GRADE 11 LAW UNIVERSITY LEVEL COURSE OUTLINE CLU3M

Legal Studies programmes in Canada trace their origins to intellectual and ideological movements after WWII, including both the Law and Society movement and a more explicitly Marxist Critical Legal Studies movement. In keeping with the liberal arts tradition, Legal Studies programmes draw on the humanities and the social sciences in equal measure.

(2012) 42-3 Revue de droit de l’Université de Sherbrooke 505-569

The paper offers a systematic but brief account of the adjudicative protection of human rights, both collective and individual, in domestic law. Such an overview also provides the opportunity to identify a few trends in the development of the Canadian constitutional case law regarding human rights. Even if human rights had received quasi-constitutional protection several decades earlier, their codification as part of the supreme law of Canada in 1982 proved to be a significant step forward. This is particularly true for the fundamental freedoms of expression and religion, and for "legal rights." The picture is more mixed, however, regarding democratic rights. Part II of the Constitution Act, 1982, relating to special rights of Aboriginal peoples, has had huge systemic repercussions. A notable source of concern is the Supreme Court's continued hesitance on how to conceive of the relation between the Charter's individual rights and freedoms and the special rights of Aboriginal peoples recognized in Part II of the C. A. 1982. L'article qui suit est une version corrigée, mise à jour et légèrement remaniée du rapport national canadien produit au deuxième congrès thématique de l'Académie internationale de droit comparé. Ce congrès, qui fut tenu à l'université nationale de Taiwan du 24 au 26 mai 2012, avait pour thème « La Codification ». Le texte qui suit offre donc une présentation à la fois systématique et brève de la protection juridictionnelle des droits fondamentaux, collectifs comme individuels, en droit interne. De dresser un tel panorama devait du reste permettre de dégager certaines tendances d'évolution de la jurisprudence constitutionnelle canadienne relative aux droits fondamentaux. Même si la protection « quasi constitutionnelle » de ceux-ci y était alors réalité depuis quelques décennies, la « codification » des droits de la personne au sein de la « loi suprême » du Canada en 1982 devait se révéler comme un progrès considérable. Cela concerne au premier chef les libertés fondamentales de religion et d'expression ainsi que les « garanties juridiques ». Le bilan est plus mitigé en ce qui concerne les droits démocratiques. La Partie II de la Loi constitutionnelle de 1982, relative aux droits spéciaux des peuples autochtones, a eu des répercussions systémiques énormes. Une source d'inquiétude est l'hésitation dont continue de faire montre la Cour suprême sur la question de la manière dont il convient de concevoir la relation entre les droits et libertés que la Charte garantit à la personne et les droits que la Partie II de la L.C. 1982 reconnaît en propre aux peuples autochtones.

International Social Science Journal, 2010

Judicial power is not a concept with which Canadian judges have long been comfortable, or one on which Canadian social scientists have long cut their teeth. In large part, this stems from the way that most lawyers and judges understood the judicial process for most of the country's first century. The mechanical approach to jurisprudence highlights professionalism, objectivity and technical expertise; and by the same token it severely down-plays (if it does not altogether preclude) judicial discretion as an appropriate dimension of the judicial role. If lawyers and judges see decision-making as a purely technical exercise, then there is not much that can be discussed with nonexperts; and if social scientists accept that description, then there is not much that can usefully be studied. And if courts are considered this way, then they are no threat to democracy, and no part tual approach (Bushnell, 1992). For another, Canadian political scientists finally began to follow the lead of scholars like the University of Toronto's Peter Russell, who had long argued that there was a politically relevant dimension to what courts did and how they did itsomething that American social scientists had known for decades. Thirdly, the entrenchment of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982 gave the Supreme Court of Canada a new

McGill Law Journal, 2009

This article asks the Canadian legal community to look beyond the standard historical viewpoint that roots Canadian law in the British common law and French civil law traditions. The author discusses the historical foundations of Canadian law in a uniquely Canadian context, beginning with the earliest interactions between the First Nations and the Europeans. Drawing on the research outlined in his recent book, A Fair Country, the author challenges his audience to think of Canadian law as far more than the local implementation of foreign legal traditions. While Canada has freely borrowed from various legal traditions, the application of law in Canada has been a unique process intimately tied to Canadian history. The author calls on us to recognize a distinctly Canadian legal tradition which has grown out of Aboriginal law and subsequent local experience while being influenced by, but by no means limited to, common law and civil law traditions.

This project examines how two recent controversial Canadian Supreme Court decisions, Bedford and PHS Community Services, combined with their legislative responses, demonstrate competing interpretations of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms between the legislative and judicial branches of the state. Using Bonnie Honig's account of agonism, this paper creates a contestation-centred approach that emphasizes disagreement between these branches to illustrate how, despite what the judicial dialogue literature insists, a final interpretation of the Charter is not possible. The remainder of this project demonstrates how the legislature's responses to these cases could have been more democratic by emphasizing the contestation taking place between it and the judiciary over the interpretation of the Charter. Specifically, it argues that the contestation in these instances could have been made more accessible by the legislature justifying its decision to resist the judiciary's interpretations of the Charter, or, in exceptional circumstances, invoking the notwithstanding clause.

2019

This paper considers the evolution of Carleton University’s Department of Law and Legal Studies and its approach to the study of law and the legal within the context of the continuing growth of legal studies programs across Canada. It starts by outlining the historical development of the Department and the evolution of its perspective of its role and purpose. Part II examines a number of aspects of the architecture of fourteen undergraduate legal studies programs across the country and the ways in which the roles of these programs are described. Part III provides a brief outline of the current structure of the undergraduate programs offered by the Department and considers how it fits within the broader landscape of academic units offering undergraduate legal studies programs in Canada. The paper concludes by identifying some of the challenges faced by the Department as it prepares for the next 50 years.

An extremely refreshing book in what is considered curriculum studies. […] Squarely situated in a Canadian context where the decolonization struggles of Indigenous people in Canada is the primary source of political, social, economic, and cultural injustice, the book is nonetheless theoretically and empirically rich enough to inform studies of embodiment in North America more broadly."

Patterns of Prejudice, 1983

2002

Canada formally amended its written Constitution by adding the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms,' which "explicitly authorized judicial review and the power of all courts to declare offending statutes void." ' 2 This event was a turning point for the Canadian legal and political system and culture, prompting much speculation and a great deal of debate about what the effect of the Charter would, and should, be. Over the past two decades, the Osgoode Hall Law Journal has provided a forum for scholarly discussion and analysis of some of the crucial questions arising out of this debate. The appropriate relationship between the courts and legislatures in a liberal democracy has been a recurring theme in the debate surrounding the Charter that has been taken up in the pages of the Osgoode Hall Law Journal. The normative question about what the relationship between these two institutions should be 3 and the empirical question of the actual impact of the Charter on the relations between courts and legislatures have been considered. 4 Political scientists and legal academics have attempted to answer these questions, promoting a dialogue between the disciplines in the Osgoode Hall Law Journal.