Multiculturalism and the Foundations of Meaningful Life
Theories of liberal multiculturalism seek to reconcile cultural rights with universal liberal principles. Some focus on individual autonomy; others emphasize communal identity. Andrew Robinson argues that liberal multiculturalism can be justified without privileging either. By appealing to the deeper value of meaningful life, he shows how autonomy …
Domestic Reforms
British Columbia inherited a legal system that granted married men control over most family property and imposed few obligations on them toward their wives and children. Yet from the 1860s onward, lawmakers throughout the Anglo-American world, including legislators on the Pacific Coast, began to grant women and children new rights. Domestic Reforms …
Defining Rights and Wrongs
Human rights complaints attract a great deal of public interest, but what is going on below the surface? When people contact a human rights lawyer, how do they think about and use human rights discourse? How are complaints turned into cases? Can administrative systems be both effective and fair? Defining Rights and Wrongs investigates the day-to-da …
Two Families
First Nations Elders interpreted treaties as instruments that gave Europeans the right to settle here, share resources, and build a relationship of equality with those who were here before. These elders did not intend the treaties to allow the subjugation and impoverishment of First Nations, or give settler governments the right to legislate every …
Law and Citizenship
The essays in Law and Citizenship provide a framework for analyzing citizenship in an increasingly globalized world by addressing a number of fundamental questions. How are traditional notions of citizenship erecting borders against those who are excluded? What are the impacts of changing notions of state, borders, and participation on our concepts …
Carefair
We often think of care as personal or intimate, and citzenship as political and public. In Carefair, Paul Kershaw urges us to resist this private/public distinction, and makes a convincing case for treating caregiving as a matter of citizenship that obliges and empowers everyone in society.
Carefair has its roots in the rise of "duty" discourses - i …
Negotiating Buck Naked
Negotiating Buck Naked examines the accord closely. Why did the violence end? How was the accord reached? What factors enabled it to succeed when numerous other interventions had failed? How did it change the patterns of conflict between the factions? To answer these questions, Cran develops a theoretical framework for understanding the process of …
Discourses of Denial
Enriched by its official policies of multiculturalism, gender equality, and human rights, the Canadian public is occasionally shocked by glaring acts of racist and sexist violence brought to their attention by the sensationalist media. But nobody pauses to consider the historical antecedents and root causes of these tragedies. Discourses of Denial …
Diversity and Equality
The tension between diversity and equality is central to debates about multiculturalism, self-determination, identity, and pluralism. How, for example, can the claims of ethnic and religious groups be respected when they conflict with individual rights and liberal equality? Diversity and Equality critically examines the challenge of protecting righ …
The Culture of Hunting in Canada
The Culture of Hunting in Canada covers elements of the history of hunting from the pre-colonial period until the present in all parts of Canada and features essays by practitioners and scholars of hunting and by pro- and anti-hunting lobbyists. The result crosses the boundaries between scholarship and personal reflection, and between academia and …
Sex Workers in the Maritimes Talk Back
Sex workers are often the “objects” of study for academics and policy makers. Theories about their lives and the policies that affect their work are usually developed without input from the sex workers themselves, as they are rarely seen as capable of analyzing the social and political world in which they work.
In this book, however, sex worker …
Governing with the Charter
Since the introduction of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982, the question of judicial power and its relationship to parliamentary democracy has been an important one in Canadian politics. Some critics, suspicious of what they perceive as the "activism" of "unelected and unaccountable" judges, view the increased power of the Suprem …
The Middle Power Project
The Middle Power Project describes a defining period of Canadian and international history. During the Second World War, Canada transformed itself from British dominion to self-proclaimed middle power. It became an active, enthusiastic, and idealistic participant in the creation of one of the longest lasting global institutions of recent times – …
With Good Intentions
With Good Intentions examines the joint efforts of Aboriginal people and individuals of European ancestry to counter injustice in Canada when colonization was at its height, from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century. These people recognized colonial wrongs and worked together in a variety of ways to right them, but they could not stem …
Sanctuary, Sovereignty, Sacrifice
Drawing on theories of governmentality, Lippert traces the emergence of sanctuary practice to a shift in responsibility for refugees and immigrants from the state to churches and communities. Here sanctuary practices and spaces are shaped by a form of pastoral power that targets needs and operates through sacrifice, and by a sovereign power that is …
Brute Souls, Happy Beasts, and Evolution
In this provocative inquiry into the status of animals in human society from the fifth century BC to the present, Rod Preece provides a wholly new perspective on the human-animal relationship. He skillfully demonstrates that, counter to prevailing intellectual opinion, ethical attitudes toward animals are neither restricted to the twentieth century …
Multicultural Nationalism
Generations of intellectuals have debated Canada’s national question. Rather than join the debate, Multicultural Nationalism challenges its logic. The national question is self-defeating: attempts to constitute a Canadian political community generate polarizing and depoliticizing deliberations. Gerald Kernerman engages with leading political theo …
Defending Rights in Russia
Lawyers often play pivotal roles in building democracies. Pamela Jordan’s engaging study of the Russian bar (advokatura) provides a richly textured portrait of how, after the USSR’s collapse, practising lawyers called advocates began to assume new, self-defined roles as contributors to legal reform and defenders of rights in Russia.
Using the hi …
Securing Borders
Detention and deportation are the two most extreme sanctions of an “immigration penality” that polices noncitizens, identifies those deemed dangerous, diseased, deceitful, or destitute, and refuses them entry or casts them out. They play a key role in regulating national borders, citizens, and populations. But what determines whether a noncitiz …
Last Word
Media coverage of the Supreme Court of Canada has emerged as a crucial factor not only for judges and journalists but also for the public. It’s the media, after all, that decide which court rulings to cover and how. They translate highly complex judgments into concise and meaningful news stories that will appeal to, and be understood by, the gene …
Animals and Nature
“No one tradition alone offers a sufficient respect for other species. Taken together, they may offer a prospect for saner human-animal relations.” – From the book
Western conceptions of objectivity and individuality have resulted in a readier appreciation of the worth of the animals and nature than has been recognized. This provocative book …
The Big Red Machine
In The Big Red Machine, astute Liberal observer Stephen Clarkson tells the story of the Liberal Party’s performance in the last nine elections, providing essential historical context for each and offering incisive, behind-the-scenes detail about how the party has planned, changed, and executed its successful electoral strategies. Arguing that the …
Our Box Was Full
For the Gitksan and Witsuwit’en peoples of northwest British Columbia, the land is invested with meaning that goes beyond simple notions of property or sustenance. Considered both a food box and a storage box of history and wealth, the land plays a central role in their culture, survival, history, and identity. In Our Box Was Full, Richard Daly e …
International Environmental Law and Asian Values
This book juxtaposes international environmental norms and practices with relevant Asian policies and their applications in key areas. Roda Mushkat examines the fundamental principle of public participation in environmental law-making, as well as the "rights approach," against the emergence of democratic and human rights norms in the region. The co …
From UI to EI
Established in 1940 in response to the Great Depression, the original goal of Canada’s system of unemployment insurance was to ensure the protection of income to the unemployed. Joblessness was viewed as a social problem and the jobless as its unfortunate victims. If governments could not create the right conditions for full employment, they were …
Insiders and Outsiders
Insiders and Outsiders celebrates the work of Alan Cairns, one of the most influential Canadian social scientists of the contemporary period. Few scholars have helped shape so many key debates in such a wide range of topics in Canadian politics, from the electoral system and federalism, to constitutional and Charter politics, to questions of Aborig …
Despotic Dominion
In the late 18th century, the English jurist William Blackstone famously described property as “that sole and despotic dominion.” What Blackstone meant was that property was an “absolute right, inherent in every Englishman . . . which consists in the free use, enjoyment, and disposal of all acquisitions without any control or diminution, save …
Humanitarianism, Identity, and Nation
Australia and Canada have each sought international reputations as humanitarian do-gooders, especially in the area of refugee admissions. This book traces the connections between the nation-building tradition of immigration and the challenge of admitting people who do not reflect the national interest of the twenty-first century. In a detailed cons …
The Courts and the Colonies
The Courts and the Colonies offers a detailed account of a protracted dispute arising within a Hutterite colony in Manitoba, when the Schmiedeleut leaders attempted to force the departure of a group that had been excommunicated but would not leave. This resulted in about a dozen lawsuits in both Canada and the United States between various Hutterit …
Advancing Aboriginal Claims
Can Aboriginal values be reconciled with Canadian jurisprudence, and what is the role of Aboriginal jurisprudences in the development of treaty and Aboriginal rights? The combination of policy, philosophy, strategy, and legal arguments are valuable as a resource for thoughtful discussion and action on the future of Aboriginal claims. With the persp …
Elections
Open and competitive elections governed by widely accepted rules and procedures are essential to the legitimacy of any political system. Elections assesses the history and development of five building blocks of the Canadian electoral regime: the franchise, electoral districts, voter registration, election machinery, and plurality voting. Arguing th …
Citizens
Citizens are central to any meaningful definition of democracy. What does it say about the health of Canadian democracy when fewer citizens than ever are exercising their right to vote and party membership rolls are shrinking? Are increasingly well-educated citizens turning away from traditional electoral politics in favour of other forms of democr …
Gay Male Pornography
The 2000 case of Little Sisters Book and Art Emporium v. Customs Canada provided Canada’s highest court with its first opportunity to consider whether the analysis set out in R. v. Butler – in which the Supreme Court identified pornography as an issue of sex discrimination – applies to pornography intended for a lesbian or gay male audience. …
