bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Liminality of Culture: Second Generation South Asian Canadian Identity and the Potential for Postcolonial Texts
Authors: Shariff Farha D
Published: April 2017

This article problematizes the issues surrounding the schooling experiences of visible minority Canadians. It highlights some of the exclusionary practices through a critical examination of recalled memories as well as theories which support the notion that “visible minority” Canadian students experience feelings of “racelessness” and identity confusion in the face of exclusionary literacy practices in Canadian schools. This study is particularly significant in light of new research that questions the efficacy of official multiculturalism for the children of visible minority Canadians who exhibit “a more profound sense of exclusion than their parents” (Jimenez, Globe & Mail, January 12, 2007, A1).
Incorporating a Critical Pedagogy of Place in the Mathematics Classroom: Rural School Bussing
Authors: Gleason Jim , Belcher Johnny , Britt Deborah , Savich Paula
Published: April 2017

There is a growing opinion within the mathematics education community that the mathematics students learn should connect with real world examples from the students’ life and culture. Based upon a group project in a discrete mathematics course, this paper describes the issues involved in rural bus routing, including social, political, economical, and mathematical issues. In addition, several suggestions for incorporating a study of rural school bussing into the mathematics classroom at various levels from kindergarten to post-secondary are included.
The Concurrent Education Program at Laurentian University: What Have We Learned From the First Graduating Class?
Authors: Danyluk Patricia , Buley Jan M. , Van der Giessen Eva G.
Published: April 2017

In September 2003, Laurentian University began offering a Concurrent Bachelor of Education in English. As the program prepared to graduate its first cohort in the spring of 2007, the researchers realized they had a unique but brief window of opportunity to learn as much as possible from the first graduating class. This article reviews the findings through a three-pronged approach: three ninety-minute focus group sessions with graduating students, the administration of a Likert scale, and an exit interview with each participating student. Key results indicate that students were overwhelmed by both teaching responsibilities and class-based assignments. Their early pre-practicum experiences provided later context for reflective practice during the final practicum experiences. In some situations, the students more readily connected with their associate teacher, while others struggled to find their place in the classroom. In contrast to other studies, results indicate that the teaching practicum is not always the transforming highlight of the professional year.
What would Socrates do? An exploratory study of methods, materials and pedagogies in high school philosophy
Authors: Pinto Laura Elizabeth , Boyd Dwight , McDonough Graham P.
Published: April 2017

For over half a century, North American philosophers and teachers have been interested in introducing philosophy courses at the high school level. In 1995, such a course was introduced into the curriculum for the Canadian province of Ontario, making it the first and only English-speaking jurisdiction in North America to have philosophy as part of its official curriculum, yet to date no investigation of how these courses are taught exists. Our research addresses this gap in the literature by describing the results of the exploratory stage of our empirical investigation into the practices of Ontario high school philosophy teachers. A survey reveals that they tend to rely heavily on textbooks and employ a wide range of pedagogies in their philosophy classes, favouring discussion and lecture, despite mixed perceptions about their effectiveness.
Por Llanos y Montañas: Creemos en la Historía: An Inquiry into the 1961 Cuban Literacy Campaign using Photographic Representation
Authors: Elvy Joanne C.
Published: April 2017

In 1961, the Revolutionary government in Cuba initiated a literacy campaign that became the vehicle for social change in the country, affirming the value of education, healthcare, citizenship, professional development and the concept of family and community. As an artful researcher revisiting the impact of this educational initiative, my intent was to incorporate photographs into my research as a kind of language, a felt knowledge. Photography thus became a vital part of my methodological process as an important research and presentation tool, in respect to my engagement as a researcher from outside the Cuban experience, together with the audience’s interaction with the resulting images (Cixous, Barthes, Jongeward, Robins, et al). The photograph has also been a metaphor for the complexity of how Cuba is understood within an historical context; in how it deflects from linear readings of past events, into a space where stories can be revisited as part of a shared experience (Irwin-Zarecka, Steedman, Thelen, et al).
Predicting Teacher Anxiety, Depression, and Job Satisfaction
Authors: Ferguson Kristen , Frost Lorraine , Hall David
Published: April 2017

This study investigates predictors of anxiety, depression, and job satisfaction in teachers in northern Ontario. Using data from self-report questionnaires, factor analysis and multiple linear regression were performed to determine which sources of stress predict stress-related symptoms among teachers and to explore job satisfaction as predicted by: stress, depression, anxiety, years of teaching experience, gender, grade level assignment and position (part-time vs. full-time). The results indicate that workload and student behaviour were significant predictors of depression in teachers in the study. Workload, student behaviour, and employment conditions were significant predictors of anxiety. In addition, stress and depression had a significant and negative impact on job satisfaction. Years of teaching experience was a significant and positive predictor of job satisfaction. Anxiety, gender, grade level, and position were not statistically significant predictors of teacher job satisfaction. Therefore, efforts made to improve workload, student behavior, and employment conditions may lead to reduced stress among teachers and thus lower levels of depression and anxiety. These results may provide guidance for teachers and administrators, as well as inform teacher retention efforts and attempts to improve teacher job satisfaction.
Connecting for Greater Purpose: An Examination of a District PLC
Authors: Gojmerac Annie , Cherubini Lorenzo
Published: April 2017

This paper discusses an innovative professional development model based on a personal service approach of teacher collaboration in lieu of the more traditional expert-driven in-service paradigm. It presents a research-based Professional Learning Community (PLC) model in a large urban Ontario (Canada) school board that focused on transformational teaching strategies as a means of professional development to enhance teacher practice and improve student learning. The two key themes of the grounded theory qualitative analysis are also discussed. They include: (1) contextually-relevant PLCs, and (2) teacher leadership embedded in relationships. Last, the paper provides a framework for provincial, district, and school-level administrators to support the underlying values of teachers’ professional capacities as collaborative lead learners.
Early Childhood Perceptions of Diversity: A Case of Addressing Multicultural Education in the Classroom
Authors: McRae Ashley , Ellis Jason Brent
Published: April 2017

This evaluation-based case study research focused on the on how elementary school children perceived diversity in a homogeneous community and analyze how teaching practices can act as an agent to toward and against multicultural pluralism in the classroom. Visual-based methods were used with participants as first grade children were asked to take pictures in the school setting of what they interpreted as diverse. Findings suggested that early childhood students saw the physical manifestation of diversity in many ways and hidden curriculum in the way teachers choose to display diversity in the classroom may hold the key to unlocking a more multicultural curriculum.
Teacher use of silence in elementary education
Authors: Vassilopoulos Stephanos , Konstantinidis Georgios
Published: April 2017

The aim of this study was to expand the scope of the sparse empirical research literature concerning teachers’ use of silence. Ninety-six primary school teachers responded to a survey about their use of silence during a specific event in school and about their general attitudes about using silence in the classroom. For the specific event, teachers used silence primarily to bring the students to reason or calm them down, to facilitate reflection, encourage experiencing of feelings and communicate a subtle message. In general, teachers indicated that they would use silence with older students who are solving a task, are assimilating the information presented or are sensitive to criticism, but they would not use silence with students who may misunderstand the silence or with whom they have a poor relationship. Teachers learned about using silence mostly through teaching experience. We argue that teacher educators need to continue to systematically investigate the perception and experiences of silence in classroom settings for designing more effective teacher education courses.
Implementation of a Strengths-Based Approach to Teaching in an Elementary School
Authors: Brownlee Keith , Rawana Edward Peter , MacArtthur Julia
Published: April 2017

Schools play a significant role in addressing children’s mental health needs and this article contends that schools can further contribute to student mental well-being by adopting a strengths perspective model. A specific strengths assessment and treatment model is presented that extends to individual, peer and group interventions as well as discussions within the classroom that is applicable to every student in the school and not only students considered ‘at risk’. By engaging an entire class, or indeed an entire school, in a dialogue of strengths, the concept of strengths can become a part of the culture of the school and lead to a positive school environment. This article provides an overview of the model, its implementation in a school, including the theory informing the interventions, followed by two brief case studies showing how the model was applied in a classroom. The intervention not only transforms the way in which educators interact with students, but it changes the way students perceive themselves and the manner in which they perceive their own potential.
Effects of Teaching Paraphrasing Skills to Students Learning Summary Writing in ESL
Authors: Choy Siew Chee , Lee Mun Yee
Published: April 2017

This study examines the effects of teaching paraphrasing skills to students of tertiary level on summary writing. Other studies have found that students have limited paraphrasing skills that they can use to help them complete a task. Other factors like culture may also play a part. Twenty two students of lower intermediate level of proficiency in English were used in the study. A piece of summary writing task requires critical thinking skills to produce effective and concise writing. The nature of the task is basically constructing a general conceptual framework from the analysis of the passage and synthesis of specific information from it. This study analyses perceptions of students when handling a summary writing and the awareness of their learning and thinking. Inquiry-based learning (IBL) is used as a strategy to encourage independent thinking when doing summary writing in the classroom. The students in the study found the skills taught to them useful and they were able to apply them in a limited way. Added to this the results from the study indicated that the skills did not help the students equally. Students’ perception of their confidence in their learning abilities and the task assigned may not accurately reflect their paraphrasing skills.
Conflict Management and Dialogue with Diverse Students: Novice Teachers’ Approaches and Concerns
Authors: Parker Christina A. , Bickmore Kathy
Published: April 2017

Teaching, in settings with globalized migrant populations, does not automatically lead to peace. For example, social conflict and exclusion may be exacerbated when Othering narratives (in interpersonal interaction or curriculum texts) are not contested. However, paradoxically, in pedagogies that do invite discussion of conflicting viewpoints, marginalized students may be reluctant to voice divergent perspectives, or may be treated disrespectfully. We probed this puzzle through an exploratory quantitative and qualitative survey of how 68 novice teachers approached conflict and ethnocultural diversity in their classrooms. Most expressed some confidence in their capacities to address conflict, though many reported feeling alone, intimidated, or unwilling to engage students in constructive conflict talk. Several emphasized that responding to students’ diversities was an important part of their conflict management, while others said they treated all students the same way. Most said they needed more education and support in order to address conflict educatively in their classrooms.
Visibility
Authors: Nicholson Graeme
Published: April 2017

Although the scientific method has reached deeply into our intellectual and social life, there are places where it stops short, where its limitations become evident to us all. In these cases we discover that science can go about its explanations in its usual way, but that it does not tell us anything very interesting, and especially not what we most want to know. Let us think of music and painting, drama and ballet. No doubt a scientific method can tell us something about them, but nothing very important or enlightening, perhaps something about their acoustical or chromatic materials, or some sort of evolutionary background. The scientists who try to go further than that in their explanations of the arts have earned a reputation for being reductionist in the bad sense. It is also my view that the incompetence of science becomes evident when it is applied to the interpretation of law and religion, love and many other forms of human aspiration -- but I shall not argue that point here. For what I hope to show is that the study of an elementary, fundamental human experience, seeing, is best pursued by certain philosophical methods that are not what we call scientific. The same applies to hearing. Many scientific studies have been made of seeing and hearing, but in my view they have not succeeded in the way that philosophy has in revealing the true character of these experiences. I shall devote the first two sections of this paper to outlining one philosophical approach to seeing that I regard as successful -- an approach I develop by working through key sections of Heidegger's Being and Time -- and then, in the concluding section, I point to the defects that I believe mark the approach of psychology and cognitive science.
Meganarratives of Supermodernism: The Spectre of the Public Sphere
Authors: Kingwell Mark
Published: April 2017

Political-theoretic discussions of the public sphere, common at least since Habermas as a site of both crisis and justification, are rarely if ever animated by a sense of public spaces as what phenomenology calls 'real places.' Indeed, the space/place distinction is an important lever of critique for the transcendental rationalism operative in many political theories, even when unavowed. At the same time, architectural theory, even when itself informed by a laudable marriage of concrete and abstract, often seems uninterested in pursuing the political consequences of the built environment. This paper outlines the beginning steps in a large research project that might be labelled 'the political phenomenology of the city.'
Phenomenology as Critique of Institutions: Movements, Authentic Sociality and Nothingness
Authors: Angus Ian
Published: April 2017

This essay seeks to demonstrate that the practice of phenomenological philosophy entails a practice of social and political criticism. The original demand of phenomenology is that theoretical and scientific judgments must be based upon the giving of the ‘things themselves’ in self-evident intuition. The continuous radicalization of this demand is what characterizes phenomenological philosophy and determines a practice of social and political criticism which can be traced through four phases: 1. a critique of institutions through the method of unbuilding (Abbau, Destruktion, déconstruction); 2. presencing, or coming into presence, that directs one’s attention to the social movements of one’s time through which that which is pressed-out of the social form manifests itself; 3. authentic being-with (Mitsein) in which the sociality of human life is brought to the limit-condition of human life in being-toward-death; 4. nothingness, or negation, in which that which withdraws in any manifestation is incapable of a Hegelian re-immanentization as negation of the negation and thus points to an ethical dimension outside of history.
How Levinas Taught Me to Read Benjamin
Authors: Horowitz Asher
Published: April 2017

Benjamin's "Theses on the Philosophy of History" have been interpreted almost exclusively in relation to Marxist historical materialism and, in that context, inevitably found wanting, misunderstood as the unwelcome intrusion of mystical and voluntarist notions into a rational method of historical explanation. Levinas, although he never mentions Benjamin, nonetheless affords a better clue as to what Benjamin might have been trying to accomplish. The major distinction animating and structuring Levinas's work is that between ethics, or the ethical relation, and ontology, or the disclosure of being. One of the principal ways this distinction is elaborated is in terms of the contrast and conflict between the synchronizable time assumed by the historical memory belonging to the ontological project and the diachrony of the ethical relation, or the non synchronizable time, the posterior anteriority of the memory of radical separation and interiority. The distinction between synchronic temporalization and diachrony can enable a different understanding of the central concept of Benjamin's "Theses...", viz. "empty homogeneous time, and also thereby of the perspective of Benjamin's "angel of history" from which the liberatory(non-)activity of the Benjamininan historical materialist follows. What the historical materialist does in allowing the flow of time and thought to be arrested in the grand abridgement of a monadic image is to speak for those Others whose being has been functionalized within universal history.
Something New Under the Sun: Levinas and the Ethics of Political Imagination
Authors: Erfani Farhang
Published: April 2017

Despite Emmanuel Levinas’ own ambivalent relationship to utopianism, Levinasian ethics and utopianism have much in common. First, I look at Levinas’ own remarks on utopianism, to underline the said ambivalence. It is clear that Levinas is concerned with utopia’s “totalitarian” potential. Then I turn to the utopian tradition and scholarship to argue that utopia ought to be properly understood precisely as a resistance to a given order, or totality. Utopia is a form of political imagination that positions itself against the dominant forces of its time, giving a voice to those who have “no place” in society. But there is an inherent danger to utopia as well. What if it lends itself to a dangerous “other”? I conclude by looking at Levinas’ politics and the importance of the Third, which politically keeps our singular ethical obligation in check by forcing us to think about our obligation to all other others.
Spinoza, Schopenhauer and the Standpoint of Affirmation
Authors: Egyed Bela
Published: April 2017

This paper has two aims: to show the affinities between Schopenhauer’s and Spinoza’s ethics and ontology, and to show that Spinoza’s position, where it is in conflict with it, is superior to Schopenhauer’s. The main focus is on Schopenhauer’s attacks on the affirmation of the will-to-live. It is argued that these attacks are not even convincing in terms of what he says about “better knowledge”, namely, that they are valid only against vulgar forms of affirmations of the Will. Also, it is argued that Schopenhauer’s attacks on Spinoza do not carry much weight. For, they are either the result of misunderstandings or, when they are not, they are based on assumptions rejected by Spinoza himself. In conclusion, it is claimed that Schopenhauer’s synthesis of Plato’s, Kant’s and Hindu philosophy into a “single thought” is neither as original nor as convincing as he took it to be.
The Unity and Difference of the Speculative and the Historical in Hegel's Concept of Geist
Authors: Duquette David A.
Published: April 2017

While Hegel scholars overall have acknowledged that the concept of Geist (Spirit or Mind) is central to Hegel’s comprehension of history, there is some degree of controversy among commentators concerning the interpretation of this concept. Lack of clarity about whether the principles Hegel presents fall on the speculative or on the historical level can result in charges of mystification. In this essay I attempt to clarify the concept of Geist by 1) defining the speculative transcendental meaning of Geist, which will involve articulating the principles that structure Geist’s essential features, especially as presented in Hegel’s Logic; 2) explicating the historical and existential dimension of Geist, which will focus on the nature of its action and embodiment, specifically attending to the nation state as the true historical individual, and 3) explaining the essential connection between the speculative and the historical in such a way as to address their dialectical unity in difference, and thus to alleviate the problem of ontology overcoming Geist’s temporality.
Faces and the Invisible of the Visible: Toward an Animal Ontology
Authors: MORRIS DAVID
Published: April 2017

This paper studies the role of faces in animal life to gain insight into Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, especially his later ontology. The relation between animal faces and moving, animal bodies involves a peculiar, expressive logic. This logic echoes the physiognomic structure of perception that Merleau-Ponty detects in his earlier philosophy, and exemplifies and clarifies a logic elemental to his later ontology, especially to his concept of an invisible that is of (endogenous to) the visible. The question why the logic of the face can manifest this analogy or homology with the logic of perception and ontology is treated through a study of embryology, which suggests that the logic of the face ramifies a deeper logic of being. Methodologically, the face is taken as something like a lens into the onto-logic of being. This lens suggests that what underlies Merleau-Ponty’s later ontology is a logic of animality.
Commuting Bodies Move, Creatively
Authors: NEIMANIS ASTRIDA
Published: April 2017

In this paper, I sketch out the way our bodies are engaged while commuting in order to elucidate several key aspects of the bodily experience of “in-between-ness.” I discover that within the rhythm and movement of the in-between, our bodies can open to a specific kind of conceptual creativity—an insight that I unfold in reference to the unanticipated innovation and transformation that accompanies other bodily experiences of in-between-ness more generally. This sketch, however, also demands that I reflect on phenomenological methodology, and our ontological presuppositions about the “things” that we intend to “go back to.” I conclude by suggesting that while Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizomatic ontology helps us explain the findings of my phenomenological sketch of commuting, Merleau-Ponty’s embodied phenomenology can help to flesh out (quite literally) Deleuze and Guattari’s suggestion that all the work happens in “the logic of the AND” (A Thousand Plateaus 25). While the method I call on in this paper is decidedly phenomenological, the conclusions I reach invite me to explore further the promise of a more “rhizomatic phenomenological” practice.
From Intersex to DSD: the Disciplining of Sex Development
Authors: CLUNE-TAYLOR CATHERINE
Published: April 2017

Drawing on the writings of Michel Foucault, this paper argues that the establishment of a new nomenclature and treatment model for intersexed individuals expands both the number of disciplines and the number of physical elements recognized as involved in (im)proper sex development and further, that the temporalization of these elements works to establish sex development as a discipline. Sex development thus emerges as a field of power/knowledge that allows for the distribution of not just individuals with intersex conditions, but of all individuals, in relation to a norm. Further, while many see this model of treatment as finally acknowledging the calls of intersex activists for patient involvement in decision making, for the delaying of unnecessary surgical and hormonal treatment, and for urging honesty among physicians, patients and parents, this article argues that for some these may be hollow victories, requiring that both the patient and his or her family be disciplined into the right attitudes, behaviours and responses to treatment—and that they themselves discipline others accordingly—in order to enjoy these gains.
Groups in Schutz: The Concrete Meaning Structure of the Socio-Historical World
Authors: EMBREE LESTER
Published: April 2017

Schutz is well-known for his social-psychological description of how an individual self relates to “consociates,” “contemporaries,” “predecessors,” and “successors,” but there are rudiments as well in his oeuvre of an account of groups or collectivities that can be developed analogously to show how groups can share space and time like consociates, share only time like contemporaries, and not share time (but could share space) like a group in relation to its dead predecessors and not-yet founded successors. This aspect deserves exploration because individuals apart from their memberships in voluntary and existential groups are abstract and the concrete has of course ontological priority.
Simone de Beauvoir’s Apprenticeship of Freedom
Authors: BREDLAU SUSAN M.
Published: April 2017

In The Ethics of Ambiguity, Simone de Beauvoir makes reference to an “apprenticeship of freedom,” but she does not directly address why freedom requires an apprenticeship or what such an apprenticeship entails. Working from Beauvoir’s discussion of freedom in The Ethics of Ambiguity and her discussion of apprenticeships in The Second Sex, I explicate the idea of an apprenticeship of freedom, establishing why an apprenticeship is a necessary condition of freedom and describing how such an apprenticeship is administered. In doing so, I draw together two strands of thought within recent research on Beauvoir—first, that Beauvoir conceives of freedom as embodied and, second, that she conceives of freedom as interpersonal—to consider how adults’ interactions with a child either support or impede the realization of this child’s freedom.
Visualizing Resistance: Foucauldian Ethics and the Female Body Builder
Authors: DEAN MEGAN A.
Published: April 2017

Drawing on the relation between disciplinary power and aesthetics, Honi Fern Haber argues that the muscled woman’s “revolting” body undermines patriarchy and empowers women. Consequently, female bodybuilding can be a Foucauldian and feminist practice of resistance. I will argue that Haber’s insistence on the visibility of embodied resistance is flawed. By positing a static goal and failing to sufficiently consider non-visible aspects of normalization, namely pleasure and pain, Haber risks reinscribing the muscled woman into yet another normalizing scheme. In the light of recent work on Foucault's ethics and embodied resistance, I suggest that weight lifting may be more successfully recommended as a practice of resistance when undertaken to increase capacities and for the pleasure of the activity itself.
Toward a FIERCE Nomadology: Contesting Queer Geographies on the Christopher Street Pier
Authors: WALKER RACHEL LOEWEN
Published: April 2017

New York City has a long history of gentrification, well demonstrated by the strategies of “revitalization” and “re-development” that have occurred in Harlem throughout the last century. Less well known is the historical, political, and social context surrounding New York’s Pier 45, also known as the Christopher Street Pier. As a historically-known gathering spot for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals, the Christopher Street Pier gained recognition for harbouring what could be described as a queer public. However, recent processes of gentrification have changed Pier 45 into the Hudson River Park, ostensibly privatizing the site. With reference to Braidotti’s nomadic subject, this paper explores the Christopher Street Pier as a representation of queer geographies. Further, it argues that the re-appropriation of the once queer public space of Pier 45 exposes a municipal agenda of surveillance in relation to sexualized and racialized identities. Through reference to the activist practices of FIERCE, a local NGO, I show how the nomadic subjectivities of queer youth open up a discussion of ethical responsibility and point toward strategic movements of resistance in the face of gentrification in New York’s West Village.
Figuring Reconciliation: Dancing With the Enemy
Authors: Sutton Jane S. , Mpofu Nkanyiso
Published: April 2017

This essay is about figuring “argument as dance” and one way of conceiving how to live or embody argument as such. Concretely, it displays “argument as war” alongside a road in Mississippi after a white man shoots down James Meredith as he asserts his legal right to vote. And it tells “how to” perceive the shooting as dance by turning firstly to the performance of dance figured in the beginnings of rhetoric and then secondly, setting forth demystified methods and strategies of body-speech figuring argument as dance, rather than as war, through performances of Nelson Mandela. More generally, it explores a new meaning or experience of rhetoric by explicitly conjoining two historical times, two geographies, two speakers, enemies and dancers, that are inextricably interconnected. Using a combination of description and analysis, the first is a full display of three photographs picturing argument as war. The whole picture serves as a descriptive compass or guide for making our way analytically through argument as war and into dance language and behavior and their interconnections to argument. The second is a retrospective discussion of the background, dancing/argumentative practices, what is called “blinking on the behalf of the enemy,” of Nelson Mandela. Overall, the strategy of reticulating political times, chronology and political spaces, geography on the one hand, and argument as war and argument as dance on the other hand is to reconcile conflicting measures and to produce a performance practice (of rhetoric) of which there is no canon.
Human Rights, The Rule of Law, and Development in Africa & Human Rights Under African Constitutions: Realizing the Promise for Ourselves
Authors: Ocheje Paul D.
Published: April 2017

Paul Tiyambe Zeleza & Philip J. McConnaughay,eds., Human Rights, The Rule of Law, andDevelopment in Africa&Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im, ed., Human RightsUnder African Constitutions: Realizing the Promise forOurselves
The Scales of Injustice
Authors: Blattberg Charles
Published: April 2017

This paper criticises four major approaches to criminal law – consequentialism, retributivism, abolitionism, and “mixed” pluralism – each of which, in its own fashion, affirms the celebrated emblem of the “scales of justice.” The argument is that there is a better way of dealing with the tensions that often arise between the various legal purposes than by merely balancing them against each other. It consists, essentially, of striving to genuinely reconcile those purposes, a goal which is shown to require taking a new, “patriotic” approach to law.
Gavin Drewry, Louis Blom-Cooper, Charles Blake, The Court of Appeal
Authors: James Charles
Published: April 2017

This study is an important contribution to access to justice scholarship and research. The subject is the English Court of Appeal as the authors found it in 2000–2001 responding to the deep and comprehensive agenda of change resulting from the “new public management” initiatives of the Tory and Labour governments in power during the 1980’s and 90’s. Although the study is concerned primarily with the present day operation and recent history of the Court of Appeal, significant events in the life of the court from its beginnings in the court restructuring legislation of the 1870’s are recounted and analyzed at appropriate junctures in the text. An important body of data was collected by the authors during 2000-2001 from which they describe and analyze the subjects, types and origins of cases, the throughput of applications and appeals and their outcomes, and in particular, the new requirement for permission to appeal.
Learning to Act Like a Lawyer: A Model Code of Professional Responsibility for Law Students
Authors: Tanovich David M.
Published: April 2017

Law students are the future of the legal profession. How well prepared are they when they leave law school to assume the professional and ethical obligations that they owe themselves, the profession and the public? This question has led to a growing interest in Canada in the teaching of legal ethics. It is also led to a greater emphasis on the development of clinical and experiential learning as exemplified in the scholarship and teaching of Professor Rose Voyvodic. Less attention, however, has been placed on identifying the general ethical responsibilities of law students when not working in a clinic or other legal context. This can be seen in the presence of very few Canadian articles exploring the issue, and more significantly, in the paucity of law school discipline policies or codes of conduct that set out the professional obligations owed by law students. This article develops an idea that Professor Voyvodic and I talked about on a number of occasions. It argues that all law schools should have a code of conduct which is separate and distinct from their general University code and which resembles, with appropriate modifications, the relevant set of rules of professional responsibility law students will be bound by when called to the Bar. A student code of conduct which educates law students about their professional obligations is an important step in deterring such conduct while in law school and preparing students for ethical practice. The idea of a law school code of professional responsibility raises a number of questions. Why is it necessary for law schools to have their own student code of conduct? The article provides a threefold response. First, law students are members of the legal profession and a code of conduct should reflect this. Second, it must be relevant and comprehensive in order to ensure that it can inspire students to be ethical lawyers. And, third, as a practical matter, the last few years have witnessed a number of incidents at law schools that raise serious issues about the professionalism of law students. They include, for example, the UofT marks scandal, the Windsor first year blog and the proliferation of blogs like www.lawstudents.ca and www.lawbuzz.ca with gratuitous, defamatory and offensive entries. It is not clear that all of this conduct would be caught by University codes of conduct which often limit their reach to on campus behaviour or University sanctioned events. What should a law school code of professional responsibility look like and what ethical responsibilities should it identify? For example, should there be a mandatory pro bono obligation on students or a duty to report misconduct. The last part of the article addresses this question by setting out a model code of professional responsibility for law students.
Jane Kelsey, Serving Whose Interests? The Political Economy of Trade in Services Agreements
Authors: Irish Maureen
Published: April 2017

Serving Whose Interests is an examination of the General Agreement on Trade in Services [GATS] since its inception in 1995, with several case studies that discuss services trade in specific applications around the world. The scholarship i s extensive and detailed. Jane Kelsey, law professor at the University of Auckland, has criticized the pro-market services trade regime i n her role as a political activist. In this book, her goals are to make the technicalities of trade rules accessible and to show their effects on people and communities.
Feminist Debates on Civilian Women and International Humanitarian Law
Authors: Oosterveld Valerie
Published: April 2017

International humanitarian law [IHL] provisions address the situation of civilian women caught in armed conflict today, but is this law enough? Feminist commentators have considered this question and have come to differing conclusions. This article considers the resulting debate as to whether female-specific IHL provisions are adequate but underenforced, or inadequate, outdated and in need of revision. One school of thought argues that the main impediment to the protection of female civilians during hostilities is lack of observance of existing IHL. A second school of thought believes that something more fundamental is needed to meet the goal of protecting civilian women during war: revision and reconceptualization of IHL to take into account systematic gender inequality. This article considers the status of this debate within three areas of IHL considered by many to be central legal aspects of the experience of female civilians caught in armed conflict: the general non-discrimination provisions, the specific protection for civilian women against sexual violence and the specific protection of pregnant women and mothers. It concludes that, while there has been a vibrant debate within feminist circles on the adequacy of existing IHL provisions, mainstream action has tended to focus on enforcement. This is unfortunate, as it means that certain insights into the impact of deep gender inequalities on conflict have largely been left unexplored.
Nudge...Fat...Drugs: Permit but Discourage – The Regulation of Excessive Consumption
Authors: Bogart W. A.
Published: April 2017

Law tells many stories. Of violence. Think of all those sordid trials over gangland shootings. Of Olympian ideals. Think of all those bills of rights meant to protect individuals’ freedoms in fundamental ways Of betrayal: the legal proceedings swirling around Bernard Madoff and his Ponzi scheme. Of happiness: those couples (straight and, now, gay) marrying; legalizing a commitment of love. Of excess consumption. On this topic think whatever, since legal interventions to address intemperate appetites have given rise to a multitude of tales. Law has long been fascinated by what people eat, drink, smoke, snort, and their many games of chance.
The International Criminal Court and Non-Party States
Authors: Schabas William A.
Published: April 2017

Although more than half of the States in the world are parties tothe Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, morethan eighty have yet to ratify. The article considers the relationshipof the Court with these non-party States. It examines theexercise of jurisdiction over their nationals, arguing that internationallaw immunities continue in force despite the terms ofthe Statute. Declarations of jurisdiction by non-party States arealso studied, including the declaration formulated by the PalestinianAuthority with respect to Gaza in January 2009. NonpartyStates may be asked to cooperate with the Court and, whereso ordered by the United Nations Security Council, they may berequired to do this.
Brave New Words: Labour, The Courts and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms
Authors: Fudge Judy
Published: April 2017

In Health Services and Support – Facilities Subsector BargainingAssociation v. British Columbia, [2007] 2 S.C.R.391, the Supreme Court of Canada overturned precedent andconcluded “that the grounds advanced in the earlier decisions forthe exclusion of collective bargaining from the Charter’s protectionof freedom of association do not withstand principled scrutinyand should be rejected” (at para. 22). The author exploresthe Supreme Court of Canada’s change of heart and what thischange implies, not only for constitutional doctrine, but also forwhat the Court understands about the governance of the post-Fordist world of work. She situates the Court’s reasoning in afew key cases dealing with labour’s distinctive rights – to bargaincollectively and to strike – in the social context that both shapesthe legal discourse about labour rights and influences organizedlabour’s power. She considers the paradox of the Supreme Court’sembrace of Fordist labour rights in a post-Fordist economy, andsuggests a modest, though important, role that the Court couldplay in fostering social justice in the brave new world of work.
Human Rights Disclosure Litigation: Uncovering Invisible Medical Records
Authors: Chadha Ena
Published: April 2017

This article examines disclosure process and disclosure jurisprudence in human rights litigation. Based on a study of a decade of human rights disclosure rulings from across the country, this article finds that there have been increasing numbers of disclosure demands in human rights litigation and a substantial number of cases in which the disclosure pertained to personal documents and medical records of human rights claimants. While disclosure applications were adjudicated according to a relevance-confidentiality framework used ostensibly to balance privacy and procedural fairness, in reality significant personal information was disclosed based on assumptions of relevancy and under the guise of neutral labels. A closer examination of the different types of materials sought for disclosure in three employment human rights cases reveals that the medical core of certain records are rendered invisible and thereby open for access when tribunals neglect to look behind document categories and titles. The article concludes that there is heightened vulnerability on the part of persons with disabilities as targets of disclosure demands for their confidential medical information.
Implications of the Internet for Quasi-Legislative Instruments of Regulation
Authors: Strauss Peter L.
Published: April 2017

It is a quarter century since I began telling my Administrative Law studentsthat they had better be watching the Internet and how agencies of interest tothem were using it, as they entered an Information Age career. The changessince then have been remarkable. Rulemaking, where the pace has perhapsbeen slowest, is now accelerating into the Internet, driven by a Presidentcommitted to openness and consultation. This paper seeks little more than topoint the reader toward the places where she can find the changes and watchthem for herself.
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and its Implications for the Equality Rights of Canadians with Disabilities: The Case for Education
Authors: Malhotra Ravi , Hansen Robin F.
Published: April 2017

In this paper, we examine the history of Article 24 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and its implications for the equality rights of people with disabilities in education. We specifically consider leading recent cases in the area such as Eaton, Auton, Wynberg and Moore in order to provide a road map to advocates of people with disabilities as to potential strategies that will empower people with disabilities. While disability rights advocates lost all four cases, we suggest ways in which Article 24 might shift the balance in favour of disability rights advocates.
ACCESS TO JUSTICE AND THE INSTITUTIONAL LIMITS OF INDEPENDENT COURTS
Authors: Rankin Micah B.
Published: April 2017

Canadian citizens’ inability to access courts has been a subject of controversy for decades. Despite widespread evidence that Canada’s legal aid system is faltering, governments continue to be unwilling to commit the resources necessary to remedy the problem. In the meantime, Canadian courts have failed to develop constitutional standards defining the government’s obligations to ensure that Canadians have access to courts. In this paper, the author argues that people’s inability to access courts and obtain legal representation not only has implications for their rights and interests, but may also create specific burdens on courts and judges that can sometimes undermine their independence. The author argues that the traditional view of judicial independence is too narrow and should be expanded. Judicial independence, the author claims, is best understood as a variable bundle of rights, guarantees and powers conferred on courts and judges that preserves and enhances their abilities to adjudicate impartially, maintain a constitutional distribution of powers and uphold the rule of law. Since people’s inability to access courts and obtain legal representation can impair the judiciary’s ability to preserve these values, the author argues that judicial independence is undermined. Relying on his broadened conception of judicial independence, the author claims that it is possible to correct problems of inaccessibility by recognizing that courts have a power to appoint state-funded counsel in appropriate circumstances in order to preserve their independence.
JUDGING SELECTION: APPOINTING CANADIAN JUDGES
Authors: McCormick Peter
Published: April 2017

Since the 1970s, the appointment of trial judges in Canada has generally involved an arms-length committee of professionals, although the structure of these committees and their role in the process has varied from province to province, as well as evolving over time. Yet these “new” structures and “new” processes did not prevent a major judicial appointment scandal in the province of Quebec in 2010, culminating in the formation of the Bastarache Committee to recommend changes. This paper summarizes the forty-year history of Canadian judicial appointment committees, identifies the major challenges that face those committees, and suggests the basic values toward which reforms to the appointment process might be directed.
INCOMMENSURABLE LEGAL CULTURES: INDIGENOUS LEGAL TRADITIONS AND THE COLONIAL NARRATIVE
Authors: Manley-Casimir Kirsten
Published: April 2017

In this paper, the author argues that the non-Indigenous legal system has historically exerted and continues to exert violence on Indigenous legal traditions by insisting that its interpretation of law is authoritative and excluding alternative interpretations. Relying on Robert Cover’s theories, she asserts that both non-Indigenous and Indigenous legal traditions are based on mythology, narratives and particularized language which support the different normative values that characterize the cultures from which they arise. Non-Indigenous judges may refuse to exert violence by recognizing the value inherent in and accepting the incommensurability of Indigenous legal traditions.
MADE YOU LOOK: NIQABS, THE MUSLIM CANADIAN CONGRESS, AND R V NS
Authors: Cader Fathima
Published: April 2017

R v NS was the first Canadian case to involve a niqab-wearing sexual assault complainant. At the Supreme Court of Canada, the Muslim Canadian Congress [MCC] was especially vocal in arguing it would be un-Canadian to allow NS to testify while wearing a niqab. This paper sets out to investigate the MCC’s depictions of Muslim women, Muslim men, and the mainstream public, with specific attention paid to the details of the MCC’s “clash of civilisations” framing, its impact on the Court’s reasons, and its implications for women combatting sexual violence.