IHRP report says Canada's adoption of AI in immigration raises serious rights implications

Thursday, September 27, 2018

Algorithms and artificial intelligence are augmenting and replacing human decision-making in Canada’s immigration and refugee system, with alarming implications for the fundamental human rights of those subjected to these technologies, says a report released today by the University of Toronto’s International Human Rights Program (IHRP) and the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.

Prof. Anita Anand writes "Time for the OSC to revisit its policy on no-contest settlements" in Globe and Mail

Wednesday, July 11, 2018

In a commentary in the Globe and Mail, Prof. Anita Anand assesses the Ontario Security Commission's use of no-contest settlements and argues that "We should question whether the alleged benefits of no-contest settlements, including efficiency and deterrence, outweigh the weaknesses of this enforcement program" ("Time for the OSC to revisit its policy on no-contest settlements," July 10, 2018).

Read the full commentary on the Globe and Mail website, or below.

Prof. Anna Su writes "The Supreme Court has dismissed religious practice as a matter of mere choice in its TWU decision"

Tuesday, June 19, 2018

In a commentary for the CBC, Prof. Anna Su analyzes the Supreme Court of Canada's decision in the case of Trinity Western University's law school accreditation by provincial law societies in terms of its approach to religious practice ("The Supreme Court has dismissed religious practice as a matter of mere choice in its TWU decision," June 18, 2018).

Read the full commentary on the CBC website, or below.

The Supreme Court has dismissed religious practice as a matter of mere choice in its TWU decision

By Anna Su

Op-ed by the IHRP's Samer Muscati and Petra Molnar: "Ontario should revise discriminatory driving policy against refugees"

Tuesday, December 12, 2017

In a commentary in the Ottawa Citizen, International Human Rights Program director Samer Muscati and research associate Petra Molnar argue that refugees in Ontario should benefit from the exemption to the driving-test waiting period available to other newcomers in Ontario, and to refugees in other provinces ("Ontario should revise discriminatory driving policy against refugees," December 11, 2017).

Jean-Christophe Bédard-Rubin

Jean-Christophe Bédard Rubin
SJD Candidate
Thesis title:
Claiming Constituent Authority in Non-Revolutionary Constitutionalism: State, Sovereignty and Representation in the formation of French-Canadian Constitutional Culture
Office in Falconer Hall
84 Queen's Park
Toronto, M5S 2C5
Email: john.bedardrubin@mail.utoronto.ca

Jean-Christophe Bédard-Rubin (LL.B. Laval, LL.M. Toronto) is a doctoral candidate at the Faculty of Law of the University of Toronto and a Joseph-Armand Bombardier Scholar. His doctoral dissertation titled Claiming Constituent Authority in Non-Revolutionary Constitutionalism: State, Sovereignty and Representation in the formation of French-Canadian Constitutional Culture provides a genealogical account of the intellectual history of public law thought in the French-Canadian liberal tradition. His research draws on a variety of methodological approaches to explore Canadian constitutional culture from a comparative perspective writ large. His work has appeared or is forthcoming, in English or French, in the Canadian Journal of Law and Society, Osgoode Hall Law Journal, the Review of Constitutional Studies, the International Journal of Canadian Studies, the Bulletin d’histoire politique, Constitutional Forum, Linguistic Minorities and Society as well as an edited collection by Brill. In 2020-2021, Jean-Christophe was the R. Roy McMurtry Fellow of the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History. In 2021-2022, he is a visiting assistant in research at Yale University's MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies.

Education
Visiting Assistant in Research, Yale University's MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies (2021-2022)
LL.M. University of Toronto (2016)
LL.B. Laval University (2013)
Cert. Philosophy Laval University (2013)
Awards and Distinctions
SSHRC Michael-Smith Foreign Study Supplement
Ontario Graduate Scholarship 2021-2022 (10 000$)
R. Roy McMurtry Fellowship in Legal History of the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History 2020-2021
Dean's Graduate Student Leadership Award 2019
SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier Scholarship 2018-2021 (105 000$)
FRQSC Quebec Government Scholarship 2018-2022 (80 000$) (declined)
Nathan Strauss Q.C. Graduate Fellowship in International Law University of Toronto (2018-2019)
Central European University visiting scholarship (2018)
DAAD (German Academic Exchange Fund) and Goethe University Frankfurt-am-Main scholarship (2018)
W.C.G. Howland Prize for best overall performance in the LL.M. University of Toronto (2016)
Nathan Strauss Q.C. Graduate Fellowship in Canadian Constitutional Law University of Toronto (2015-2016)
Lieutenant-Governor Tribute Laval University (2014)
Dean's Honour List Laval University (2013)
Professional Affiliations
Member of the Quebec Bar
Member of the Canadian Political Science Association
Member of the Quebec Political Science Society
Member of the Quebec Constitutional Law Association
Member of the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History
Selected Publications

Jean-Christophe Bédard-Rubin, "L'analyse comportementale du jugement judiciaire dans l'angle mort des études sociojuridiques francophones au Canada", [Judicial Behavior Studies in the Dead Angle of French Canadian Socio-legal Studies] (2022) Revue de droit de l'Université de Sherbrooke (forthcoming).

Jean-Christophe Bédard-Rubin & Tiago Rubin, "The Elusive Quest for French on the Bench: Bilingualism Scores for Canadian Supreme Court Justices, 1985-2013", (2022) Canadian Journal of Law & Society (forthcoming).

Jean-Christophe Bédard-Rubin, "Comparing Regimes of Constitutional Historicity: The Case of Precedents in Canada and the United States", in Jason Mazzone, Justin Frosini & Francesco Biagi, eds., The Uses of History in Constitutional Adjudication: Comparative Perspectives, Leiden, Brill, 2022 (forthcoming).

Jean-Christophe Bédard-Rubin, "L'émergence inattendue de la dualité institutionnelle à la Cour suprême du Canada depuis Pepin-Robarts" [The Unexpected Emergence of Institutional Duality at the Supreme Court of Canada since Pepin-Robarts], (2021) 29:2 Bulletin d'histoire politique 125, online: https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/bhp/2021-v29-n2-bhp06227/1079767ar/

Jean-Christophe Bédard-Rubin, "La Couverture médiatique du bilinguisme à la Cour suprême du Canada: entre légalisme, pragmatisme et polémique", [Media Coverage of Supreme Court Bilingualism: Between Legalism, Pragmatism and Polemics] (2019) 59 International Journal of Canadian Studies 51, online: https://www.utpjournals.press/doi/epdf/10.3138/ijcs.59.x.50

Book review of Samuel V. LaSelva, Canada and the Ethics of Constitutionalism: Identity, Destiny, and Constitutional Faith, Montreal, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2018, 324 p., in (2020) 14 Linguistic Minorities and Society 101, online: https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/minling/2020-n14-minling05565/1072314ar/

Jean-Christophe Bédard-Rubin, "Senate Reform and the Political Safeguards of Canadian Federalism in Québec", (2019) 28:1 Constitutional Forum constitutionnel 19, online: https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/constitutional_forum/index.php/constitutional_forum/article/view/29375

Jean-Christophe Bédard-Rubin, "Des Causes et des Conséquences du Dialogue Constitutionnel" [Causes and Consequences of Constitutional Dialogue] (2018) 23:2 Review of Constitutional Studies/Revue d'études constitutionnelles 287, online: https://www.constitutionalstudies.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/03_Bedar...

Jean-Christophe Bédard-Rubin & Tiago Rubin, "Assessing the Impact of Unilingualism at the Supreme Court of Canada: Panel Composition, Assertiveness, Caseload, and Deference", (2018) 55 Osgoode Hall Law Journal 715, online: https://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/ohlj/vol55/iss3/3/

Curriculum Vitae
Research Interests
Administrative Law
Canadian Constitutional Law
Comparative Law
Economic Analysis of Law
International Law
Judicial Decision-Making
Law and Globalization
Legal Ethics
Legal History
Legal Process
Legal Theory
Political Philosophy and Theory
Supervisor
David Schneiderman
Committee Members
David Dyzenhaus
Ron Levi

The David Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights' Public Interest Litigation Conference

 

The David Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights is a Centre within the University of Toronto, Faculty of Law devoted to advocacy, research and education in the area of constitutional rights in Canada. Since its inception in 2008, the Centre has intervened in several significant Charter litigation cases and has keenly observed the successes and challenges of public interest litigation.

Emerging Issues Workshop - Panel discussion on the Trinity Western University case

On November 30th and December 1st 2017, the Supreme Court of Canada will hear two appeals involving Trinity Western University (TWU), a private Christian university in British Columbia wishing to open a new law school.  The appeals involve legal challenges to decisions by the law societies of British Columbia and Ontario and the impact of a policy that requires TWU students to sign a code of conduct forbidding sexual intimacy outside heterosexual marriage.

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.

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