In 1887, Canada was in a fervour over so-called “combines,” a term used to cover price-fixing schemes, pool agreements, trusts, and other cartel arrangements. The public debate led to the passage in 1889 of the Anti-Combines Act, the world’s first modern competition statute, enacted a year prior to the United States’ Sherman Antitrust Act. But while Canada acted before its neighbour to the south, the United States was omnipresent in the Canadian debates in four ways: as a benchmark against which the Canadian economy and the combines problem should be judged; as a model for potential legal action; as a potential economic liberator; and as the very source and propagator of the combines problem. Canadians thus alternately presented the United States as saviour or devil, as paragon or antithesis. The result was a paradox of a sort: Canadians borrowed American ideas in order to avoid becoming American.

This article employs a “policy cycle” framework to explore Bill C-51, legislation which contains Canada’s latest amendments to the “rape shield.” Through an in-depth evaluation of earlier rape shield reforms, as well as a content analysis of the legislative proceedings of Bill C-51, this paper reveals that, while the impetus for introducing rape shield legislation is to protect the equality and privacy rights of sexual assault complainants, the legislative process of these “policy cycles” focuses disproportionately on remedying due process concerns and less on the problems that arise in judicial implementation of the provisions. We situate this finding within the larger trend towards the “judicialization of politics,” and trace some of the institutional and structural obstacles that impede Parliamentarians from more effectively legislating to improve sexual assault trials for complainants.

Cet article s’interroge sur les différentes possibilités susceptibles d’éclairer la norme juridique antidiscriminatoire québécoise, soit l’interdiction de discrimination prévue à l’article 10 de la Charte des droits et libertés de la personne du Québec, par le cadre théorique de l’intersectionnalité. On procédera à un bref survol de la pensée intersectionnelle telle que développée dans les disciplines externes au droit ainsi qu’un portrait de son intégration au droit sont dressés afin de comprendre la pertinence de l’intersectionnalité pour appréhender la « réalité » sociale de la discrimination. Quelques points d’ancrage de la mobilisation de l’intersectionnalité seront présentés dans une perspective de réinvestissement du droit vers une appréhension élargie de cette « réalité » sociale par la norme juridique. Il est ainsi proposé de repenser les catégorisations juridiques et de déconstruire les dynamiques d’oppression en ouvrant des possibilités de mobilisation concrètes au moment de l’énonciation et de l’interprétation par la pratique judiciaire des éléments constitutifs de l’acte discriminatoire.

This paper explores the thorny mingling of law with qualitative social science methodologies through the lens of the 2010–11 Supreme Court of British Columbia Charter Reference on polygamy, which was conducted to determine whether the criminalization of polygamy was consistent with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Reference reveals how the marginalization of qualitative research(ers) effectively controlled whose voices were to be heard and whose were to be silenced in the broader project of sovereign intervention into family formation. With specific focus on Professor Angela Campbell, who provided expert opinion testimony in the Reference, this paper reflects on two important questions: when social science is invoked in legal settings, whose knowledge is legitimized, and who benefits from this legitimization? Drawing upon the longstanding feminist project of deconstructing assumptions of value-neutrality in all science, this paper considers how qualitative, feminist research(ers) may be inherently at odds with law’s quest for (rational) “truth.”

Polyamory means consensual, aspirationally gender-egalitarian, non-monogamous relationships. People who engage in such relationships often seek relationship advice. This article is a critical review of a self-help webcomic and other texts in the light of contract theory. Polyamorous people often use contractual concepts to understand their relationships and how to carry them out. Applying critical contract theory, we can trace how problems typical of contractual framing in other fields play out in the poly context. At the same time, these problems are recognized and responded to by poly people, and they dynamically reinterpret core contract concepts. This article thus makes two contributions. First, it provides a study in the way legal concepts percolate out into, and are transformed by, everyday life. Second, in consolidating some ways poly people have solved old contract problems, it offers conceptual tools for the continuing project of imagining more just ways of relating.

In 2016, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal found that Canada’s management of child welfare discriminates against First Nations children. The First Nations Child and Family Caring Society, one of the complainants, maintains a web-based campaign called “I Am A Witness,” providing details on the hearings and legal materials and asking visitors to act towards ending discrimination against First Nations children. What does it mean to bear witness to such discrimination? The concept of “witnessing” circulates through Indigenous oral traditions, communication and media theories, and the common law. This article explores the I Am A Witness campaign, arguing that as it evokes various theories of witnessing and builds public awareness of legal processes, it shifts spaces of and perspectives on legality beyond Western categories, creating a public that is enabled to bear witness to, and respond to, ongoing injustices against Indigenous peoples.

The notarial profession in Québec is currently facing several challenges, including that of the financial situation of many of its members. A study conducted among notaries in the Outaouais region reveals that although, in general, notaries recognize that there is a price war happening, they do not necessarily agree on its causes, their capacity to address it, or the most effective ways to do so. While the traditional image of the notary as a professional and public official remains prominent, it now competes with another, more entrepreneurial view of the notary as a service provider in a competitive market. This implies that the notarial profession is currently going through a transition period that could involve a shift towards new business models.

Courts conceptualize and construct the phenomenon of consumer rights violations against older people in different ways. This qualitative analysis of court decisions explores the meanings that Israeli courts have attributed to the fact that the victim was an older consumer. Specific objectives include determining whether existing consumer protections for older consumers are effective, how the relevant provisions of consumer protection law are expressed in application of case law, and how courts structure the issue in their rulings. Analysis has revealed a tension between two judicial approaches: assumption of older consumers as inherently vulnerable and meriting special-class protection, versus application of general consumer protection law attending to actual plaintiffs’ or defendants’ characteristics. Critical reading of the judgments leads to construction and suggestion of a tiered approach to adjudicating consumer protection cases that protects the vulnerable older consumer without falling into a trap of unwarranted ageism.