Critical Conversations in Canadian Public Law is a groundbreaking open-access collection of peer-reviewed essays showcasing interdisciplinary thinking on topical public law issues at the forefront of the evolving relationship between state and society.In Canada, this relationship is undergoing a period of significant reinvention, as evidenced, for example, by the movements for reconciliation, decolonization and Indigenization, the calls to recognize and remedy systemic rac...

Each of these essays begins with the words “A Canadian is . . .”. Each one is very different, producing a fascinating book for all thinking Canadians.Irvin Studin is an idealistic young Canadian who wanted to do something extraordinary for his country. So he decided to approach leading Canadians — he calls them “sages” — to tell us what they believe defines us. The people who responded eagerly, to produce an essay of 1,500 to 2,000 words, are, in his words, “all distinguished Canad...

In a brilliant history of a turbulent time and place Mills pulls back the curtain on the decades activists and intellectuals showing their engagement both with each other and with people from around the world. He demonstrates how activists of different backgrounds and with different political aims drew on ideas of decolonization to rethink the meanings attached to the politics of sex race and class and to imagine themselves as part of a broad transnational movement of anti-colonial and anti-i...

Both lionized and vilified, Claire L’Heureux-Dubé has shaped the Canadian legal landscape – and in particular its highest court. The second woman appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada, and the first from Quebec, she was known as “the great dissenter” on the bench, making judgments that were applauded and criticized in turn.L’Heureux-Dubé’s innovative legal approach was anchored in the social, economic, and political context of her cases. Constance Backhouse employs a similar tac...

The novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which causes the disease known as COVID-19, has infected people in 212 countries so far and on every continent except Antarctica.Vast changes to our home lives, social interactions, government functioning and relations between countries have swept the world in a few months and are difficult to hold in one’s mind at one time. That is why a collaborative effort such as this edited, multidisciplinary collection is needed. This book confronts the vulne...

The Canadian principle of reasonable accommodation demands that the cultural majority make certain concessions to the needs of minority groups if these concessions will not cause 'undue hardship.' This principle has caused much debate in Quebec, particularly over issues of language, Muslim head coverings, and religious symbols such as the kirpan (traditional Sikh dagger). In 2007, Quebec Premier Jean Charest commissioned historian and sociologist Gérard Bouchard and philosopher and politic...

Édouard Glissant was a leading voice in debates centering on the postcolonial condition and on the present and future of globalisation. Prolific as both a theorist and a literary author, Glissant started his career as a contemporary of Frantz Fanon in the early days of francophone postcolonial thought. In the latter part of his career Glissant's vision pushed beyond the boundaries of postcolonialism to encompass the contemporary phenomenon of globalisation.Sam Coombes offers a deta...

Lawyers have to adapt their reasoning to the increasingly global nature of the situations they deal with. Often, rules formulated in a national, international or European environment must all be jointly applied to a given case. This book seeks to make explicit the analysis the lawyer engages in every time he or she is confronted by the operation of several laws in different contexts.This reasoning is organised according to a basic three-step approach, consisting of the comparison (...

In this powerful, timely study Ronald Niezen examines the processes by which cultural concepts are conceived and collective rights are defended in international law. Niezen argues that cultivating support on behalf of those experiencing human rights violations often calls for strategic representations of injustice and suffering to distant audiences. The positive impulse behind public responses to political abuse can be found in the satisfaction of justice done. But the fact that oppressed ...

The year 1968 in Canada was an extraordinary one, unlike any other in its frenetic pace of activities and their consequences for the development of a new national consciousness among Canadians.It was a year when decisions and actions, both in Canada and outside its borders, were thick and contentious, and whose effects were momentous and far-reaching. It saw the rise of Trudeaumania and the birth of the Parti Québécois; the articulation of the new nationalism in English Canada and ...

In the first major study of postwar social movement organizations in Canada, Dominique Clément provides a history of the human rights movement as seen through the eyes of two generations of activists. Drawing on newly acquired archival sources, extensive interviews, and materials released through access to information applications, Clément explores the history of four organizations that emerged in the sixties and evolved into powerful lobbies for human rights despite bitter internal disput...

Unique in both scope and perspective, Calling for Change investigates the status of women within the Canadian legal profession ten years after the first national report on the subject was published by the Canadian Bar Association. Elizabeth Sheehy and Sheila McIntyre bring together essays that investigate a wide range of topics, from the status of women in law schools, the practising bar, and on the bench, to women's grassroots engagement with law and with female lawyers from the ...