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Depuis mon retour dans le milieu de la justice en 2005, j’ai entendu à maintes reprises bâtonniers, ministres de la justice, juges en chef, professeurs d’université et tutti quanti dire que leur priorité est l’accès à la justice pour tous ! Comment ne pas être d’accord ? C’est un des principes fondamentaux de nos sociétés libres et démocratiques. 

Un autre de ces principes est « nul ne peut ignorer la loi » : on impose comme obligation à tous de connaître toutes les règles qui gouvernent notre société. L’accès à la justice, c’est aussi ça  . . . [more]

Hot: Discussing the civil justice system

Not: Funding the civil justice system

The civil justice system will likely never be a popular subject of household discussion or even a top trending topic on Twitter for a day, but it is receiving a little more attention in mainstream and social media of late. Sadly, it is receiving attention for all the wrong reasons. In the United States, the new feature-length documentary Hot Coffee explores a nation-wide conservative campaign to institute tort reforms that restrict the liability of corporations and medical professionals, but likewise limit access to justice for ordinary Americans. British . . . [more]

The UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) was established by the Equality Act 2006 with the ambition of creating an equal society which respects human rights. The government in its consultation, Building a Fairer Britain: Reform of the Equality and Human Rights Commission is now proposing that the equality and human rights champion has its wings clipped and turned into a mere regulator through the repealing and amending of certain sections of the Equality Act 2006. Under the proposals, the EHRC would in effect no longer be a champion of equality and human rights, but instead an isolated . . . [more]

What I plan to do in these periodical contributions to Slaw is to examine debates and committee proceedings on bills that may be of special interest to lawyers and legal scholars. What I want to do in this first discussion is to look at the nature of “omnibus bills” and to consider whether such bills tend to erode the capacity of parliamentary scrutiny and may be, to that extent, inconsistent with one or another part of our Constitution.

Many lawyers and legal scholars will be familiar with the notion that “the test of the reasonable man [person] is the man . . . [more]

The Canadian Forum on Civil Justice (CFCJ) focuses its research on access to justice and legal services. The justice system in Canada is not, of course, one united system but a set of institutionalized processes with overlapping provincial, territorial, and federal jurisdictions. There are civil, family, criminal and administrative divisions and both substantive and procedural laws that must be applied to each situation. Courts and Tribunals attached to this system are increasingly dealing with problems arising from Canada’s failure to solve resistant social problems. Yet, to achieve access to justice for all Canadians, legal services must be delivered as part . . . [more]

Public works often impose heavy losses on those in private property nearby. Under what circumstances should they be compensated? That should have been the question in Heyes v. Vancouver, now Susan Heyes Inc. (Hazel & Co.) v. South Coast B.C. Transportation Authority 2011 BCCA 77. Alas, it was not – Heyes was decided on whether the transit builders had been at fault.

Ms. Heyes’s company designed, made and sold maternity clothing in Cambie Village, Vancouver. Her business was severely disrupted during construction of the Canada Line, a regional transportation system connecting downtown Vancouver, the City of Richmond and . . . [more]

Regular readers of my SLAW column will know that, while I’m an ardent supporter of initiatives that enhance the efficiency of our criminal justice system, I am also a regular critic of how that same system deals with the deluge of domestic-related charges that clog our courts on a daily basis. For these very reasons, a promising new pilot project has recently caught my attention.

The Integrated Domestic Violence Court (IDV) has ambitious plans to combine cases from two of Toronto’s busiest courthouses: the criminal courts of The Old City Hall and the family courts housed at 311 Jarvis Street. . . . [more]

It is a well-documented and oft-lamented fact that the problem of limited access to justice is far worse in the rural and remote areas of Canada than in its cities and suburbs. Previous Slaw blog entries have outlined the multitude of distance-related obstacles that prevent many rural and small-town Canadians from finding quick and affordable resolutions to their legal problems. Geographic restrictions do not apply to legal problems, however. Wherever you find personal and business relationships, you will find legal problems. They stretch freely across the country—from “sea to sea to sea,” as Canadian politicians like to say these days. . . . [more]

I was recently asked which one area of civil legal aid I would protect from the upcoming spending cuts in the UK. It is difficult to single out one area of law, but I think I would protect employment advice in the civil legal aid budget for three reasons:

The rise in unemployment 

In the last three years there has been a substantial rise in unemployment and The Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development predicts that in 2011 over 200,000 people in the UK will lose their jobs. This increases the probability that the number of people requiring advice regarding . . . [more]

Racism is like alcoholism — you can’t deal with it until you admit that you have a problem with it. Somehow the same people who might agree that Canada is filled with systemic discrimination, in virtually every institution or sector imaginable, also seem to believe that no one is a racist. (Well, maybe those boot-wearing, skinhead white supremacists, but no one else.)

No one in government, education, law, health-care, business, or social services even wants to hear the words “racism” or “racist” – they are just too harsh. How then can we deal with the harsh and deeply entrenched reality . . . [more]

In 1994, Ontario adopted the grandly named Crown Forest Sustainability Act (CFSA). A long, bruising environmental assessment (the Timber Management EA) had shown that we were ravaging Crown forests with a short term focus on extracting the most timber now, damaging the future of the forests and everything that lived there. It will be better now, the government said. The CFSA begins with impressive (if wordy) promises:

1. The purposes of this Act are to provide for the sustainability of Crown forests and, in accordance with that objective, to manage Crown forests to meet social, economic and environmental needs of

In my last post on young people’s legal capability, I explored how NGOs such as PLEnet and IARS are piloting innovative Public Legal Education (“PLE”) programmes to enable individuals to take control of their own legal problems. One of the main arguments that I made for PLE is the long term pecuniary advantage to be gained from empowering (young) people to resolve their own legal problems before they reach the stage at which the state might need to step in and provide legal aid funded support. I also made the point that PLE is not a panacea that completely . . . [more]