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This is an introduction to selected articles published in vol. 35 of The Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice (2018) further to the Symposium: "Copyright User Rights and Access to Justice" hosted by Windsor Law on May 18-19 2017. It gives a brief overview of the concept of copyright user rights and access to justice, as well as of the main themes discussed in the articles and at the Symposium, including access to knowledge and human rights.

The #MeToo movement has exposed inequalities in the legal system that disadvantage women. Restorative justice could help in certain sexual violence cases.

Racial bias likely played a role in the Gerald Stanley case. This article explains how racial dynamics and process failures enabled systemic racism to play a part in Stanley’s acquittal.

This dissertation delves into the legal and labour history of Hashemite Iraq (c. 1921-1958) to explore the role international law and its institutions played in Iraqs state formation, as well as, the imperial control of the semi-peripheral region of the Middle East. By highlighting the historical specificity of the semi-periphery in international legal history, it shows how Iraq was a laboratory for experimentation with the concept of sovereignty. A unique doctrine of semi-peripheral sovereignty was skillfully developed by the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations in Geneva and embedded in the 1930 Anglo-Iraq Treaty to ensure Iraqs independence in 1932 maintained geopolitical and imperial interests that were specific to the region, especially the extraction, production and transportation of Iraqi oil to the Mediterranean. The material effects of this international legal doctrine on the everyday lives of working class Iraqis is traced by looking at how it intersected with British imperial law, land law, the transnational law of oil concessions and pipeline agreements, criminal law and emergency law. The spaces and semi-colonial enclaves of capitalist production and trade of the oil fields in Kirkuk, the railways in Baghdad and the Port of Basra, and their corresponding governing structures are then detailed in micro-histories with the aim of analyzing the manner in which the oil, port and railway workers organized against the semi-colonial and imperial legality that was imposed upon them. The dissertation ends with an analysis of the massive 1948 Wathba uprising against the revision of the 1930 Anglo-Iraq Treaty. The Wathba, successfully prevented the re-imposition of imperialism in Iraq, and would turn into the seed of the July Revolution in 1958. It is situated here within the wider history of decolonization in the Third World to advance a novel methodological approach of the conjuncture to understand anti-colonial and labour agency in relation to international legal history. This study illustrates that undertaking a conjunctural analysis illuminates how the agency of the ordinary peoples of the Third World influenced international legal transformation. The doctrine of semi-peripheral sovereignty and all juridical forms of semi-colonialism would be unequivocally rejected through the Iraqi contribution to the drafting of the 1960 Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples. This dissertation therefore reveals the unique constitutive relationship between international law, imperialism, and capitalism in the semi-peripheral Middle East, while maintaining the importance of integrating the history of class formation, agency and labour into international legal history. The material effects of this international legal doctrine on the everyday lives of working class Iraqis is traced by looking at how it intersected with British imperial law, land law, the transnational law of oil concessions and pipeline agreements, criminal law and emergency law. The spaces and semi-colonial enclaves of capitalist production and trade of the oil fields in Kirkuk, the railways in Baghdad and the Port of Basra, and its corresponding governing structures are then detailed in micro-histories with the aim of analyzing the manner in which the oil, port and railway workers organized against the semi-colonial and imperial legality that was imposed upon them. The dissertation ends with an analysis of the massive 1948 Wathba uprising against the revision of the 1930 Anglo-Iraq Treaty. The Wathba, successfully prevented the re-imposition of imperialism in Iraq, and would turn into the seed of the July Revolution in 1958. It is situated here within the wider history of decolonization in the Third World to advance a novel methodological approach of the conjuncture in relation to understanding anti-colonial and labour agency in international legal history. This dissertation illustrates that undertaking a conjunctural analysis illuminates how the agency of the ordinary peoples of the Third World influenced international legal transformation. The doctrine of semi-peripheral sovereignty and all juridical forms of semi-colonialism would be unequivocally rejected through the Iraqi contribution to the drafting of the 1960 Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples. This dissertation therefore reveals the unique constitutive relationship between international law, imperialism, and capitalism in the semi-peripheral Middle East, while maintaining the importance of integrating the history of class formation, agency and labour into international legal history.

This article proposes a theoretical foundation for measuring legal service value. It aims to support efforts to compare the value of offerings from different law firms, as well as alternative legal service providers. The value of any legal service depends on (i) its effectiveness, (ii) its affordability, (iii) the experience it creates for its clients, and (iv) third party effects (the impact the service-provider has on people other than the client). These four elements of value can be quantified through various metrics applied to firms or entities that provide a given service. Output metrics evaluate either the actual real-world impact of a legal service service, or the written and oral work products of the firm. Internal metrics check for processes or structures within a firm that demonstrably support high value outputs. Input metrics focus on the attributes and credentials of the individuals who provide the service.This article concludes that measuring legal service value is challenging, and may be dangerous if done poorly. Nevertheless, the rewards justify the challenge. Higher quality legal professionalism, more effective and less burdensome regulation, and consumer empowerment are among the payoffs if we can find better ways to measure legal service value.

In this study, the author analyzes, comparatively, the administrative governance functions of legislation that provides accessibility standards in six jurisdictions that also offer legal protection from discrimination to people with disabilities: Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States and the Canadian provinces of Ontario, Manitoba and Nova Scotia. The following governance functions were examined: a) creating accessibility standards, b) enforcing accessibility standards, c) enforcing decisions, d) encouraging compliance, e) raising public awareness (and promoting systemic culture change) and f) public education. The study was conducted with a view to understanding how human rights laws, principles and values can be used to further and strengthen disability access laws on the ground. The federal government has proposed to introduce legislation that will likely establish a framework for the development of accessibility standards within Canada’s federal legislative jurisdiction. This follows on the heels of accessibility legislation being enacted in Ontario (2005), Manitoba (2013) and, most recently, Nova Scotia (2017). Public consultations in 2016-17 for the proposed federal accessibility legislation identified confusion about the practical differences between human rights laws and accessibility laws, and the need for more clarity about how these two laws interact. This study was commissioned to examine the interplay between human rights legislation and accessibility legislation in Canada and internationally. Based on the research findings, several recommendations are made regarding the complete set of governance functions examined. These recommendations include: incorporating a mechanism for public enforcement within the enforcement of accessibility standards, incorporating human rights supports and technical expertise within the development of standards, strengthening the statutory language to ensure an inclusive equality approach, avoiding confusion between reactive and proactive approaches to accessibility legislation by keeping the two systems distinct, and, establishing a Commissioner to take leadership in promoting awareness and systemic culture change, in encouraging compliance and in public education both across the federal government and with the general public. Finally, throughout this report, the author argues that all administrative governance functions in the proposed federal accessibility legislation should be guided by and promote an inclusive equality approach. Inclusive equality is a theoretical framework put forward by the UN that focuses on recognizing the intersectionality of individuals with disabilities in their experiences of disability discrimination. Power relations, access to justice, and the socio-historical context surrounding legal efforts to realize equality by people with disabilities within a reactive regulatory (complaints-based and adjudicative) system should also be considered through this lens.The views expressed in this document are those of the author and not those of Employment and Social Development Canada (Government of Canada) (ESDC).

In most religious accommodation cases, an individual or group seeks to be exempted from a law that restricts their religious practice. The accommodation claim, though, has a slightly different form in conscientious objection cases. In these cases, an individual asks to be exempted not from a law that restricts his/her religious practice, but instead from a law that requires him/her to perform an act that he/she regards as immoral. In many of these cases the claimant asks to be excused from performing an act that is not itself “immoral” but that supports or facilitates (what she/he sees as) the immoral action of others, and so makes him/her complicit in this immorality.

"This is the twelfth edition of Evidence: Principles and Problems. Combining text and excerpts from leading cases with commentary and thought-provoking problem scenarios, the work continues to be a comprehensive resource on the law of evidence for both students and practitioners. This edition has been thoroughly re-edited and updated [to include major new rulings]. ... Attention is also given throughout to many significant rulings by trial judges, including the sexual assault acquittal in Ghomeshi and Parliament's response in Bill C-51." --cataloguer's adaptation of publisher's description

This article will detail an event of revolutionary action in the historiography of anti-colonial and anti-imperial struggle in Iraq, namely al-Wathba (‘the leap’) of 1948, utilising it as an example to address the limitations of the methodology and analysis of Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) scholarship. I will argue that there is a disconnect between notions of agency and structure in TWAIL analyses and that therefore TWAIL scholars should consider studying the conjunctures that allowed certain movements ample room to struggle against the imperialism of international law in the first place. I will use the example of the Wathba to illustrate how a conjunctural analysis may be undertaken, analysing its implications for the international legal order. I will then move to highlight the significance of labour to the conjuncture in question. Finally, I will demonstrate how events like the Wathba illuminate the transient and provisional nature of the foundations of international law, while emphasising its structural constraints.