Your search
Results 52 resources
-
[From Introduction]Inherent in our constitutional right to a jury trial in criminal cases—for offences where imprisonment for five years or more is a possible sentence— is the right to have jurors who are our “peers” and “equals.” This right can be traced back to 1215 when King John signed the Magna Carta to make peace with the wealthy men of England.The route from the Magna Carta to Canadian criminal law in the early twenty-first century is long and convoluted, and extra twists and turns are added when we consider the use of juries in Canada’s North. Here, where the effects of colonialism are still felt on a daily basis, and where communities from which a jury might be drawn sometimes number only a few hundred persons, the ability to obtain a jury comprised of “the peers” of our clients, who are usually Indigenous, can be challenging and sometimes difficult. In this article I offer my perspective, as a practising criminal defence lawyer in the Northwest Territories, on the challenges we face in trying to obtain juries that truly represent the communities from which our clients originate. ... ...More
-
Disclaimer: This summary was generated by AI based on the content of the source document.
-
Disclaimer: This summary was generated by AI based on the content of the source document.
-
Disclaimer: This summary was generated by AI based on the content of the source document.
-
Disclaimer: This summary was generated by AI based on the content of the source document.
-
Disclaimer: This summary was generated by AI based on the content of the source document.
-
Disclaimer: This summary was generated by AI based on the content of the source document.
-
The critical evaluation of the High Court's decision in Crimmins v Stevedoring Industry Finance Committee in the conceptual context of the public/private law dichotomy is discussed. The public/private law dichotomy is a formalistic distinction which belies the fact that there are overlaps in public and private law and that all law is in fact guided by considerations of public policy.
-
Although it has long been acknowledged that heuristics influence judicial decision making, researchers have yet to explore how sentencing guidelines might interact with heuristics to shape sentencing decisions. This article contributes to addressing this gap in the literature in three ways: first, by considering how heuristics might help produce the phenomenon of sentence clustering, in which a significant proportion of sentences are concentrated around a small number of outcomes; second, by reflecting on the role of sentencing guidelines as a feature of the environment within which sentencing decisions are made; and third, by analysing the guidelines from Minnesota and from England and Wales, theorizing how their content might interact with heuristics to make clustering more or less likely. Ultimately, we argue that sentencing guidelines likely affect the role played by heuristics in shaping sentencing decisions and, consequently, that their design should be informed by research evidence from the decision sciences.
-
This article will identify the inconsistency and confusion in mediation regarding the definition of mediation, the role of the mediator, and the difference between mediation confidentiality and privilege. Further, it will discuss the confusion and inconsistency in the protection of mediation communication, specifically regarding the definition of mediation communication, the time frame for protected communication, waiver of the protections and exceptions to protected mediation communication. It will provide a roadmap and fact pattern for determining whether mediation communications are protected and if so, the protection they are afforded. Lastly, it will offer recommendations so parties, professionals and the courts may better understand and reap the benefits of mediation.
-
Arbitration, mediation/arbitration and arbitration/mediation allow parties to resolve their disputes usually more expeditiously, privately and with less cost than going to court. While confidentiality is seen as essential to the mediation process and often included in statutes, confidentiality seems less essential to a more adversarial process. Confidentiality provisions rest at the intersection between privacy and self-determination and the protection of vulnerable parties in family law disputes. This article explores the importance of confidentiality clauses in drafting arbitration and med/arb or arb/med agreements.
-
On June 8, 2020 the Ontario Attorney General Doug Downey said that the Crown would be seeking leave to appeal Sullivan & Chan to the Supreme Court of Canada. 12 This is a time of opportunity in the intoxication/NMDA sphere. The Supreme Court will (likely) have an opportunity to define this defence and requisite elements, and/or Parliament will have an opportunity to redraft s. 33.1 to bring much needed clarity. This comment will give some thoughts on the appeal of Sullivan & Chan, and the state of intoxication and automatism going forward examining both the voluntariness and the mens rea required.
-
Research Summary By taking advantage of data published by the Sentencing Project to analyze whether states that use life without parole (LWOP) more often experience lower violent crime rates or greater reductions in violent crime, this study is the first to empirically assess the crime-reducing potential of LWOP sentences. The results suggest that LWOP might produce a small absolute reduction in violent crime but that it is no more effective than life with parole. Policy Implications Despite reductions in the use of the death penalty, LWOP has expanded dramatically—and at a much faster rate—over the last quarter century. This expansion has come at great financial and human costs and has not been distributed equally throughout the population. As such, the public policy debate over the use of LWOP is likely to intensify. Yet, to date, there have been no empirical assessments of LWOP's efficacy to inform this debate. This study begins to fill this gap in our knowledge, and the results, if replicated, suggest that the use of LWOP should be either scaled back or eliminated.