Law and Society

Ancillary Police Powers in Canada investigates the scope of police powers under Canadian common law, and the implications for our rights, freedoms, and individual liberty.

What really happened at Heenan Blaikie? This is the ultimate account of what went on behind the scenes of the largest law firm dissolution in Canadian history.

Canada’s Surprising Constitution asks why the Constitution Act, 1982, keeps generating unexpected interpretations and outcomes.

Constraining the Court considers what happens when a statute involving a significant public policy issue is declared unconstitutional – and government disagrees.

Suing for Silence exposes the phenomenon of lawsuits whose purpose is to silence those who disclose sexual violence, revealing the gendered underpinnings of Canadian defamation law and its chilling effect on public discourse including formal reports of sexual violence.

Refugees Are (Not) Welcome Here details the paradox of the simultaneous expansion and restriction of access to refugee rights in Canada.

The Notorious Georges is an engaging exploration of the alchemy of community identity and reputation in Prince George, BC, once branded Canada’s most-dangerous city.

Family Law in Action examines the inequalities produced by divorce and separation in France and Quebec.

Four decades after the adoption of the Constitution Act, 1982, Constitutional Crossroads assesses its legacy, focusing on the themes of rights, reconciliation, and constitutional change.

Power Played represents a distinctly critical criminology of sport, blowing the whistle on the harm, violence, and exploitation embedded in contemporary sport and sporting cultures.

House Rules takes a hard look at the law and norms governing family life, compelling readers to rethink entrenched inequalities in familial relationships and proposing ways to approach legislative solutions.

Banning Transgender Conversion Practices is the first book to offer a comprehensive analysis of how conversion practices targeting transgender people are regulated around the world.

This comprehensive analysis of the legally complex relationship between religion and public schools will compel readers to reconsider the role of law in education.

Reconciling Truths is a forthright examination of commissions of inquiry that demonstrates the need for astute leadership and an engaging process if they are to lead to meaningful change.

The Laws and the Land, an original and impassioned account of the history of the relationship between Canada and Kahnawà:ke, reveals the clash of settler and Indigenous legal traditions and the imposition of settler colonial law on Indigenous peoples and land.

Women, Film, and Law questions the criminalization of women through an engaging exploration of the women-in-prison film genre.

Do community programs offer an effective alternative to imprisonment for women within the criminal justice system? A Better Justice? sets out the case.

Inalienable Properties explores the contrasting approaches taken by local leaders to property rights and development in four Indigenous communities.

Indigenous peoples around the world are seeking greater control over tangible and intangible cultural heritage. In Canada, issues concerning repatriation and trade of material culture, heritage site protection, treatment of ancestral remains, and control over intangible heritage are governed by a complex legal and policy environment. This volume looks at the key features of Canadian, US, and international law influencing indigenous cultural heritage in Canada. Legal and extralegal avenues for reform are examined and opportunities and limits of existing frameworks are discussed. Is a radical shift in legal and political relations necessary for First Nations concerns to be meaningfully addressed?

First Nations Cultural Heritage and Law explores First Nations perspectives on cultural heritage and issues of reform within and beyond Western law. Written in collaboration with First Nation partners, it contains seven case studies featuring indigenous concepts, legal orders, and encounters with legislation and negotiations; a national review essay; three chapters reflecting on major themes; and a self-reflective critique on the challenges of collaborative and intercultural research. Although the volume draws on specific First Nation experiences, it covers a wide range of topics of concern to Inuit, Metis, and other indigenous peoples.

In the past several years religion has increasingly become an integral component of discussions about diversity and multiculturalism in Canada. Of particular concern has been the formulation of limits on religious freedom. Defining Harm explores the ways in which religion and religious freedom are conceptualized and regulated in a cultural context of fear of the “other” and religious “extremism.”

Drawing from literature on risk society, governance, feminist legal theory, and religious rights, Lori Beaman looks at the case of Jehovah’s Witness Bethany Hughes who was denied her right to refuse treatment on the basis of her religious conviction. The B.H. case, as it was known in the courts, reflects a particular moment in the socio-legal treatment of religious freedom and reveals the specific intersection of religious, medical, legal, and other discourses in the governance of the religious citizen.

A powerful examination of the governance of a religious citizen and of the limits of religious freedom, this book demonstrates that the stakes in debates on religious freedom are not just about beliefs and practices but also have implications for the construction of citizenship in a diverse nation.

The image of “backlash” is pervasive in contemporary debates about the impact of second-wave feminism on law and policy. But does it really explain the resistance to feminist initiatives for social change in contemporary culture?

In this timely volume, contributors from various disciplines analyze reaction and resistance to feminism in several areas of law and policy – child custody, child poverty, sexual harassment, and sexual assault – and in a number of institutional sites, such as courts, legislatures, families, the mainstream media, and the academy. Collectively, their studies paint a more complicated, often contradictory, picture of feminism, law, and social change than the popular image of backlash suggests.

Reaction and Resistance offers feminists and other activists empirically grounded knowledge that can be used to develop legal and political strategies for change.

In the early 1970s, many questioned whether Aboriginal title existed in Canada and rejected the notion that Aboriginal peoples should have rights different from those of other citizens. But in 1973 the Supreme Court of Canada issued a landmark decision in the Calder case, confirming that Aboriginal title constituted a right within Canadian law.

Let Right Be Done examines the doctrine of Aboriginal title thirty years later and puts the Calder case in its legal, historical, and political context, both nationally and internationally. With its innovative blend of scholarly analysis and input from many of those intimately involved in the case, this book should be essential reading for anyone interested in Aboriginal law, treaty negotiations, and the history of the “BC Indian land question.”

Human rights complaints attract a great deal of public interest, but what is going on below the surface? When people contact a human rights lawyer, how do they think about and use human rights discourse? How are complaints turned into cases? Can administrative systems be both effective and fair? Defining Rights and Wrongs investigates the day-to-day practices of low-level officials and intermediaries as they construct domestic human rights complaints. It identifies the values that a human rights system should uphold if it is to promote mutual respect and foster the personal dignity and equal rights of citizens.

Domestic Reforms tells a complicated story of family and welfare law reform within the context of British Columbia’s transformation from a British colonial enclave to a white settler Canadian province. It inherited a British legal system that granted married men control over most family property and imposed few obligations on them toward their wives and children. Yet from the 1860s onward, lawmakers throughout the Anglo-American world, including legislators on the Pacific Coast, began to grant women and children new rights. Feminist scholars have long debated the reasons for these reforms. Why did male legislators choose to depart from patriarchal norms, enacting laws that eroded husbands’ control over property and increased their obligations? More important, what were the legal and social consequences?

Chris Clarkson examines three waves of property, inheritance, and maintenance law reform, arguing that each was related to a broader political vision intended to precipitate vast social and economic effects. He analyzes the impact of the legislation, with emphasis on the ambitions of regulated populations, the influence of the judiciary, and the social and fiscal concerns of generations of legislators and bureaucrats.

Recent years have seen the retrenchment of Canadian social programs and the restructuring of the welfare state along neo-liberal lines. Social programs at both the federal and the provincial levels have been cut back, eliminated, or recast in exclusionary and punitive forms. Poverty: Rights, Social Citizenship, and Legal Activism responds to these changes by examining the ideas and practices of human rights, citizenship, legislation, and institution-building that are crucial to addressing poverty in this country.

The essays in this volume investigate current trends in social, political, and legal anti-poverty activism. They challenge prevailing assumptions about the role of governments and the methods of accountability in the field of social and economic justice. Through their analysis of rights advocacy and the interconnectedness of law and politics, the contributors also demonstrate that the fight for social and economic justice is vibrant and of critical importance.

People and Place presents a path-breaking collection of essays demonstrating the fascinating ways in which personalities interact with physical locale in shaping the law. Examining law through the framework of history, this anthology presents a mixture of innovative articles produced by established scholars as well as representatives of the next generation.

The collection represents a rich array of interdisciplinary expertise, with authors who are law professors, historians, sociologists and criminologists. Their essays include studies into the lives of judges and lawyers, rape victims, prostitutes, religious sect leaders, and common criminals. The geographic scope touches Canada, the United States and Australia. The essays explore how one individual, or small self-identified groups, were able to make a difference in how law was understood, applied, and interpreted. They also probe the degree to which locale and location influenced legal culture history.

The essays offer snapshots of human history, capturing the centrality of law as individuals located themselves in relation to others and to the places and times in which they lived. Accessible to academics, students, and general readers interested in the formation of law within a social context, this collection offers a compelling perspective of this subtle relationship. The close examination of people and place will allow readers to unpack law’s various meanings across communities and time, and to move closer to a more profound awareness of the complexity of human society.