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Iraq has had a unique, extraordinary, and contradictory historical relationship with international law and world order. From its inception as a modern and sovereign state in 1932, it was considered the pride of the new postwar order – a triumph of the “peaceful” workings of the international institution of the Mandate system of the League of Nations. By the first Gulf War in 1991 and later the 2003 invasion, it was labeled a “rogue” and “outlaw” state that needed to be put in its place by the “civilized” world through the instruments of war, economic sanctions, and unilateral invasion. This chapter will explore this contradictory relationship and its dynamics in history.

A commitment to free speech means protecting speech for reasons that are independent of the truth or merit of its content. This commitment, though, depends on certain assumptions or conditions – most notably that individuals are capable of making reasoned and independent judgments and have access to different opinions and reliable factual information. These conditions, of course, never hold perfectly, but they now seem to be eroding at a rapid pace.The character of public speech has changed in the internet era: how we speak to one another and how we experience that speech. Audiences have become more fragmented. Disinformation and conspiracy theories seem to spread easily and widely, so that distortion and deceit rather than direct censorship may now be the most significant threat to public discourse. There is little common ground in the community on factual matters or the reliability of different sources of information, which has made it difficult, even impossible, to discuss issues and to agree or compromise on public policy. Those who hold competing positions seem rarely to engage with one another and, when they do, their engagement is often combative. A growing number of people feel they should not be expected to hear speech with which they disagree, or which is critical of their views. The spaces or platforms in which public speech occurs have become increasingly privatized and therefore outside the scope of the constitutional right to freedom of expression. What future does the right to free speech have in this changing communication environment?

“Personal plight” is the sector of the legal services industry in which the clients are individuals, and the legal needs arise from disputes. This article proposes that competition among personal plight law firms is suppressed by three demand-side phenomena. First, consumers confront high search costs. Identifying competing law firms willing and able to provide the needed services often requires significant expenditure of temporal and psychological resources. Second, comparable price and quality information about firms is scarce for consumers. Both of these factors impede comparison shopping and reduce competitive pressure on firms. A third competition-suppressing factor is observed in tort legal service markets, where offerings are typically priced on a contingency basis. Contingency fees have relatively low salience to consumers, and this reduces consumers’ willingness to negotiate and comparison-shop on the basis of price. This analysis is supported by the author’s empirical research with Ontario personal plight lawyers as well as the existing literature. The article concludes by suggesting possible consequences of this analysis for regulatory policy.

This paper considers the different types of challenges that technological innovation poses to the Legal Services Act 2007’s regulatory framework, and whether the framework is capable of supporting technological innovation that benefits consumers while also addressing the risks it poses to them.The paper makes some recommendations about how the current regime could be adapted to better address these challenges, but its overall conclusion is that the LSA regime remains capable, for the time being, of responding to them.

This paper examines the recent Supreme Court of Canada judgment in LSBC v. TWU, in which the court upheld the decision of the BC law society not to accredit a law program proposed by an Evangelical Christian university. The paper argues that the task for the courts in this and other religious freedom cases is not to balance competing civic and religious interests but is instead to mark the boundary between the spheres of civic and spiritual life. More particularly, in this case, the issue was whether TWU (in applying to operate an accredited law program) should be viewed as a private religious institution that is free to govern itself according to its own norms, or whether, because its actions directly impact outsiders to the religious group, it should be viewed as performing a public role and therefore subject to non-discrimination and other civic norms. The different judgments in the case begin with different assumptions about the public/private character of TWU (or at least its proposed law program) and so never really address the key issue and never really engage with each other. The paper argues that because admission to law school continues to be a significant barrier to entry into the legal profession in Canada, TWU’s admission decisions will have an impact on non-members. The law society, therefore, was justified in requiring TWU to conform to non-discrimination norms as a condition of accreditation.

In 2017, the Law Commission of Ontario (LCO) initiated an independent study to consider Ontario’s experience with class actions since the enactment of the Class Proceedings Act, 1992 (CPA). During this period, class actions have grown significantly in volume, complexity, and impact in Ontario and across Canada. Class actions also have systemic implications for access to justice, court procedures and efficiency, and government and corporate liability. Finally, this form of litigation has had major financial, policy and even cultural implications across the country.Following an intensive 18-month research project that included over 100 interviews with stakeholders and an empirical examination of Ontario cases, the LCO published its final report, and made over 40 recommendations for amendment and reform of the CPA. It is the first review of the CPA since the Act's inception, and the most detailed examination of class actions in Canada in three decades.

By: Joshua Sealy-Harrington PDF Version: Confusing Equality with Tyranny: Repealing the Statement of Principles Matter Commented on: Law Society of Ontario Statement of Principles Tomorrow, the Law…

The Canadian government has recently tabled legislation for self-governance of the Canadian patent and trademark agent professions, thereby creating the Canadian College of Patent and Trademark Agents. As such, regulation of the Canadian patent and trademark agent professions might become unique amongst comparable countries – Canada’s self-regulatory body may have authority over setting and administering competency-based standards, ethical standards and continuing professional education.With respect to patent agency, self-regulation of the Canadian profession comes at a pivotal time, not just for Canada, but in technological history generally. We are now moving into the age of the fourth Industrial Revolution, where file sharing, additive manufacturing (i.e. 3D printing) and artificial intelligence (AI) are democratizing invention and along with it challenging long-standing patent law concepts. Furthermore, developments in AI are set to disrupt our traditional notions of professionalization and the delivery of professional services. Patent agency rests on the nexus of both movements and as such, patent agency and patent agent self-governance are approaching unique historical crossroads.Part 1 of this piece highlights some of the issues that the Canadian profession has had to contend with in recent years along with several emerging trends, such as the growing IP clinical movement, new AI-driven service providers and a growing academic interest in the sociology and administration of patent law, all of which are coming to prominence while the Canadian patent agent profession is acquiring self-regulatory authority. Combined with changing notions of the patent system’s role in society, this raises the possibility of conflicts between professional self-interest entrenched within a self-regulatory governance model and shifting perceptions of the public interest. How the new Canadian patent agent self-regulatory body responds to these challenges will define whether Canada will be a leader in forward-thinking patent agency or whether patent agent self-regulation will become a convenient front for professional, rather than public interests.

The Canadian government has recently tabled legislation for self-governance of the Canadian patent and trademark agent professions, thereby creating the Canadian College of Patent and Trademark Agents. As such, regulation of the Canadian patent and trademark agent professions might become unique amongst comparable countries – Canada’s self-regulatory body may have authority over setting and administering competency-based standards, ethical standards and continuing professional education.With respect to patent agency, self-regulation of the Canadian profession comes at a pivotal time, not just for Canada, but in technological history generally. We are now moving into the age of the fourth Industrial Revolution, where file sharing, additive manufacturing (i.e. 3D printing) and artificial intelligence (AI) are democratizing invention and along with it challenging long-standing patent law concepts. Furthermore, developments in AI are set to disrupt our traditional notions of professionalization and the delivery of professional services. Patent agency rests on the nexus of both movements and as such, patent agency and patent agent self-governance are approaching unique historical crossroads.Part 2 of this piece critically analyzes the new College of Patent Agents and Trade-mark Agents Act [College Act] in view of the issues and concerns set out under Part 1. Part 2 argues that a responsive regulation approach to patent agent governance is required to ensure that Canadian patent agency remains open and flexible to the challenges ahead. From this perspective, Part 2 assesses the ways in which the proposed College Act appears to achieve the necessary responsiveness and where it falls short. In some instances, the analysis under Part 2 will also provide proposed revisions or additions to the College Act intended to better address the concerns set out under Part 1.

Graffiti is vilified, and at the same time is increasingly revered and celebrated. This ambivalence is reflected in the general legal landscape that surrounds graffiti and other forms of street art at the criminal, civil and municipal levels. Within this general legal framework, the application of copyright law to graffiti and street art reveals a complex web of interwoven issues about the protection of the graffiti artist’s economic and moral rights and questions of illegality and public policy, and about the rights of the property owner of the “wall” on which the art resides, and the public. This book chapter explores how the law mediates between the rights of graffiti and street artists, the rights of the property owner on which the art resides, and members of the public. The application of copyright law to graffiti and street art offers an opportunity to investigate where the balance should lie between various competing rights and interests relating to these types of works.

Populist candidates and causes have scored a series of remarkable victories in Europe and the Americas since 2015. It is too soon to say whether we are living in a populist “moment,” or at the dawn of a new populist age. It is not, however, too soon to think carefully about the consequences of populism for public policy. Nor is it too soon to consider policy decisions by non-populist governments today that might affect the likelihood that this will be only a moment and not an age.This paper considers the relationship between two ideologies: welfare-consequentialism and populism. Welfare-consequentialism, reviewed in Part 1, holds that governments should always try to adopt the policies that are most likely to make individuals’ lives go best. Part 2 juxtaposes it with populism, defined as the view that (i) society is divided into a pure people and a corrupt elite, and (ii) public policy should give effect to the general will of the pure people (Mudde 2004). The paper then argues that welfare-consequentialism and populism are diametrically opposed ideologies. They are fundamentally incompatible in their representations of “the people,” and in the weight they give to public opinion. Populism’s anti-elitism may sometimes be reconciled with welfare-consequentialism, but not in the many cases where it takes the form of anti-intellectualism. Part 3 concludes by asking whether, in the long-term, welfare-consequentialism makes a polity more or less vulnerable to populism.

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 the goal of public policy is to make individuals’ lives better, does it follow that maximizing aggregate life-evaluations constitutes policy success? This paper argues that life-evaluation data provides a solid basis for welfare-consequentialist policy-making. This is illustrated by the successful argument for expanding state-funded mental health services in the United Kingdom.However, life-evaluations do not always provide a complete account of individual welfare. Policy-makers 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-evaluationist and preferentist data about individual welfare, as a basis for rational policy-making.

Canadians should invest in affordable housing. It’s a commitment to lifting the most vulnerable members of our society from the ground up — and lifting our entire country up in the process.

How can we preserve and extend what's good about contingency fees, while minimizing the bad and the ugly? In order to identify the regulatory tools best suited to this challenging task, this Chapter proposes a consumer welfare analysis. The consumers of contingency fee legal services are the individual clients, and the members of classes, represented by law firms working on this basis. These consumers, like other consumers, have interests in:(i) quality, (ii) price, (iii) fairness, and (iv) choice. Part 2 of this Chapter will analyze these four sets of consumer interests, all of which are affected by the regulation of contingent fees. Part 3 scrutinizes various regulatory approaches to contingency fees against the consumer welfare criterion. I argue that heavy-handed interventions, such as fee caps and retrospective price review, can do as much harm as good for consumers. "Light touch" alternatives such as disclosure and standardized contracts, and fostering the "invisible hand" of the market, are preferable approaches for a regulators interested in maximizing consumer welfare.

This volume is a collection of papers presenting theories & strategies for public interest litigation, a specialized area of litigation aimed to bring about social impact, & the various avenues & methodologies that have been used in Canadian history.

In popular culture and imagination, World War I was a bloody, muddy, senseless, almost accidental conflict. International law seems far removed from the causes of the war or the way hostilities were conducted. This seeming irrelevance of international law in popular imagination is rejected in intellectual, literary, and scholarly accounts. However, during the centenary of the war, it is time to rethink the role law played in this first large-scale conflict of the twentieth century. Drawing on recent legal historiography as well as original research, this article will argue, through a look at the conduct of naval warfare, that law was central to how Allied, Central, and neutral states navigated the conflict. Specifically, we examine the role law played in the practices of the warring parties in navigating the interdiction of – and attacks on – the civilian shipping of belligerents and neutrals.

A co-founder of Idle No More was put on trial for ‘trespassing’ on her family’s ancestral lands. Canada has much to learn about institutionalizing respectful relationships with Indigenous peoples.

The prospect of political interference is at the heart of the SNC-Lavalin controversy. But it raises more issues related to identifying and preventing inappropriate interference.