Understandings of the public interest underpin many law reform processes. The public interest is not a fully definable term and so reform bodies have to engage with a range of articulations of that interest. The negotiation of the different articulations, however, has not been explored empirically before. This article reports on a study of the claims to the public interest in a public Australian inquiry into potential abuses of the patent system by pharmaceutical companies. More specifically, submissions to the Pharmaceutical Patents Review are analysed and the results show “oligopolistic” tensions between competing views of the public interest—and with these views claiming primacy over more technical understandings of the issues. This lack of a single “public interest” allows dominant players to frame the debate to reflect their interests; and the tension between these players means that the debate, and the underlying problem, has not been subject to a resolution.

Following the arrival of the MV Ocean Lady in 2009, four men were charged with human smuggling under s. 117 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act for having helped Sri Lankan asylum seekers reach Canada. Section 117 made it a criminal offence to aid and abet the unauthorized entry of asylum seekers, including when this was done for humanitarian reasons, to help family members, or as a matter of mutual aid. The case made its way to the Supreme Court and, in 2015, the court ruled in R v Appulonappa that s. 117 was too broad, potentially criminalizing humanitarian workers and family members who help transport asylum seekers, and should be interpreted in a strict manner. This article draws from pragmatic sociology to study the regimes of justification mobilized by various actors involved in, and around, R v Appulonappa between 2009 and 2015. It focuses on two sites of contestation that crystalized around divergent conceptions of fairness and safety, discussing how competing regimes of justification were used to advance stakeholder’s positions.

This essay offers a feminist analysis of the abuse of female lessees and, more specifically, of one solution enacted by the Quebec legislature. Since 2006, article 1974.1 of the C.C.Q. has authorized the unilateral termination of a lease when the safety of a female lessee is threatened. This study questions the effectiveness of this legislative initiative. First, it offers a materialist and radical feminist analysis of the private/public dichotomy that underlies the organization of landlord/tenant law in Civil law. This spatial and legislative division implies a preliminary and implicit characterization of abuse within the home as belonging to the private and individual sphere instead of the social and collective sphere. Within this legal structure, article 1974.1 C.C.Q. takes on a reformist character. Preliminary results of the use of this article before the Régie du logement are then presented. These results highlight four major obstacles to its effectiveness.

In Canada, Treaty 1 First Nations brought a claim against the Crown for land debt owed to them since 1871. In 2004, Crown land in Winnipeg became available that, according to the terms of the settlement, should have been offered for purchase to Treaty 1 Nations. Similarly, in New Zealand, the Waikato-Tainui claim arose from historical Crown breaches of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi. In 1995, a settlement was reached to address the unjust Crown confiscation of Tainui lands. Despite being intended to facilitate the return of traditional territory, compensate for Crown breaches of historic treaties, and indirectly provide opportunity for economic development, in both cases, settlement was met with legal and political challenges. Using a comparative legal analysis, this paper examines how the state continues to use its law-making power to undermine socio-economic development of Indigenous communities in Canada and New Zealand, thereby thwarting opportunity for Indigenous self-determination.

Guided by Weiner’s (1993, Am Psychol 48:957-964) attribution theory of social motivation, we examined perceptions of exonerees. Specifically, we examined whether biased police procedures impacted perceptions of responsibility, emotional reactions, and willingness to assist exonerees. Participants read a vignette involving an exoneration due to either a false confession or an eyewitness misidentification with police practices (biased vs. unbiased) manipulated across participants. Findings corroborate that participants hold more negative views of exonerees who falsely confess than exonerees who were mistakenly identified by eyewitnesses. Moreover, when police bias was high, participants were angrier at the police and less likely to perceive the exoneree as responsible for the wrongful conviction—especially when false confessions were involved. The findings are discussed in light of Weiner’s social motivation theory, and in regards to improving attitudes towards individuals who have been wrongly convicted.