What’s in a Name (Or Pronoun)?I recently noticed headlines that the Federal Court of Appeal had set aside an interim Order staying the removal of Colin Ewen because the Motions Judge had raised an issue about gender pronouns…
SCC Cases and Business EthicsI want to examine a couple of cases from the Supreme Court of Canada that demonstrate a growth of ethical principles in contracts that underpin much of the economy…
Banish Your Backlog: Concise Decision-Writing as a Teachable Skill That Improves Timely JusticeMany people know that tribunals, courts, and other government decision-makers have increasingly long backlogs. What fewer people may realize is that the length of decisions are also soaring, and that there is a strong negative correlation between decision length and how many decisions a court publishes.
Extraterritorial Investigations and the CharterRecently, the Supreme Court of Canada was faced with two interlocking issues in McGregor. They arose from a charge of voyeurism against a member of the Canadian Armed Forces attached to the Canadian Embassy in Washington DC…
A View of the Charter Methodology BattlefieldIt’s not often that a Justice in a senior appellate court characterizes an inflection point in Charter methodology as a “battlefield” between two approaches to its interpretation…
A Summer as a Judicial InternIn this blog post, Angelika Kuzma shares her thoughts on her enriching experience shadowing the Honourable Justice Scott K. Campbell of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in the summer of 2022.
The Effect of an Arrest Warrant Issued by the International Criminal CourtIn this piece, CIAJ’s collaborator James Hendry considers the effect of the arrest warrants issued last March by the ICC for Vladimir Putin and his Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Maria Lvova-Belova.
Interpreting the Exemption of Creditors’ Remedies on ReservesThe Ontario Court of Appeal recently had to choose between interpreting a provision of the Indian Act protecting Indian reserve property from creditors’ remedies, and one that might have opened up more commercial possibilities for Indigenous entrepreneurs though putting Indian property at greater risk.
Mandatory Minimum Sentences and s. 12 of the CharterThe Supreme Court of Canada recently struck down a four-year mandatory minimum sentence for discharging a firearm into a home in Hills (here). Though Hills admitted that the mandatory minimum was warranted in his case, he argued that the law might be applied to someone who did not deserve it.
My Judicial Internship at the Superior Court of Justice: A Real-World Learning ExperienceWhat could you learn shadowing a judge during a CIAJ judicial internship? Many things! Thank you to Justice Kathleen Cullin of the Superior Court of Justice in Sudbury, ON, who welcomed law student Nicholas Waltenbury during the summer of 2022.
