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Engineered systems govern ordinary life long before a court, regulator, or complaint process becomes involved. They influence whether drinking water remains protected, whether a public building can be used safely and with dignity, and whether technical information can be understood and challenged. A design may satisfy a minimum technical requirement while still placing a patterned and uneven burden on a structurally marginalized public. This thesis asks how the public-interest mandate in the provincial and territorial laws that regulate professional engineering across Canada should apply when engineering work creates or significantly shapes that kind of risk. I argue that the mandate requires role-specific due care for a material disparate-impact risk when six cumulative conditions are met. The first three ask whether the risk is more than remote or minor, whether it may impair a public-facing interest, and whether its burden is patterned and uneven. The remaining three ask whether engineering work creates or significantly shapes the risk, whether a competent actor could know of it through ordinary diligence within role, and whether an actor has authority to respond. The thesis develops that argument through interdisciplinary legal and engineering analysis. It interprets statutes, regulations, and cases governing professional authority, then connects those sources to engineering ethics and science and technology studies. Scholarship on equality and disability helps identify evidence that conventional technical routines may miss. Work on Indigenous knowledge and epistemic injustice adds questions about authority, credibility, and excluded forms of knowledge. Three recurring examples test the framework at different distances from licensed practice. Site 41, a proposed Ontario landfill, is the engineering-heavy example because hydrogeology and groundwater modelling were central to the dispute. Technical transparency and distributed public authority were also central. Public washrooms provide an ordinary code-mediated example in which fixture calculations, mechanical systems, and accessibility can affect equivalent access. Artificial intelligence and large language model system integration provide the boundary example, showing how professional engineering may govern a defined technical use while other legal and institutional actors govern the wider technology ecosystem. The thesis makes three connected contributions. First, the cumulative threshold test identifies when an equality-facing concern becomes relevant to professional engineering responsibility. Second, the actor-authority map locates the person or institution that can investigate or change the relevant work. It also identifies who can approve the decision or receive an escalation. Third, the Public-Interest Impact Assessment translates those findings into a process of identify, assess, and respond. The assessment connects evidence to engineering judgment, assigns a response within authority, and records the conditions that require later review. The goal is to contribute to technological accountability by making professional decisions more attentive to affected publics, more transparent about uncertainty, and more reviewable when a material disparate-impact risk is known or reasonably knowable. This account places defined duties on engineering actors while preserving the separate authority of Indigenous legal orders, public bodies, and human-rights institutions. Employers and other regulators retain the authority assigned to them by law or organizational role. -- Bien avant qu'un tribunal, un organisme de réglementation ou un mécanisme de plainte intervienne, les systèmes issus du génie organisent déjà la vie quotidienne. Ils influencent la protection de l'eau potable, l'accès sûr et digne aux bâtiments publics ainsi que la possibilité de comprendre et de contester une décision technique. Une conception peut respecter une exigence technique minimale tout en imposant, selon un schéma récurrent, un fardeau inégal à un public structurellement marginalisé. Cette thèse examine la manière dont le mandat d'intérêt public prévu par les lois provinciales et territoriales qui encadrent la profession d'ingénieur au Canada devrait s'appliquer lorsqu'un travail de génie crée ou façonne de façon importante un tel risque. Je soutiens que ce mandat exige une diligence adaptée au rôle lorsqu'un risque important d'effets négatifs structurés et inégalement répartis satisfait à six critères cumulatifs. Les trois premiers demandent si le risque dépasse le stade lointain ou mineur, s'il peut compromettre un intérêt dont le public doit pouvoir bénéficier concrètement et si le fardeau se répartit de manière structurée et inégale. Les trois autres portent sur le lien avec le travail de génie, les connaissances accessibles à un acteur compétent dans l'exercice de son rôle et le pouvoir d'intervenir. La thèse développe cet argument au moyen d'une analyse interdisciplinaire du droit et du génie. Elle interprète les lois, les règlements et la jurisprudence qui encadrent l'autorité professionnelle, puis met ces sources en relation avec l'éthique du génie et les études sociales des sciences et des technologies. Les travaux sur l'égalité et le handicap aident à repérer les éléments de preuve que les routines techniques peuvent laisser de côté. Les savoirs autochtones et les travaux sur l'injustice épistémique soulèvent aussi des questions d'autorité, de crédibilité et d'exclusion des connaissances. Trois exemples récurrents éprouvent le cadre selon des liens plus ou moins étroits avec l'exercice réservé du génie. Le site 41, un projet de lieu d'enfouissement en Ontario, constitue l'exemple où le génie occupe une place centrale parce que l'hydrogéologie et la modélisation des eaux souterraines étaient au coeur du différend. Les toilettes publiques fournissent un exemple courant de conception encadrée par les codes du bâtiment, où le calcul des appareils sanitaires, les systèmes mécaniques et l'accessibilité peuvent influer sur l'égalité d'accès. L'intégration de systèmes d'intelligence artificielle (IA), notamment de grands modèles de langage (GML), sert d'exemple frontière où la responsabilité professionnelle dépend du travail précis et de l'autorité réellement exercée. La thèse propose trois contributions liées. Premièrement, un test de seuil cumulatif précise le moment où un enjeu lié à l'égalité devient pertinent pour la responsabilité professionnelle en génie. Deuxièmement, une cartographie des acteurs et de leurs pouvoirs situe la personne ou l'institution qui peut enquêter sur le travail ou le modifier. Elle indique aussi qui peut approuver la décision et à qui le risque doit être signalé. Troisièmement, l'évaluation des incidences sur l'intérêt public (Public-Interest Impact Assessment ou PIIA) traduit ces constats en trois étapes : identifier, évaluer et intervenir. L'évaluation relie les éléments de preuve au jugement de génie, attribue une réponse dans les limites de l'autorité et consigne les circonstances qui exigent une réévaluation. La thèse cherche ainsi à contribuer à la responsabilisation technologique en rendant les décisions professionnelles plus attentives aux publics touchés, plus transparentes quant à l'incertitude et plus faciles à examiner lorsqu'un risque important d'effets négatifs structurés et inégalement répartis est connu ou devrait raisonnablement l'être. Le cadre attribue des responsabilités précises aux acteurs du génie tout en respectant l'autorité distincte des ordres juridiques autochtones, des organismes publics et des organismes de protection des droits de la personne.

Alberta’s Adult Interdependent Relationships Act was ground-breaking as Canada’s first and, to date, only legislation recognizing non-conjugal relationships. So far, scholars of alternative relationship recognition have assumed that the Act expanded the kinds of relationships we recognize in law — namely, non-conjugal ones. However, the analysis I present shows that this is inaccurate as non-conjugal couples are often denied recognition under the Act, which has become a highly important part of the landscape protecting unmarried (“common law”) conjugal couples after relationship breakdown. The article ends with a theoretical exploration into the future of scholarly arguments to recognize non-conjugal relationships and families, suggesting that previous choice-based arguments are not enough and must be supplemented with an analysis that troubles recognition and centres family law’s distributive functions.

In early August, mainstream outlets repeated the findings of a flawed report describing alarming levels of antisemitism on university campuses. Two weeks later, the authors stated that 92 per cent of…

This dissertation examines how and why status-excluded (undocumented) migrant youth in Canada – Canada's “Dreamers” – are systematically precluded from accessing postsecondary education and pathways to permanent residency. Its central thesis is that status-excluded youth are not people who have simply “fallen through the cracks”. Rather, they are produced, regulated, exploited, and expelled through what I term a regime of “xenoracial capitalism” – a system of accumulation in which immigration law functions as a primary constitutive site of intersecting colonialisms, racialization, and capitalist labour extraction. The dissertation develops a tripartite methodological framework. Legal-historical analysis traces the evolution of Canadian migration law from its origins in imperial mobility rights through the era of white settler nationalism and into the neoliberal present, revealing status-exclusion as a persistent and largely intentional shadow policy. A law and political economy framework, grounded in xenoracial capitalism and decolonial theory, situates contemporary immigration law as structurally organized around profit-making (through exploitation, expropriation, and expulsion) and race-making (through stratification, segregation, and sacrifice zones). Qualitative empirical research, drawing on semi-structured interviews with twenty-two current and former status-excluded youth aged 18–35 and five expert stakeholders, grounds abstract claims in lived collective experience. The empirical findings reveal how status-excluded youth navigate an immigration status pyramid defined by pervasive chutes (mechanisms where people lose status) and few, fragile status ladders. These in turn normalize conditions of discriminatory tuition fees, wage theft and labour exploitation, precarious housing, criminalization, and deportability. Early 21st century regulatory developments, including the Canadian Experience Class and Post-Graduate Work Permit, transformed ostensible pathways into gauntlets towards PR that hyperexploit migrant workers and students by concentrating power in the hands of employers and schools. Recent legislation such as Bill C-12 indicate that status-excluded people is now firmly entrenched as a shadow policy that organizes the mass production of an invisibilized, racially stratified lower-caste population. The dissertation concludes by charting three normative legal-political horizons that undermine xenoracial capitalism: regularization and status for all; internationalist worker organizing; and decolonizing migration through engagement with Indigenous legal orders and sovereignty. Together, these challenge liberal human rights framings and demand structural transformation of the xenoracial capitalist order.

Civil procedure should be "just, speedy, and inexpensive," according to the purposive rules found at the outset of many procedural codes. However, this formula creates as many questions as it answers. What does it mean for procedure to be "just?" What sorts of costs are relevant when considering how "inexpensive" procedure is? How should rule-makers and adjudicators compromise between justice, speediness, and inexpensiveness when these goals are in tension and resources are scarce? This article offers a normative account of civil procedure's purpose. The goal is to identify the warrant for"just, speedy, and inexpensive," and then to explain and refine it. I argue that welfarism, a general normative theory of public policy, is implicit in modern civil procedure. Welfarism is the idea that public policy decisions should always seek to optimize welfare for all affected individuals. I defend welfarism as a theoretical basis for reforming civil procedure and resolving its hard cases, and propose three refinements to civil procedure's purposive rules to give better effect to it.

Following in the wake of the "Hockey Canada trial" in 2025, this article begins from the recognition that sexual harm is a complex social problem of gender inequality in Canada that requires a transformative approach to remediate effectively. Restorative justice is one such transformative approach. In Ontario, however, where the Hockey Canada trial took place, Crown prosecution policy states that individuals charged with sexual offences are categorically ineligible to be diverted to restorative programs at pre-trial stage. In other provinces, there are similar policies and other moratoriums in place that limit the use of restorative justice to varying degrees. Building on insights from the criminal law, feminist legal theory, and penal abolition fields, this article argues that these policies should be revised and moratoriums should be lifted to enable restorative justice to be more widely available in sexual harm cases.

The separateness of the Copyright Act from the common law has been somewhat taken for granted by the legislator and the judiciary. This book chapter applies the statutory interpretation principles that mediate the relationship between legislation and the common law as a principled approach to better situate the Copyright Act in relation to the common law and by the same token, copyright law in relation to private law. This chapter challenges the assertion that the Copyright Act is an exhaustive code, and points to the over-reliance on copyright’s distinctiveness from the common law, both at the legislative stage, and by the judiciary. It does so with specific examples from the Copyright Act, including statutory remedies, technological protection measures (TPMs), and the right to repair. Statutory interpretation principles guide both the legislator and courts on how the balance of powers should be exercised between the legislative arm and the judiciary. This balance of powers needs to be exercised carefully in the realm of copyright law. Its scope looms large in the regulation of the information society and digital marketplace, and its construction away from general principles of private law has led to unfortunate consequences. The chapter concludes by reaffirming the nature of copyright law as private law. The authoritative power conferred on judges in constructing the Copyright Act should set aside any tendency to treat copyright law, or other statutory law governing relationships between private parties, differently than spheres of private law derived primarily from judge-made law.

[Shahd Hammouri is a lecturer in international law and legal theory at the University of Kent. She is the author of the forthcoming book Corporate War Profiteering and International Law (Cambridge …

The Online Harms Bill (Bill C-63) imposed on larger social media platforms a “duty to act responsibly,” which rested on a recognition that traditional legal responses were no longer effective in addressing hate speech and other forms of unlawful expression when they occur online. This recognition, however, made it all the more surprising that the Bill also included an amendment to the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA), adding a prohibition on online hate speech. This ban was a slightly revised version of a provision — section 13 of the CHRA — that had been repealed by the federal government in 2014. The proposed revisions to the earlier CHRA ban on hate speech addressed some of the concerns raised about the earlier version of the section and that led to its repeal, but fail to account for the fact that the communication landscape has changed dramatically since 2014. In this new landscape, traditional legal responses, including human rights code restrictions, are simply too slow and cumbersome to respond effectively to the problem of online hate speech.

Podcast Episode · Queen's Faculty of Law: QLaw Pod · March 25 · 51m

This article explores the relationship between legal ethics and restorative justice. It argues that the legal profession should be reoriented around restorative justice as the moral foundation of a more progressive approach to legal ethics and professional responsibility. It translates concepts from restorative justice into ethical terms, grounding ideas about interdependence, community involvement, and public accountability into a list of restorative principles that can be readily applied in the practice of law, and recommending a series of practices and regulatory measures that are consistent with a restorative principles-based approach. Ultimately, the article shows that such an approach has the potential to raise the moral consciousness of lawyers, facilitate collaboration within communities and across systems, and redefine the role of lawyers in the administration of justice, transforming conditions of law and society in a more equitable direction.

This article examines the reasonable suspicion requirement in the entrapment defence as applied in Canadian terrorism prosecutions. Although designed as an objective safeguard against state overreach, reasonable suspicion has proven highly malleable in practice, often shaped less by concrete conduct than by institutional narratives of threat, vulnerability, and deviance. Drawing on all five terrorism-related entrapment cases in Canada to date, the article demonstrates how courts have permitted markers of ideology, religion, and identity to serve as proxies for criminal intent. While Canadian jurisprudence has formally rejected the American subjective predisposition test, the case law reveals a troubling drift toward a distinct form of subjectivity: one grounded in perceived ideology or motive. In this way, suspicion attaches to who a defendant is imagined to be--because of their beliefs--rather than to what they have done.

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Police are reanimating years-old injunctions to threaten activists, casting a chill over protests and free speech