Legal Process

Ontario Attorney General Yasir Naqvi came to the University of Toronto Faculty of Law this morning to make an important announcement about new steps to improve the province's criminal justice system.

Prof. Albert Yoon has co-authored a comprehensive report with Tracey George of Vanderbilt University that examines whether US state judges reflect the demographics of their state in terms of gender and people of colour. "The Gavel Gap: Who Sits in Judgement on State Courts?" gives each US state a grade on this basis, with 26 states receiving an "F" grade because women and people of colour are severely under-represented among state court judges.

In a commentary in the Globe and Mail, International Human Rights Program (IHRP) director Samer Muscati and Carmen Cheung, executive director of the Global Justice Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs (and a former acting director of the IHRP) describe the case of a 16-year old Syrian refugee placed in solitary confinement when he arrived in Canada, and call for a complete ban on putting minors in solitary confinement ("An inexcusable travesty: Canada sent a Syrian minor to solitary confinement," February 17, 2016).

In a commentary in the National Post, Prof. Kent Roach and Prof. Craig Forcese of the University of Ottawa argue that the judicial protections proposed to control the new powers being offered to CSIS in Bill C-51 are limited and problematic ("Judicial warrants are designed to prevent — not authorize — Charter violations," February 17, 2015).