Scholarly Exchange on Eric v. Lola

There’s some good stuff happening over on Osgoode Hall Law School’s IFLS blog, which is managed by the impressive Sonia Lawrence. I’m referring to a “roundtable” discussion about the recent Supreme Court of Canada case Quebec (Attorney General) v. A, 2013 SCC 5, otherwise known as Eric v. Lola. The old song says “whatever Lola wants, Lola gets” — but not this time. The majority of the court supported the exclusion of de facto spouses from the provisions of the Civil Code governing spousal support and division of property, making Québec (yet again) unique among the provinces. This, of course, raises a host of issues about Charter law, family law, and Québec exceptionalism.

To explore those issues, Professor Lawrence constituted a panel of four academics — Hester Lessard (U Vic), Bruce Ryder (Osgoode), Margot Young (UBC), and Robert Leckey (McGill) — each of whom responded, in turn, to questions put by Lawrence and to points made by the prior commentator. In my view, this is the sort of responsive scholarship that the web has made possible — demanded, really — for at least a decade now, responsive in a timely fashion to the development of law and responsive to the scholarship of others in the field. Yet this engaged and engaging scholarship is sadly rare in the Canadian legal academy. Perhaps things are changing at long last.

Whether or not family law, or, indeed, the workings of the Supreme Court are of particular interest to you, do yourself a favour and go to the IFLS roundtable and see what Lawrence has brought about.

(Speaking of responsive, you may find that the pages will take some time to load. Have patience. It’s worth it.)