Cet article explore les effets ambivalents des mobilisations juridiques autochtones, dans un contexte de faible État de droit, à partir d’une étude de cas approfondie de la communauté Xákmok Kásek au Paraguay. Malgré une victoire devant la Cour interaméricaine des droits de l’Homme, les résultats matériels restent limités. Toutefois, le recours au droit joue un rôle important en légitimant les luttes et en structurant les actions collectives. L’analyse repose sur un travail de terrain mené à Asunción et dans le Chaco en 2022, incluant quarante-six entretiens, l’étude de documents juridiques et l’accès aux archives d’ONG. Théoriquement, l’article mobilise les travaux sur les mobilisations juridiques dans les régimes hybrides et autoritaires. Il montre que le droit, bien qu’imparfait, peut renforcer la visibilité et la légitimité des revendications. Cette contribution éclaire les usages stratégiques du droit dans des contextes répressifs et invite à reconsidérer ses effets au-delà des victoires formelles.

This article investigates why restorative justice in France—legally recognized since 2014 and broadly endorsed by political actors—remains only marginally implemented, particularly in cases of gender‑based violence (GBV). Drawing on qualitative research, including interviews, observations, and parliamentary debate analysis, the study shows that limited uptake cannot be explained primarily by feminist resistance or public reluctance. Instead, restorative justice has been shaped by blame‑avoidance strategies, institutional ambivalence, and the downward delegation of responsibility to under‑resourced local actors. Presented as a right but maintained in a quasi‑experimental mode, it relies heavily on the discretionary, often overtime labour of frontline practitioners. This governance configuration reframes, a statutory right into an optional service, preserves existing penal hierarchies, and obscures the structural nature of GBV. The article highlights how symbolic reforms may be neutralized through managerial practices and calls for comparative research on institutional designs that enable more consistent implementation.

This article analyzes the parliamentary debates over three Canadian federal laws (2021-2024) on medical assistance in dying (MAID). It explores the factors that influenced Parliament’s decision to expand MAID eligibility to include mental illness in 2021 and to subsequently defer that eligibility on two occasions in 2023 and 2024. We argue that the expansion of MAID to include mental illness was partly driven by a looming judicial deadline and the government’s desire to avoid future Charter litigation, while the deferrals were driven by the perceived lack of readiness from key stakeholders, especially the provinces. This case study identifies broader dynamics of judicial-legislative interaction that can affect policy outcomes, including governments’ attempts at “future-oriented compliance” to pre-empt litigation rather than merely respond to it. It also demonstrates both how judicial deadlines can constrain legislative choice in unforeseen ways and how sunset clauses can foster policy uncertainty.

This article explores factors contributing to the launching of private prosecutions for criminal libel during World War I in Calgary against the proprietor of a small newspaper. In the first of the cases considered here, the allegations of this originally English journalist—that a Jewish-owned business had German and Austrian employees—had the potential to inflame local ethic tensions and provoke violence, but the Crown sat on the sidelines while the lumber company prosecuted. In the second case, the libellous text suggested that Calgary’s former Member of Parliament, R.B. Bennett, and his associate William P. McLaws were party to financial improprieties around spending on munitions manufacturing in Medicine Hat. Again, the Crown lawyers watched while Bennett prosecuted and McLaws did not. This article explores the strategic decision-making behind a prosecutorial approach now largely unfamiliar to us.

Processes of repression, criminalization and penalization were importantly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Mobilizing data produced through an ethnographic study of plea courts in Ottawa, this article reports on the ways in which lower criminal courts administered what judges described as “COVID justice.” In this transitory form of justice, we observed a) a dilated reward system for guilty pleas; b) the work of the virtual resolution team, a workgroup dedicated to unburdening the courts from backlogs attributed to the pandemic; c) requests to increase the credits granted for time served in locked-down, noxious prisons, and; d) the diversion of sentenced individuals from prison on the grounds of the primacy of public health over criminal justice.

Cet article présente les diverses configurations de crédit offertes par les magasins à rayons canadiens au cours du 20e siècle, en s’attardant au développement du crédit variable dans la période de l’après-guerre. Il démontre que les diverses formes de « comptes budgétaires » identifiées dans la littérature américaine étaient aussi offertes au Québec, en s’appuyant sur deux corpus d’archives. Il argue aussi que les transformations apportées au compte courant pour le rendre similaire à la vente à tempérament ont servi à transformer un contrat basé sur une relation humaine en contrat d’adhésion. Il fait ainsi une double contribution à la littérature : enrichissant d’une part les discussions théoriques des juristes sur le contrat d’adhésion de réflexions pertinentes tirées de la littérature sociologique sur le crédit à la consommation, et contribuant d’autre part à la littérature historique « fragmentée » sur le crédit à la consommation dans le siècle dernier.

Hogg and Bushell’s “The Charter Dialogue between Courts and Legislatures” sparked a debate concerning the extent to which legislatures respond to the Supreme Court of Canada’s decisions in which the judges invalidate laws under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. After constructing and coding a dataset of all relevant Charter cases between 2010 and 2023, this paper finds that the legislatures complied with rulings made by the Court in 93.3 per cent (or 28 out of 30) of the cases. It nevertheless demonstrates how the two non-compliant replies (to Bedford on sex work and to Carter on medical assistance in dying) are exceptional in that they featured strong interest-group support for upholding the constitutionality of the challenged provisions and thus straying from the Court’s rulings that invalidated them. This paper argues that while legislatures overwhelmingly comply with Charter rulings, interest-group support may help explain rare instances of legislative noncompliance.

Cet article examine la problématique de la grossophobie en discutant de ses racines comme de ses impacts sur les personnes qui en sont victimes ainsi que sa manifestation au sein du droit. Il explore plus précisément comment le droit et les politiques publiques peuvent perpétuer la stigmatisation des corps, notamment à travers les interventions en matière de saine alimentation. L’étude se concentre sur l’approche environnementale adoptée au Québec pour promouvoir une alimentation saine, en interrogeant sa capacité à éviter la stigmatisation individuelle. S’appuyant sur le cadre théorique des Fat Studies, l’article expose l’argumentation politique des Fat Studies, présente le cadre normatif québécois destiné à la création d’environnements favorables à la saine alimentation, et examine la place accordée au poids corporel dans les politiques publiques québécoises liées à la saine alimentation dans le but d’offrir une perspective critique sur les approches actuelles en santé publique ainsi que leurs impacts sur la perception sociétale de la grosseur.

In late-nineteenth-century Canada, cases of incest were met with both outrage and doubt. To avoid questions of consent raised by long-term abuse, the Crown Attorney in Ontario’s Wentworth County experimented with a novel prosecutorial strategy between 1886 and 1890, trying three cases of incestuous abuse involving fifteen-year-old girls under the new criminal seduction law. Only one resulted in a conviction, and an examination of court records and contemporary commentary reveals how social taboos, discredited testimony, and requirements of corroboration rendered girls’ experiences of incest illegible to the court and community when viewed through the lens of seduction. Situating girlhood within discourses about protection, the family, and sexual morality, this study illuminates unexplored applications and limits of the seduction law, contemporary shifts in understandings of consent and coercion, and how victims serve as sites of socio-legal experimentation before being discarded once they have fulfilled that role.

The Supreme Court of Canada mandates recognition of systemic factors that create barriers for Indigenous peoples’ access to equitable justice. Specifically, R. v. Gladue directs courts to consider the unique circumstances of Indigenous peoples when engaging in decision-making processes in all criminal courts. Drawing from interview data with Indigenous and non-Indigenous defence counsel in Ontario, this study assesses whether and how Gladue factors shape bail hearings. Our findings reveal that the application of Gladue principles exists along a continuum, ranging from mere “lip service”, to the tailoring of bail decisions based on meaningful recognition of systemic disadvantages. We also highlight the importance of lived experience and representation of Indigenous legal actors and the challenges they encounter working within a colonial system. We situate these findings within broader critiques of risk-based bail frameworks and settler colonial legal systems, concluding with policy recommendations and directions for future research.

Only two cases of migrant trafficking have been successfully prosecuted in Canada (R v. Gonzalez-Valbuena and R v. Domotor). This article considers why by offering a comparison of human trafficking offences defined at section 118 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) and sections 279.01-279.011 of the Criminal Code of Canada (CrC). We also assess the application of these provisions to seven publicly reported cases of migrant trafficking. We demonstrate that the anti-trafficking frameworks fail to capture the offence of migrant trafficking. We also confirm that the prosecution of migrant trafficking is undermined by the promotion of racist and gendered ideas of victimization in judicial decision making. Our analysis offers support for the work of Nandita Sharma (2005) on the existence of “global apartheid” in the Canadian context, which operates to sustain the illegalization, criminalization and removal of specifically racialized female migrants from Canada.

Human rights systems in Canada face difficulties: growing caseloads, slow case processing, and a lack of access to hearings. Some Canadian jurisdictions have responded to these challenges by changing from a commission system to a direct access system. This change is made to maximize efficiency, to more quickly process complaints, and to render faster justice to all. Using British Columbia, Canada, as a test case, we assess which of these two systems is most efficient at processing complaints by examining annual reports from 1996 to 2022. We analyze which system closed complaints faster and which system screened out and or settled more cases over time. We also determined which system processed more cases in full hearings. We conclude that the commission system was more efficient, it closed more cases and was faster than the direct access system. It also provided a greater chance to have complaints adjudicated in formal hearings.

Des données statistiques provenant de publications scientifiques ou de témoignages d’expert sont de plus en plus portées devant les tribunaux. Or, de telles données peuvent être mal employées. Après un bref exposé de quelques fondements de la statistique, la première partie de cet essai relate des cas tirés du droit de mauvais usage de données statistiques. Le théorème de Bayes est ensuite présenté comme un outil mathématique qui pourrait contribuer à réduire la fréquence de ce type d’erreurs. En seconde partie, l’essai propose le rehaussement de la formation des juristes en statistique et un recours accru à l’expertise dans ce domaine comme autres moyens d’éviter les erreurs du passé. La conclusion souligne les difficultés que pose en pratique l’application du théorème de Bayes et le besoin d’évaluer l’efficacité de stratégies visant une utilisation plus appropriée de données statistiques.

When it was first introduced, the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA) had two primary goals of reducing the reliance on custody and increasing uniformity in sentencing practices. Twenty years later, the YCJA has succeeded in dramatically lowering overall rates of youth in custody, but this gain has been selectively experienced by non-Indigenous youth and regional disparities in sentencing practices persist. In this paper, we suggest that the YCJA’s inability to meet its goals is due to overcriminalization by over depth. Using Indigenous youth sentencing as a case study, we argue the YCJA’s layered and sometimes conflicting principles have symptoms of overcriminalization by over depth, including over- and under-inclusiveness, arbitrariness, and confusion in implementation. To more effectively meet the YCJA’s initial goals, we propose legislative streamlining and systemic reforms, including specialized Indigenous youth courts and enhanced community-based resources, as pathways to greater justice.

Surety supervision is one of the most onerous bail conditions imposed on legally innocent people pretrial. Sureties are generally family or friends who promise a sum of money and agree to supervise the accused, enforcing conditions and reporting non-compliance. Drawing on data from 32 in-depth interviews with individuals who have acted as sureties, this paper examines the complex, contradictory, and damaging implications of exploiting personal relationships for the state’s surveillance and monitoring interests. We argue that by placing sureties in such a role, the court stresses the accused’s social relationships by transforming the accused’s support network into an apparatus of state control. Sureties describe exploited relational bonds and ruptured relationships, insisting they will never act as a surety again. We conclude by outlining directions for reform, including changing the nature of surety supervision, decriminalization and developing bail supervision programs.

This article explores what intended parents think about the Assisted Human Reproduction Act—a federal law that criminalizes paid surrogacy in Canada. Canadian scholars have long debated the merits of the AHRA’s prohibitions and, in recent years, lawmakers have proposed decriminalization. However, interviews with Canadian intended parents reveal that few support decriminalizing paid surrogacy in the absence of regulations and policies that provide protection for surrogates and intended parents. This piece will interest scholars and law and policymakers advocating for evidence-based responses to surrogacy. It challenges longstanding assumptions that decriminalizing payment—and leaving provinces to decide whether to introduce regulations—would support family building through surrogacy.