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Sujith Xavier & Ntina Tzouvala introduce our series of reflections on ‘Teaching International Law: Between Critique and the Canon’.

The legal profession throughout most of Canada enjoys the privilege of self-regulation and a (purported) monopoly over legal practice. In Ontario, the Law Society must regulate so as to facilitate access to justice and protect the public interest. Critics argue that self-regulation is anti-competitive it allows the profession to control the market for legal services, increasing the cost of services and restricting access to them and serves professional interests over the public interest. The Ontario government introduced paralegal regulation to enhance access to justice. Regulation would increase consumer choice and the competence and affordability of non-lawyer legal service providers. The Law Society agreed to regulate paralegals in the public interest. After decades of discord between lawyers and non-lawyers, paralegal regulation was implemented in 2006. Many were opposed to lawyers regulating competitors. For some, it was akin to having the fox watch over the chickens. It also confounded self-regulation the legal profession now regulating itself and others. Paralegals are licensed to provide legal services directly to the public independent of lawyers but they are regulated by lawyers. The Law Society has declared paralegal regulation a success and itself the right choice of regulator. This dissertation explores whether paralegal regulation has increased access to justice, as the government promised and Law Society claims. It examines the history of the legal profession and Law Society in Ontario and the events leading to paralegal regulation. Using both market control and the cultural history of the legal profession as theoretical underpinnings, and through the lens of access to justice, this dissertation analyzes the Law Societys exercise of regulatory authority over paralegals and undertakes empirical research of paralegal representatives at the Workplace Safety and Insurance Appeals Tribunal. This dissertation concludes that paralegal regulation has done little to increase access to justice and that self-regulation and the Law Societys manner of regulating are barriers to increased access to justice.

A life-evaluation question asks a person to quantify his or her overall satisfaction with life, at the time when the question is asked. If public policy seeks to make individuals’ lives better, does it follow that changes in aggregate life-evaluations track policy success? This paper argues that life-evaluation is a practical and philosophically sound way to measure and predict welfare for the purpose of analyzing policy options. This is illustrated by the successful argument for expanding state-funded mental health services in the United Kingdom. However, life-evaluations sometimes fail to adequately measure individual welfare. Policy analysts therefore must sometimes inquire into the extent to which individuals’ preferences would be fulfilled, if different policies were to be adopted. This article proposes synthesizing life-evaluation and preference-fulfilment data about individual welfare, as a basis for welfare-consequentialist policy analysis.

The print edition The Law of Trusts, 3rd Edition, includes a PDF ebook. Look for your PIN code card inside the front cover. The Law of Trusts, 3rd Edition, edited by Mark R. Gillen and Faye Woodman, traces the development of resulting and constructive trusts to reflect a uniquely Canadian approach. Written by leading scholars in the field, this comprehensive casebook situates the law of trusts in context for its readers, yet extends beyond the normal scope to discuss specialized topics such as unjust enrichment, taxation, and succession planning. The third edition has been updated and expanded to include a new chapter on the Quebec trust. An overview of the taxation of trusts and beneficiaries has been added to make the subject matter more accessible, and an updated chapter on fiduciary obligations references the Galambos and Elder Advocates cases to reflect the clarified approach adopted by the SCC.

Tort law allows parties to seek remedies (typically in the form of monetary damages) for losses caused by a wrongdoer’s intentional conduct, failure to exercise reasonable care, and/or introduction of a specific risk into society. The scope of tort law makes it especially relevant for individuals who are harmed as a result of an artificial intelligence (AI)-system operated by another person, company, or government agent with whom the injured person has no pre-existing legal relationship (e.g. no contract or commercial relationship). This chapter examines the application of three primary areas of tort law to AI-systems. Plaintiffs might pursue intentional tort actions when an AI-system is used to intentionally carry out harmful conduct. While this is not likely to be the main source of litigation, intentional torts can provide remedies for harms that might not be available through other areas of law. Negligence and strict liability claims are likely to be more common legal mechanisms in the AI context. A plaintiff might have a more straightforward case in a strict liability claim against a wrongdoer, but these claims are only available in specific situations in Canada. A negligence claim will be the likely mechanism for most plaintiffs suffering losses from a defendant’s use of an AI-system. Negligence actions for AI-related injuries will present a number of complexities and challenges for plaintiffs. Even seemingly straightforward preliminary issues like identifying who to name as a defendant might raise barriers to accessing remedies through tort law. These challenges, and some potential opportunities, are outlined below.

Based on an empirical review of post-RDS caselaw, I argue that there is a demonstrable colour blindness within the existing jurisprudence on judicial impartiality. I illustrate this colour blind approach through two arguments. The first argument is based on the evidence needed to pierce the veil of judicial impartiality. A large number of the cases surveyed illustrate the propensity of decision makers to deny recusal arguments based on the cogency of the evidence. In these cases of colour blind decision making, the presented evidence was deemed insufficient to warrant piercing the veil of judicial impartiality. The second argument focuses on judges that adopt an antiracist perspective. When judges have relied on social science evidence to engage in contextual and antiracist judging, they have been policed and their decisions overturned by supervisory and appellate courts.

This article traces the evolution of the feminist “sex wars” in contemporary debates about campus sexual violence reform in Canada and the United States – what Emily Bazelon calls the “return of the sex wars” at American colleges and universities. The "return of the sex wars" has been characterized by many of the same unproductive hostilities and painful acrimony as the original fight between feminist sex radicals and anti-pornography feminists over three decades ago. This article focuses on a particularly controversial issue in these debates: the role of consensual dispute resolution (i.e., negotiation, mediation, and restorative justice) in addressing campus sexual violence. Employing a two-person counter conversational methodology, the article stages a negotiation between two feminists with competing and representative views on this issue. Feminist concerns about consensual dispute resolution raise challenging questions about the rise of informal justice and its implications for the rule of law in campus sexual violence cases. The article concludes by arguing that the intense polarization and politicization of the "return of the sex wars" has led to a hollowing out of the feminist critical discourse in this area, which has prevented some feminists from engaging with consensual dispute resolution as a potentially viable and redemptive means of sexual regulation on campus.

Negotiating Feminism traces the reflection of the feminist “sex wars” in contemporary debates about campus sexual violence reform in Canada and the United States – what Emily Bazelon has called the “return of the sex wars” on college and university campuses. Negotiating Feminism focuses on one issue in the return of the sex wars – the role of interests-based, consensual dispute resolution processes, including mediation and restorative justice, in changing the conditions that foster campus sexual violence on the ground. The political polarization of the return of the sex wars has prevented some colleges and universities from engaging with policy models that challenge the primacy of campus adjudication and other rights-based options. Complainants of campus sexual violence should be empowered to access any form of dispute resolution under law, whether rights-based or interests-based, that accords with their personal conception of justice. Empowering complainants in this way does not mean that colleges and universities should be willfully blind to the reality of substantive inequality that campus adjudication is intended to address. Yet acknowledging this reality should not require colleges and universities to essentialize about the nature of women’s injury or overdetermine the role of gendered power imbalances in producing the content of women’s interests in resolving their complaints otherwise. Feminist law and policymakers should negotiate between these competing imperatives and come together by instituting what Negotiating Feminism calls the “plural process” model of campus sexual violence reform. The plural process model recognizes that both rights-based and interests-based options can promote substantive equality for women and other historically marginalized groups – and it seeks to bring about that change.

"This book is comprehensive overview of the law and disability issues. It examines definitional questions and fields of law as they relate to disability issues, including equality rights instruments, the history of disability rights litigation and contemporary access to justice issues. It also examines issues arising in the lived experience of persons with disabilities in the pursuit of various fundamental rights, as well to the roles and concerns of others involved in the experience and resolution of such issues."-- Provided by publisher

This research examines the relationship among Board Diversity, Social Capital, and Governance Effectiveness by asking, “does board ethno-racial diversity moderate the relationship between Social Capital and Governance Effectiveness, and if so, how?” Exploring the direct and interacting effects of demographic diversity and Social Capital, and their relation to governing-group effectiveness using a two-sample field survey design, we illustrate whether heterogeneous or homogeneous group compositions amplify or attenuate Governance Effectiveness, and to what degree. Primary analyses find no support for Board Diversity moderating the Social Capital-Governance Effectiveness relationship, with secondary analysis revealing a more complex interaction for Governance Effectiveness, albeit inconsistently, across samples. Our investigation points to the value of social resources in understanding governance as an inherently socially complex activity or capability, predicated on truce or mutual agreement and shaped by the composition and connections of boards.