Category: Legal News

Posts about legal news generally: new cases, interesting external posts, events, or items of legal news not necessarily connected to UVic Law.

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Environmental Law Club Research Event a Success!

Earlier this month, the UVic Environmental Law Club conducted a successful all-day research event at the UVic Law Library. Using their knowledge of legislative research, over 50 law students created a timeline of environmentally important legislative and policy changes to BC mining law in support of the Environmental Law Center’s Major Mining Law Reform Project.

For more information on this event, check out this post published yesterday on Slaw and written by the Environmental Law Club: http://www.slaw.ca/2018/02/15/law-student-led-legal-research-day-supports-environmental-law-reform/

 

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Massive Enviro Law Research-o-thon effort!

We love to see legal research in action for a real-life purpose!

Today, it’s environmental law reform, through the Enviro Law Research-o-thon! The UVic Environmental Law Club co-ordinated a team of volunteers to research relevant BC legislative history and secondary discussion and to synthesize their results into a shared knowledge base.

Their work will help support the development of mining law reform proposals led by the UVic Environmental Law Centre.

Law librarians Alisa, Caron, and Alex prepared a gorgeous targeted and comprehensive research guide website earlier this week to help the students identify and work with valuable resources in the law library collection, including BC legislative research content in our Quickscribe, HeinOnline, LLMC Digital, and BC Laws databases. It also incorporates the legislative starting points compiled by ELC articling student Renata, and Kim’s chapter on researching BC legislation. Today, the librarians are on hand throughout, to help with the intricate process of historical legislative and contextual legal research.

Kudos to all involved, and many thanks to Quickscribe Inc for their generous financial support of the students’ snacks and incidentals!

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Hon. Tommy Banks and the Statutes Repeal Act

Hon. Tommy Banks, Liberal Senator from 2000 to 2011, Alberta,  was responsible for the Statutes Repeal Act, SC 2008 c. 20 .  The act stipulates that the Minister of Justice will table in Parliament, annually, a  listing of Acts and provisions of Acts that have not been brought into force within at least nine years of their enactment. These reports have been tabled since 2011 and are available on the Justice Laws Website

Over the course of seven years and five sittings of Parliament,  Banks   introduced and re-introduced the legislation that would finally pass in 2008. The bills  were reviewed by the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs. The history of the final and earlier bills can be found on LegisInfo.

Hon. Tommy Banks, jazz musician and piano player, died in Edmonton on January 24, 2018.

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Research from Professor Kathryn Chan Mentioned in SCC Hearing

UVic Law Professor Kathryn Chan‘s work was mentioned several times during the oral argument on the Law Society of British Columbia v. Trinity Western University, et al. delivered at the Supreme Court of Canada last month. Listen to the webcast of the hearing at the 2 hour and 2 minutes mark where her article “Identifying the Institutional Religious Freedom Claimant” was mentioned.

Her article is openly available on UVicSpace and can be accessed here: https://dspace.library.uvic.ca//handle/1828/8841.

See our previous post for links to the SCC case summary, factums, and archived webcast: https://onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca/hearsay/2017/11/30/trinity-western-university-et-al-v-law-society-of-upper-canada-webcast/

Check out some of Kathryn Chan’s other publications available through the UVic Libraries Collection:

Books, Chapters, Monographs

Journal Articles

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Professor Val Napoleon on Activism, Indigenous Law & Disrupting Things

UVic Law professor, grandmother, painter, and activist, Val Napoleon was featured in the Globe and Mail earlier this week. The article,  “Indigenous scholar Val Napoleon embraces disruption” goes into her life experience and involvement in Indigenous legal issues.

Napoleon has made numerous contributions to the development of Indigenous law in Canada such as establishing the Indigenous Law Research Unit and supporting Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en in their indigenous land claim that resulted in the  landmark Supreme Court of Canada case Delgamuukw v British Columbia, [1997] 3 SCR 1010. Just last September, she was named to the Royal Society of Canada (RSC) College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists.

Check out the full Globe and Mail article here for more!

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New Book by Professor Patricia Cochran

Congratulations to Assistant Professor Patricia Cochran, on her recent publication, Common Sense & Legal Judgment: Community Knowledge, Political Power, and Rhetorical Practice.

Find her book in print through the Law Library! – http://voyager.library.uvic.ca/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=3992202

Summary of her new book from McGill-Queen’s University Press:

What does it mean when a judge in a court of law uses the phrase “common sense”? Is it a type of evidence or a mode of reasoning? In a world characterized by material and political inequalities, whose common sense should inform the law?

Common Sense and Legal Judgment explores this rhetorically powerful phrase, arguing that common sense, when invoked in political and legal discourses without adequate reflection, poses a threat to the quality and legitimacy of legal judgment. Often operating in the service of conservatism, populism, or majoritarianism, common sense can harbour stereotypes, reproduce unjust power relations, and silence marginalized people. Nevertheless, drawing the works of theorists such as Thomas Reid, Antonio Gramsci, and Hannah Arendt into conversation with rulings by the Supreme Court of Canada, Patricia Cochran demonstrates that with careful attention, the democratic, egalitarian, and community-sustaining aspects of common sense can be brought to light. A call for critical self-reflection and the close scrutiny of power relationships and social contexts, this book is a direct response to social justice predicaments and their confounding relationships to law.

Check out some of her other publications available through the Uvic Libraries collection:

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Trinity Western University, et al v Law Society of Upper Canada webcast

Oral argument in the Trinity Western University, et al v Law Society of Upper matter is being delivered today and tomorrow at the Supreme Court of Canada.

The case has generated considerable interest in the legal community throughout its path. Read the SCC summary of the case and the factums of the parties and interveners for background or refresher.

If you are interested in watching the oral arguments live today and tomorrow, you can do so via the SCC webcast.

The video recording of oral arguments will be archived; look for a link to it under the case file.

 

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Professor Asad Kiyani Awarded the Antonio Cassese Prize

Congratulations to Professor Asad Kiyani who was awarded the Antonio Casses Prize for International Criminal Law Studies for 2015-2016!  The award is given to authors of the most original and innovative papers published in the Journal of International Criminal Justice in the two years proceeding the award. Dr. Asad Kiyani was commended for his article, “Group-Based Differentiation and Local Repression: The custom and Curse of Selectivity.”

https://law.uwo.ca/about_us/our_people/faculty/images/asad_kiyani.png

An announcement by the Journal of International Criminal Justice:

Although much has been written on selectivity in international criminal justice, the Board believes that Dr Kiyani’s approach offers a novel and, most importantly, well thought-through methodology that will make an original and substantial contribution to the theme.

Congratulations to Dr. Miles Jackson of Oxford University who also won the prize for 2015-2016! You can read the full announcement here.

Check out some of Dr. Kiyani’s other work held through the UVic Libraries collection:

Congratulations!

 

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Nov 9 Panel Discussion: Ktunaxa Nation

Learn about and discuss last week’s decision Ktunaxa Nation v British Columbia (Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations), 2017 SCC 54. Hear from scholars from UVic Faculty of Law, UVic Indigenous Law Research Unit, and Department of Political Science: Avigail Eisenberg, Darcy Lindberg, Alan Hanna, and Stacie Swain.

Where:   Room 152, Fraser Building
When:    Thursday, Nov 9, 12:30 pm

There will be opportunity for questions and discussion.

Selected further reading:

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Agreement-in-Principle Reached in Sixties Scoop Litigation

On Friday, the Government of Canada and the plaintiffs in the Sixties Scoop class action announced that they have reached an Agreement-in-Principle to resolve the Sixties Scoop litigation.

Earlier this year, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruled that the Federal Crown owed and breached a “common law duty of care to take reasonable steps to prevent on-reserve Indian children in Ontario, who had been placed in the care of non-aboriginal foster or adoptive parents, from losing their aboriginal identity”(Brown v Canada (Attorney General), 2017 ONSC 251 at para 85).

The Agreement-in-Principle includes a compensation fund for survivors and funding for the creation of a Foundation to provide communities and individuals access to  education, healing and wellness, and commemoration activities. The Foundation will also work towards preserving and revitalizing Indigenous languages and cultures.

You can find more about the Agreement-in-Principle, including, Chief Marcia Brown Martel’s response, on the Sixties Scoop Class Action website and   Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada’s press release.

For more background information on the Sixties Scoop, below are a few items in UVic Libraries’ collection:

  • A History of Adoption Law in Ontario, 1921 – 2015 (Chapter 9: Indigenous Children and Adoption) – Lori Chambers. Call number: KEO228 C53 2016 (Law Library)
  • A Generation Removed : The Fostering and Adoption of Indigenous Children in the Postwar World (Chapter 6: The Indigenous Child Welfare Crisis in Canada)- Margaret Jacobs. Call number: HV875.6 J33 2014 (McPherson Library)
  • Moving Toward Positive Systems of Child and Family Welfare (Chapter 3: Aboriginal Child Welfare) – eds. Gary Cameron, Nick Coady, and Gerald R. Adams. Online
  • A literature review and annotated bibliography on aspects of Aboriginal child welfare in Canada
    – Marlyn Bennett, Cindy Blackstock and Richard De La Ronde. Online.
  • Stolen from our Embrace : The Abduction of First Nations Children and the Restoration of Aboriginal Communities – Suzanne Fournier and Ernie Crey. Call number: E78 C2 F675 (McPherson Library)
  • Four Decades of Child Welfare Services to Native Indians in Ontario: A Contemporary Attempt to Understand the ‘Sixties Scoop’ in Historical, Socioeconomic and Political Perspective – Joyce Barbara Timpson. Online
  • Governing Childhood (Chapter V: Therapies of Freedom: The Colonization of Aboriginal Childhood) – Anne McGillivray. Call Number: HQ789 G658 (McPherson Library)
  • Richard Cardinal : Cry from a Diary of a Métis Child – National Film of Canada. Streaming video.
  • Native Children and the Child Welfare System – Patrick Johnston. Call number: E78 C2 J63 (Law Library)
  • No Quiet Place : Final Report Review Committee on Indian and Metis Adoptions and Placements – Edwin C Kimelman. Call Number: KF8210 C45 M36 1985 (Law Library)