Search

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 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 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 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.

Climate justice activists are increasingly looking to litigation to produce the policy changes that have eluded them in the political process. Without a codified right to a clean environment, litigants in jurisdictions like Canada must use a human rights framework to advance their cause. Recent successes in Charter class actions suggest that it is now possible to pursue constitutional damages for climate change harms. As Canadian advocates join with their international counterparts in deploying a litigation strategy, Canada’s robust class action procedure may be a useful addition in the pursuit of collective climate justice. This paper proceeds in four parts. First and by way of background, I summarize the types and extent of climate change litigation in Canada and internationally. Second, I discuss Canadian class actions advancing constitutional claims, which have recently surged after two decades of limited use. In part III, I argue that a climate change action founded on a breach of s. 7 of the Charter would meet the test for certification of a class action. Finally, in part IV I discuss the comparative advantages and disadvantages of using the class action mechanism to combat climate injustice.