Legal positivism and lesbian separatism provide very different, yet comparable, approaches to the issue of separation. Legal positivism practices separation as a tool of dominance, while lesbian separatism is based upon the need for identity formation and resistance to dominance. By elaborating upon the justifications advanced for lesbian separatism, this article critiques the separateness defended by legal positivists, and highlights the effects of power and context upon the significance of separation. Thus separatism as a political objective is not rejected or supported, except insofar as it consolidates oppressive practices. However, a critique of the idea that separation is necessarily territorial and pure is also developped, and an alternative vision of separation based upon the work of María Lugones is proposed. It is suggested that a non-oppressive concept of law can only maintain its identity if an alternative understanding of its separateness evolves.

This paper deals with a crucial problem in feminist theory and in law, namely the issue of the “Woman/Women” category. Does the presence of a single man invalidate the label and remove the issues from the field of equality between the sexes? Moreover, in order to avail oneself successfully of the non-discrimination provision of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, does one necessarily have to prove prejudice towards all women, or seek a remedy likely to improve the situation of all women? Is the category “Woman” necessarily universal and all-embracing? To answer these questions, the author deals with the relationship between women and men and concludes that this relationship is not one of absolute binary opposition, but rather of secular domination. The author then analyzes the category of Women in relation to society as a whole where women are often subsumed into minorities, absorbed into the family or collapsed into “Universal” Woman. Fully recognizing the arbitrary and artificial character as well as the deceptive and reductionist aspects of categories per se, the author observes nonetheless that the law obliges us to keep the category of “Woman” for as long as women will not have collectively attained an economic, legal, political, symbolic, etc. status equal to that of men collectively.

This study of the meaning given to aboriginal rights from within both judicial and parliamentary sources in Québec reveals, contrary to expectations, a general pattern according to which a more liberal attitude toward rights was taken by the political class than by the judiciary, except perhaps for nuances on criminal law matters. But on the whole, both groups were more insistent, and had a more open position, on legal and political autonomy, although confined within the boundaries of legal monism, than on economic rights linked with aboriginal title. Both also emphasized collective over individual rights. Beyond partisan diversity and rhetoric, there was a consensus on some basic issues, a core of specific elements common to all—or most—Quebec legislators and judges on the aboriginal question.

In 1877, the North-West constitution was amended to provide for the publication of all statutes, or ordinances, in both English and French. In 1905, this provision was carried over into the newly-created provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan; it was not repealed until 1988, shortly after the Supreme Court's ruling in the Mercure case. At the present time, however, there remains only scant evidence that this constitutional guarantee was ever respected: very few French language ordinances are extant. Were the great majority of the ordinances never printed in French? Or, were they printed in French but then destroyed?

This article examines the Canadian North-West's experience with legislative bilingualism from 1870 until 1895, and the circumstances surrounding its rise and subsequent demise. During the early years of territorial government, when responsibility for the publication of the ordinances was vested in a lieutenant-governor appointed by the Canadian government, perfunctory attention was paid to the language guarantees: the French language ordinances were printed, but with a considerable delay, and then they often went undistributed. After 1894, when authority was transferred to an executive committee directly responsible to the legislative assembly, the language guarantees were completely ignored: the French language printings ceased altogether. Minority rights succumbed to majority rule. The North-West experience provides an abject lesson in the failure of a constitution to protect minority language rights, when faced with determined opposition from an unsympathetic majority-controlled government.

With neo-liberal theories, state regulatory function has been challenged, and notably in the field of technologies. Therefore, a number of questions are raised pertaining to the capacity of persons who have suffered injuries or harm from technoscientific activities to obtain reparation through judicial process. Following an exposé of the main theoretical elements of the debate about the relationship between normativity, democratic values and economy, the authors analyse the perception by judges of science and technoscientific risk through the scrutiny of some Québec and Canadian decisions in respect of the relationship between scientific evidence and legal standard of proof. Hence, they discuss the problem of the weight and importance of scientific evidence within the judicial process and also refer to the terms of the debate already engaged in the United States.

Mediation and other forms of Alternative Dispute Resolution as conflict resolution mechanisms are being embraced widely by legal regimes in criminal law, family law, labour law, administrative law, and civil law areas. In this way, frustration with inadequacies of the legal system and an incipient crisis in legitimacy due to delay, expense and impersonality are contained, and control over dispute resolution is reasserted by the legal system. But in the process, these community-based practices also undergo an institutionalising transformation or “rationalisation” which removes them from their social framework and makes them into technical forms of conflict dispute resolution. This article uses an Habermasian analysis to contend that policymakers, legislators, professional and quasi-professional practitioners are thus systemically colonizing potentially liberatory social practices and transforming them into a “technique” where practices are formalised and strategies are imposed on conflict to produce determinable outcomes.

This paper examines a regulative shift in Canadian pesticide legislation which directs attention away from the agrichemical companies to individual farmers as the focus for preventing pesticide pollution. There are three parts to the analysis, each of which makes a particular connection between the globalization of agriculture and the development of the new regulative approach and discourse. The shift is first understood as a way in which agribusiness was able to resist environmentalist demands for increased control over the corporate promotion and development of pesticides. The link between the ideologies of globalization and agriculture's strategic responses to the environmentalist pressures are examined. The second part of the analysis looks at the broader restructuring of Canadian agricultural production and market relations to show how the intensification of agriculture within globalization helped to create significant political-economic crises within agriculture. It is argued that the policy and regulative focus on pesticide use practices and pesticide users was partly an effort to deal with these crises and the pressures to accumulate. Finally, the analysis looks at the link between globalization and the strategies and ideologies of the environmental and health movements.