COVID-19 world. A fresh framework has been created to address new strategies in discussing, interpreting, and shaping the relationship between law and public health issues, focusing on contemporary legal responses and diverse viewpoints."-- Provided by publisher

This chapter explores the promise of refuge encompassed within the Canadian domestic and international refugee regime. While relying on my own lived experience as a survivor of war fleeing to what is now known as Canada, I contrast the promises of

Some cryptocurrency advocates are promoting the use of stablecoins as a common currency, arguing that this new currency could help the cost-of-living crisis and promote economic equality – particularly for young people. Law professor, money expert and SCP Fellow Dan Rohde is not convinced that crypto can help address economic inequality. In this explainer, he breaks down what stablecoins are and aren’t, and how to think critically about their promises.

This article explores the relationship between legal ethics and restorative justice. It is commonly observed that there exists a "decline" in professionalism among Canadian lawyers today. One of the persistent concerns is that legal ethics rules and the "standard conception" of professional role morality that underpins them, the neutral partisan, fail to strike the correct balance between client interests and the public interest. Building on this idea, this article argues that the legal profession should be reoriented around restorative justice as the moral foundation of a more progressive approach to legal ethics and professional responsibility. It translates concepts from restorative justice into ethical terms, grounding ideas about interdependence, community involvement, and public accountability into a list of restorative principles that can be readily applied by lawyers, firms, and other kinds of law practices. The article concludes by recommending a series of lawyering practices and professional regulatory measures that are consistent with taking a restorative principles-based approach. Ultimately, the article shows that restorative justice offers more than an alternative path for lawyers in criminal law settings. It constitutes a distinct set of obligations that, once implemented as legal ethics, has the potential to raise the moral consciousness of lawyers, facilitate collaboration within communities and across systems, and redefine the role of lawyers in the administration of justice, transforming conditions of law and society in a more equitable direction.

The introductory chapter to Critical Conversations in Canadian Public Law situates the book "in the midst of some of the most significant social, economic, and political struggles of the past decade", from the COVID-19 pandemic to the Gaza genocide. The introduction describes how the book "seeks to reflect and ignite critical conversations about the centrality of public law and its institutions, broadly defined and deeply contested, to the (re)production of current inequities." It outlines two ways in which the collection is "critical": first, the critical legal methods employed by the contributors (e.g., acknowledging law's political operation, understanding law's relationship with power, and looking beyond descriptive accounts of law to consider its materiality and normativity); and second, "in terms of the importance, urgency, and necessity of deepening our understandings of the relationship between public law and contemporary inequities." Finally, the introduction identifies "five cascading themes reflected across the chapters in this collection—and across our varied experiences with the law—that are pivotal to the law's consistent mobilization to reify extant power disparities in society [...] exceptionalism, capitalism, segmentation, incrementalism, and formalism."

Critical Conversations in Canadian Public Law is a groundbreaking. open-access collection of peer-reviewed chapters exploring pressing issues at the intersection of public law and critical theory. Contributors examine claims about citizenship, rights. and the role of the state in addressing historic and ongoing injustices. The collection foregrounds critical perspectives such as Indigenous legal orders. critical race theory, feminisms. queer theory, and disability theory, offering an interdisciplinary and contextual understanding of public law. By bridging traditional l egal scholarship and critical approaches. Critical Conversations in Canadian Public Law reimagines public law as a discipline responsive to the diverse realities and urgent demands shaping Canada's legal and social landscape today.

<div> <p><span>The boundaries of the substantive (criminal law purpose) prong of the criminal law power test under 91(27) of the <i>Constitution Act, 1867</i>

To understand common law contract doctrinal research methodology, one must first understand how contract doctrine came into existence and its enduring relevance. Historically, the common law was derived from judgments that focused upon proof of particularized facts and their fit to established writs. Contract doctrine emerged as a product of the Industrial Revolution's transformation of commercial and labor practices, the creation of new forms of property, and the new economic and social theories that shaped political discourse. In this chapter, the rise of common law contract doctrine is first described, and its enduring relevance to today's common law is articulated. This lays the foundation for an exploration into research methodology through three distinct examples: the incremental development by the Supreme Court of Canada of a doctrine of good faith performance in contract law; the interaction between legislature and courts in modifying contract doctrine concerning liability for innocent misrepresentations; and the place of party autonomy in correcting aberrant court decisions that are not in keeping with commercial realities. Through these examples, this chapter demonstrates how the common law navigates between the Scylla of certainty and the Charybdis of flexibility to keep common law contract doctrine relevant, but within what common law courts are constitutionally and legitimately able to do.

One of the most important critiques of regulating employment through a contractual frame is that it hides from view the inequality of bargaining power that exists between employers and employees. This chapter argues that a contractual framework obscures more than the inequality of bargaining power between the parties – it also obscures the proprietary basis of the exchange. The employment contract is a legal mechanism designed to transfer wages and rights of control over workers’ capacity to labour. Conceived in this way, the employment relationship is fundamentally a contest for control over property (labour power) waged through contract. For this reason, analysing the property parameters of the employment relationship opens up another window for examining the strengths and weaknesses of regulating employment through contract.

The Bank of Canada is an independent Crown corporation that sees its primary responsibility to be promoting Canada’s economic welfare by maintaining low and stable inflation. When it was first created in 1934, however, the Bank was a radically different institution—a privately owned corporation primarily meant to anchor Canada’s economy globally and manage foreign exchange. Not only was the Bank not tasked with managing inflation, but key policymakers behind its founding thought doing so would be a severe mistake. This article offers the first legal history of the Bank’s founding. It maps the enormous public debate that accompanied the creation of the Bank and the various, often contradictory visions expressed for it. The article labels these five visions: a Bankers’ Bank, a Government Bank, an Imperial Bank, an Economists’ Bank, and a Bank of the People. The article then looks at the original legal design of the Bank and argues that it largely fit the Imperial Bank model. Charting this history helps us better understand this vital organ of Canadian government, and has the potential to upset many of our accepted, contemporary notions of central banking.