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Obscene intentions and corrupting effects

Simon Stern
Monday, July 17, 2017

[Cross-posted from the OUP Blog)   The 1868 decision in R. v Hicklin created a formula for evaluating obscene works that British and American courts would use for nearly a century. Chief Justice Alexander Cockburn, in a succinct phrase that numerous courts would quote, explained that “the test of obscenity is … whether the tendency of the matter charged as obscenity is to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences, and into whose hands a publication of this sort may fall.” Hicklin is often taken as inaugurating a new era in obscenity law, shifting attention away from the author’s intentions, and towards a vague and subjective evaluation of the work’s effects.

Canada 30, 150

Douglas Sanderson
Friday, June 30, 2017

The one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the British North America Act is now celebrated as Canada 150, Canada’s sesquicentennial. But the celebration is not without controversy. Many Indigenous people regard Canada 150 as a celebration of 150 years of colonialism, stolen land, mass oppression, and a racist devaluing of Indigenous languages, cultures, laws and practices.

As a proud member of the Opaskwayak Cree Nation, and a legal theorist in the faculty of law at the University of Toronto, I struggle with the issue of how to understand what a just relationship might look like between settler and Indigenous people. There are many large scale political, legal and territorial remedies to consider, things like providing Indigenous people greater jurisdiction over their traditional territories, or developing child welfare systems that take account of our clan based family systems rather than the nuclear family favored by current systems. These are necessary steps on the road to reconciliation, but they also represent enormous political and legal struggles.

Google v. Equustek: Unnecessarily Hard Cases Make Unnecessarily Bad Law

Ariel Katz
Friday, June 30, 2017

Google "G" LogoWhen lawyers say that hard cases make bad law, they usually mean that extreme or unusual circumstances provide poor basis for making legal rule that would have to be applicable to a wider range of more common cases. Sometimes the phrase describes cases that involve a party whose hardship draws sympathy even if its legal case is weak. But sometime hard cases can make good law, when they present smart judges with difficult dilemmas and force them to think hard and deep on their ruling and its broader consequences. Yet courts don't always choose the cases that come before them and the possibility of a hard case making bad law is an occupational hazard of the legal system.

Presents, Emoluments, and Corruption

Simon Stern
Wednesday, June 21, 2017

(Cross-posted from Balkinization)   The government’s motion to dismiss in CREW v. Trump features a two-prong argument on the central issue in the dispute, namely, the meaning of the term emolument in the provision stating that “no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.” The DOJ’s argument presumably offers a template for the government’s position in the other emoluments cases. First, according to the DOJ, the term emolument was “widely understood at the framing of the Constitution to mean any compensation or privilege associated with an office”—such as tolls, rents, fees, and the like, attached to the performance of official duties.

Our Anxious Supreme Court

David Schneiderman
Wednesday, May 10, 2017

[cross posted from https://cfe.ryerson.ca/blog/2017/05/our-anxious-supreme-court]

One gets the sense that the Supreme Court of Canada does not have a good feel for free speech questions. It took some time, for instance, for a majority of the Court to acknowledge that legal constraints might ‘chill’ free speech. The Court confidently proclaimed, on more than one occasion, that civil and criminal legal prohibitions should not be expected to deter speakers. 

Only recently did the Court acknowledge this possibility and, accordingly, relaxed the law of libel so as to allow a new defence of responsible communication on matters of public interest. The Court did so only after other commonwealth Courts had taken a lead in relaxing the common law of libel. It was this reform that enabled the press to report freely on the misdeeds of the late Toronto Mayor, Rob Ford, without the worry of a lawsuit.

Rolling back investor protection in the Trump Era

Anita Anand
Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Attempting to fulfill his election promises, President Trump has begun to reevaluate post financial crisis rules designed to protect investors. The broad-based Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act will be the target of much of Trump’s reforms in this area, which if repealed would undoubtedly leave investors vulnerable.

The Dodd-Frank Act added lending restrictions aimed at: preventing the formation of risky mortgages, protecting consumers against predatory provisions and extending similar protections to common forms of consumer debt including credit cards. In addition, its bank investment provisions (the ‘Volcker Rule’) prevent banks from trading securities in their own account while also restricting their investment in hedge funds and private equity. The derivatives provisions create a framework for the regulation of over the counter swaps, restricted regulatory authority of swap agreements and incorporated anti-fraud measures.

But the President and his team cannot instantaneously unwind Dodd-Frank – it is, after all, enacted law which would require 60 votes to be repealed and Republicans in Congress would not yet provide the support needed given that only 52 votes appear to be available.

Is the World Better Prepared for the Next Financial Crisis?

Anita Anand
Wednesday, January 18, 2017

Eight years have passed since the most recent global financial crisis although its long-term effects linger in the form of low growth rates, weak labour markets and high levels of public and private indebtedness in many countries.  History suggests that we will experience more crises which will increasingly exhibit international dimensions with the internationalization of financial markets. Thus, we must confront the central question of whether there is an optimal regulatory structure that countries should implement, given that members of the G-20 have individually committed to regulating systemic risk in their respective domestic economies.

Financial crises come in many shapes and sizes. In a recent widely acclaimed survey of eight centuries of financial crises around the globe, Reinhart and Rogoff (2009) helpfully categorize them as including sovereign defaults, banking crises, exchange rate crises and finally crises marked by bouts of very high inflation that constitute the de facto equivalent of outright default on public or private sector debt. These are not watertight categories, of course – what may begin as one type of crisis can quickly transform into a different class of crisis both within and across countries.

InterOil-Exxon precedent delivers a wake-up call on fairness opinions

Anita Anand
Sunday, December 11, 2016

 

Published in the Globe and Mail on November 29, 2016.

Rare is the precedent-setting securities case that emerges from the Yukon Court of Appeal. The recent attempted arrangement between InterOil Corp. and Exxon Mobile Corp., however, has given rise to such a case. The decision contains a welcome judicial pronouncement on fairness opinions in the context of corporate mergers.

InterOil was set to merge with another corporation before Exxon came forward with a “white knight” offer. InterOil’s financial adviser, Morgan Stanley, provided it with a fairness opinion stating that the merger (which was structured as an arrangement) was fair from a financial point of view.

While fairness opinions are common in merger transactions, their purpose may be legitimately questioned. Should they provide shareholders with information about their investment and the transaction under consideration? Or, in the words of the judge at first instance, are they simply “comfort letters” that provide boards with support for their decision to enter into the merger?

The Dangers of Euthanasia on Demand: Op-ed Chicago Tribune on the Dutch "Completed Life" Assisted Dying Proposal

Trudo Lemmens
Tuesday, October 18, 2016

The following co-authored editorial first appeared in the Chicago Tribune on October 18, 2016. It is a commentary on the Dutch government's proposal to introduce a new law that would enable state organized life-ending interventions for people who feel they have a 'completed life' but do not suffer from any 'untreatable medical condition' that causes 'unbearable suffering' (which are the key criteria to obtain access under the Dutch Euthanasia law). A new special 'counsellor in dying' would assess whether the request to have one's life terminated would be 'genuine' and based on a reasonable assessment of 'completed life'. 

The dangers of euthanasia-on-demand

By expanding access to euthanasia, the Netherlands puts society's most vulnerable at risk.

Senator Murray Sinclair's Call for Senatorial and Legal Restraint Should Inspire All of Us

Trudo Lemmens
Monday, June 6, 2016

The deluge of op-eds, blogs, commentaries, media interviews and news reports about Bill C-14 on Medical Assistance in Dying has created a level of over-saturation. More careful, reflective statements are increasingly hard to find. What now dominates the debate are bold statements about the constitutionality of the Bill—University of Ottawa’s Amir Attaran apparently even inventing a new constitutional qualifier of ‘unconstitutional by the bucketfull’--and reports of difficult and emotional end-of-life situations, which Bill C-14 may indeed not necessarily solve. It is therefore perhaps no surprise that the eloquent, respectful and wise intervention in the Senate by the Honourable Murray Sinclair, former judge and former Chair of the Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission, did not receive much attention in the media.

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