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Canada is often cited as one of the principal sources of proportionality analysis --- an approach to the determination of limits on constitutional rights that has been adopted in many jurisdictions. The two-step structure of constitutional rights adjudication is built on the idea that these rights are the basic conditions of individual autonomy or liberty that must be protected from the demands of collective welfare. At the first stage of the adjudication the court determines whether the restricted activity falls within the scope of the right. At the second stage, the court balances the right against the competing interest advanced by the restrictive law, to determine whether the restriction is justified. Yet few of these rights fit this individual liberty model and are better understood as social or relational in character – protecting different aspects of the individual’s interaction or connection with others in the community. If we recognize that most constitutional rights do not simply protect individual autonomy but instead protect different aspects of human flourishing or dignity within community then two things may follow. First there can be no single generic test for limits on rights. The form or character of “limitations” on these rights may differ in significant ways. Second, the two-steps of adjudication may often be difficult to separate or the separation may seem quite artificial. Many of the issues addressed by the courts will not fit easily into the two-step structure of analysis, because the “competing” interests are really different dimensions of a social relationship.

In the landmark Canadian racial profiling case of R v Brown, an unanimous Ontario Court of Appeal firmly recognized that racial profiling is a reality that is “supported by significant social science research.”

Only registered Canadian patent agents may represent others before the Canadian Patent Office. To qualify as a registered Canadian patent agent, candidates must complete an apprenticeship followed by successfully passing the Canadian patent agent examination. This article analyzes the current regulatory framework for Canadian patent agents. Based on a theoretical, historical and international comparative analysis, this article demonstrates that the current Canadian regulatory model has lost sight of its purpose and is symptomatic of a greater crisis of legitimacy plaguing the Canadian patent agent profession. The article highlights the need for greater reform of the Canadian patent agent regulatory framework in order to better serve the intellectual property needs of the Canadian public. This article concludes with a series of comprehensive recommendations for reform of the current Canadian regulatory framework.

Even though Sri Lanka's protracted civil war came to a bloody conclusion in May 2009, prospects for a sustainable peace remain uncertain. The Sri Lankan army is no longer waging military campaigns and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) are no longer carrying out political assassinations and suicide attacks, yet structural violence continues, and has arguably intensified since the war's end. Anti-Tamil discrimination, anti-Muslim violence, and Sinhala Buddhist majoritarianism all increased in the war's aftermath, as President Mahinda Rajapakse's government invoked its military victory over the LTTE to silence any opposition. The election of Maithripala Sirisena as president in January 2015 began to alleviate some of the worst of these post-war abuses of power, but many long-term problems will take longer to solve. This book brings together scholars in the fields of anthropology, sociology, history, law, religious studies and diaspora studies to critically engage issues such as post-war development, constitutional reform, ethnic and religious identity, transnational activism, and transitional justice. Through an interdisciplinary approach to post-war Sri Lanka, this volume examines the intractable and complex issues that continue to plague this war-torn island. , Even though Sri Lanka's protracted civil war came to a bloody conclusion in May 2009, prospects for a sustainable peace remain uncertain. The Sri Lankan army is no longer waging military campaigns and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) are no longer carrying out political assassinations and suicide attacks, yet structural violence continues, and has arguably intensified since the war's end. Anti-Tamil discrimination, anti-Muslim violence, and Sinhala Buddhist majoritarianism all increased in the war's aftermath, as President Mahinda Rajapakse's government invoked its military victory over the LTTE to silence any opposition. The election of Maithripala Sirisena as president in January 2015 began to alleviate some of the worst of these post-war abuses of power, but many long-term problems will take longer to solve. This book brings together scholars in the fields of anthropology, sociology, history, law, religious studies and diaspora studies to critically engage issues such as post-war development, constitutional reform, ethnic and religious identity, transnational activism, and transitional justice. Through an interdisciplinary approach to post-war Sri Lanka, this volume examines the intractable and complex issues that continue to plague this war-torn island.

This chapter focuses on political issues that arise when claims for gender justice, such as the call for criminalising marital rape, are made in societies or states with pluralistic legal systems, especially with customary and Indigenous law systems.

The Canadian legal landscape is changing. Data over the last three decades show a trend toward larger law firms. Many of the country’s most storied ‘big law’ corporate firms have exploded in size and reach. Almost all of these firms maintain offices across the country and satellite offices in key international markets. Other large firms have been subsumed into foreign conglomerates pursuing expansion into the Canadian legal market. These developments have led to an increase in revenues and business opportunities for senior partners at these firms. It has also led to unprecedented challenges for the management of big law firms in Canada. As one of the former managing partners of Heenan Blaikie LLP (Heenan Blaikie), Norman Bacal knows this better than most.

This article revisits long-standing debates about objective interpretation in the common law system by focusing on a crime novel by Agatha Christie and judicial opinion by the Ontario High Court. Conventions of the crime fiction and judicial opinion genres inform readers’ assumption that the two texts are objectively interpretable. This article challenges this assumption by demonstrating that unreliable narration is often, if not always, a feature of written communication. Judges, like crime fiction writers, are storytellers. While these authors might intend for their stories to be read in certain ways, the potential for interpretive disconnect between unreliable narrators and readers means there can be no essential quality that marks a literary or legal text’s meaning as objective. Taken to heart, this demands that judges try to narrate their decisions more reliably so that readers are able to interpret the texts correctly when it matters most.