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Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Clement on Human Rights in Newfoundland

Also in the winter/spring issue of Acadiensis, University of Alberta sociologist Dominique Clement looks at the application of human rights policy in twentieth century Newfoundland, in "Equality Deferred: The Origins of the Newfoundland Human Rights State":

Canada has constructed the most sophisticated human rights legal regime in the world, and yet local conditions have determined the emergence and implementation of human rights law. Newfoundland is an ideal case study. The government's lackluster support for human rights policy demonstrates how governments can inhibit the application of law. In addition, the predominance of sex discrimination complaints offers a unique insight into the dynamics of gender inequality during this period. Finally, this case study demonstrates the critical role that social movements have played in implementing human rights law in Canada, which has historically depended on the participation of non-state actors. 
Le Canada s'est doté du régime de protection des droits de la personne le plus perfectionné du monde, et pourtant les conditions locales ont conduit à l'émergence et à la mise en œuvre de lois sur les droits de la personne. Terre-Neuve en fournit un exemple typique. L'appui médiocre du gouvernement terre-neuvien à la politique des droits de la personne illustre comment les gouvernements peuvent restreindre l'application du droit. De plus, la prédominance des plaintes pour discrimination sexuelle jette un éclairage particulier sur la dynamique des inégalités entre les hommes et les femmes durant cette période. En dernier lieu, cette étude de cas met en lumière le rôle crucial exercé par les mouvements sociaux dans la mise en œuvre de lois sur les droits de la personne au Canada, qui historiquement a été conditionnée par la participation d'acteurs non étatique

Ackerman on the abortion debate in NB in the 1980s

Katrina R. Ackerman, "Not in the Atlantic Provinces": The Abortion Debate in New Brunswick, 1980-1987, in the winter/spring issue of Acadiensis:



Correspondence between Premier Richard Hatfield's Progressive Conservative government and pro-choice and pro-life activists indicates that regionalism and religion were central to the pervasiveness of pro-life ideology and the rejection of pro-choice arguments between 1980 and 1987. Despite statistical evidence that proved abortion services were inaccessible, the government received assistance from the medical community to pass anti-abortion legislation that prohibited abortion clinics and appeared to maintain the status quo. This article provides a regional perspective on the history of abortion in Canada, but it more importantly probes how religious and cultural beliefs shaped politics and society. ]
La correspondance entre le gouvernement progressiste-conservateur du premier ministre Richard Hatfield et des militants pro-choix et pro-vie indique que le régionalisme et la religion étaient au cœur de l'idéologie pro-vie omniprésente et du rejet du mouvement pro-choix entre 1980 et 1987. Malgré des données statistiques prouvant que les services d'avortement n'étaient pas accessibles, le gouvernement a reçu l'aide de la communauté médicale pour adopter une loi contre l'avortement, qui interdisait les cliniques d'avortement et semblait maintenir le statu quo. Cet article offre une perspective régionale sur l'histoire de l'avortement au Canada mais, ce qui est plus important, il examine comment les croyances religieuses et culturelles ont façonné la politique et la société. 

Ranasinghe on Vagrancy as a Penal Problem in late nineteenth century Canada

In the December 2012 issue of the Journal of Historical Sociology, "Vagrancy as a Penal Problem: The Logistics of Administering Punishment in Late-Nineteenth-Century Canada" by University of Ottawa criminologist Prashan Ranasinghe

There exists a voluminous literature on the history of vagrancy and vagrancy legislation. However, virtually all of its focus has been on the manifestations of vagrancy as a social problem. What has not received attention is another important aspect to this history, one that finds its roots and geneses directly out of its construction as a social problem. This is the problem associated with the logistics surrounding the administration of punishment within correctional institutions, what I call vagrancy as a penal problem. The day-to-day operations of the criminal justice system, especially that part which was responsible for the administration of punishment, were immensely burdened because of the sheer number of vagrants who came through the system. This created logistical problems with respect to housing, classifying, maintaining and regulating prisoners, and especially with respect to vagrants, putting them to hard labour. This paper seeks to elucidate the penal problem of vagrancy by narrating the voices of the personnel who worked in correctional institutions.

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Bailie on Violet King in CJWL

In the same issue of CJWL as Backhouse on the history of Sexual Harassment, Rachel Bailie has an article entitled "Minority of One: Violet King's Entry to the Legal Profession."

Violet King est née en 1929 à Calgary, en Alberta. Elle était la fille aînée de John King qui avait quitté l'Oklahoma pour le Canada en 1911 avec sa famille et un groupe d'immigrants noirs. En 1911 et 1912, en raison de l'intolérance du public et du gouvernement, le Canada limitait à moins de 2 000 le nombre total d'immigrants noirs dans les Prairies canadiennes. Lorsque Violet s'est inscrite à l'Université de l'Alberta à Edmonton en 1948, elle était la seule étudiante noire. Violet a assumé un rôle actif de leader à l'université et au conseil étudiant.

Après avoir obtenu son diplôme en 1953, Violet est revenue à Calgary pour faire son stage de droit chez un éminent avocat de la ville. En 1954, elle fut la première avocate noire admise au barreau de l'Alberta et la première avocate noire au Canada. Elle s'est ensuite installée à Ottawa, en Ontario, pour travailler au ministère fédéral de la Citoyenneté. Elle est ensuite partie aux États-Unis pour travailler avec le YMCA (Young Men's Christian Association). En 1976, elle fut nommée directrice principale au Conseil national du groupe de développement organisationnel du YMCA, devenant ainsi la première femme occupant un poste de haute direction dans cet organisme national américain.

Violet King was born in Calgary, Alberta, in 1929, the eldest daughter of John King who moved from Oklahoma with his family in 1911 as part of a group of Black immigrants to Canada. Public and government intolerance in Canada limited the total number of Black immigrants to the Canadian prairies in 1911 and 1912 to fewer than 2,000. When Violet enrolled at the University of Alberta in Edmonton in 1948, she was the only Black woman student. Violet took an active leadership role in school activities and student government.

After her graduation in 1953, Violet returned to Calgary to complete her articles of clerkship as a student-at-law with a prominent Calgary lawyer. In 1954, Violet was admitted to the Alberta Bar as the first Black lawyer in Alberta and the first Black woman lawyer in Canada. Violet moved from Calgary to Ottawa, Ontario, to work for the Citizenship Department with the federal government. She later moved to the United States to work with the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA). In 1976, she was appointed executive director of the National Council of YMCA's Organizational Development Group-the first woman named to a senior management position with the American national YMCA organization.

Backhouse on sexual harassment in CJWL

Constance Backhouse is both source and analyst for " Sexual Harrassment: A Feminist Phrase that transformed the Workplace," Canadian Journal of Women and the Law, now online.

Le présent article est une autobiographie de la coauteure du premier ouvrage canadien sur le harcèlement sexuel. Tout en admettant que ses souvenirs soient fragmentaires, elle relate certains des événements qui ont entouré les premiers efforts féministes visant à éradiquer le harcèlement sexuel en milieu de travail. L'article décrit les événements qui ont précédé la publication de l'ouvrage de Constance Backhouse et de Leah Cohen intitulé The Secret Oppression: Sexual Harassment of Working Women et la fureur du public à la sortie du livre. L'article porte sur l'ensemble du contexte social, politique, économique et culturel entourant le débat concernant le harcèlement sexuel et montre dans quelle mesure les changements exigés ont apporté des améliorations concrètes.

This article is a first-person memoir from a co-author of the first Canadian book on sexual harassment. It attempts to recount, from one individual's admittedly partial memory, some of the events that surrounded the early feminist efforts to eradicate sexual harassment in the workplace. It tracks the events that culminated in the publication of Constance Backhouse and Leah Cohen's The Secret Oppression: Sexual Harassment of Working Women (Toronto: Macmillan, 1978) and the public furor that greeted the book's arrival. It focuses on the wider social, political, economic, and cultural context surrounding the debate over sexual harassment and tries to analyze to what extent concrete improvements arrived upon the heels of the demands for change.

Sunday, December 16, 2012

Chambers on Canadian Legal Historiography

It was about time we had a new article about Canadian legal historiography, and thanks to Lori Chambers and Acadiensis (again! is this the fifth or sixth? they certainly hold the title) for providing it.

Here's the abstract for "Exposing the Myth of the Peaceable Kingdom: Trends and Themes in Recent Canadian Legal History."

The article discusses recent trends in Canadian scholarship on the topic of legal history. Topics mentioned include sexual assault trials in which women with disabilities were the plaintiffs, poor and marginalized black defendants in Ontarian courts, and judicial independence in the British Empire from 1800 to 1900. The author argues that the examples raised disprove the idea of Canada as a truly neutral legal haven for all, and that unless Canada truly faces the inequities in its past, it will never achieve justice in the present.









Thursday, December 6, 2012

Legal History Group Winter 2013 Schedule

Here's the schedule for the Osgoode (formerly Toronto) Legal History Group. Another great line-up:

January 16 - Patricia McMahon, Osler Hoskin: "The Courts and Conscription: The Case of George Edwin Gray, 1918."

January 30 - TBA

February 13 - Alain Beaulieu, Universite de Quebec a Montreal: "The Acquisition of Aboriginal Land in Canada: The Geneaology of an Ambivalent System, 1713-1867"

February 27 - Patrick Connor, York University: "Crime and Punishment in Upper Canada"

March 6 - Joan Sangster, Trent University: "Just Horseplay? Defining Masculinity in Grievance Arbitration During the Fordist Accord."

March 13 - Barry Wright, Carleton University: ""Macaulay's India  Law Reforms and Labour in the Nineteenth Century British Empire"

March 27 - Brad Miller, Queen's University and UBC: "An Imperial Union: Defining & Re-Defining Marriage in the Nineteenth Century British Empire."

April 3 - David Schorr, University of Tel Aviv: "Jerusalem-Jaffa District Governor v Murra and Four Imperial Constitutionalisms"

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Forthcoming: Animal Law History in Jan 2013 UTLJ


Forthcoming in the January 2013 issue of the University of Toronto Law Journal:
Focus Feature: Foxes, Seals, Whales and the Rule of Capture: Animals in the Law and Legal History. 

The publishers' blurb:


The common-law rule on the capture of wild animals is often cited by law and economics scholars to demonstrate the superiority of clear rules over vague or "fuzzy" standards. In countless property law courses, the famous fox hunt case, Pierson v. Post (1805), is used to support the "catch it and kill it if you can" view of property: mere pursuit of a wild animal is insufficient to establish possession. Where "hot pursuit" might have been sufficient according to the sportsman's custom, escape was always possible, and the law preferred certainty. In this forthcoming focus feature edited by Angela Fernandez (Law, University of Toronto), four scholars spanning law and history challenge this rules v. standards approach to the rule of capture, demonstrating that, understood historically, the situation is much more complicated and interesting - which wild animal, which type of hunting, in what period all turn out to be important.
Bruce Ziff (Law, University of Alberta) explores the way that late nineteenth-century Newfoundland courts wrestled with the conflict between the rule of capture and a local practice of "deemed abandonment" for seal pelts. Discussing whale hunting, long understood as a place where the law defers to various customs, Robert Deal (History, Marshall University) argues that these customs have been distorted by many, from the great novelist Herman Melville to the law and economics scholar Robert Ellickson. Angela Fernandez traces how Pierson v. Post came into the American law school casebooks and explains the successive meanings given to the case by twentieth-century legal scholars, including its use in the rules v. standards debate. Christopher Tomlins (Law, University of California (Irvine)) provides a comment on the three articles.

Several articles from this special focus feature are now available on
University of Toronto Law Journal Advance Online

Robert C Ellickson
DOI 10.3138/utlj.63.1.ellickson

Angela Fernandez
DOI 10.3138/utlj.63.1.fernandez

Robert Deal
DOI 10.3138/utlj.63.1.deal