David J DesBaillets
David DesBaillets is a post-doctoral fellow at the Human Rights Research and Education Centre. His main area of research is comparative constitutional and human rights law in Canada. He is writing a dissertation about the evolution and current development of the right to social housing in Canada. The scope of this research includes jurisprudence, policies, and legislation, internationally, domestically, and transnationally, relevant to the advancement of the right. The project aims to examine every legal, human rights, and policy aspect of the question, with special emphasis on the legal situation in Quebec and the indigenous right to housing.
He is also a published scholar in this area, releasing a modified chapter of his dissertation in the Windsor Yearbook on Access to Justice (The International Right to Housing and the Charter: A Case Comment on Tanudjaja v. Canada [Attorney General]), in the field of legal architecture, anthropology, culture and history (Representing Canadian Justice: Legal Symbolism and Iconography at the Supreme Court of Canada). In the field of Canadian political studies (Legislative Experiences, Ideology, and Socio-Demographic Background:
The “Orange Wave”: New Democratic Party Members of Parliament).
His essay on Magna Carta (Symbolism and Significance: The Place of Magna Carta in Contemporary Canadian Law) for the 2015 national competition organized by the Canadian Council of Law Deans, won first prize for Quebec.
He is a Post-Doctoral Fellow with the Canadian Social Sciences Humanities Research Council for 2018.
David DesBaillets est un candidat au doctorat au programme des sciences juridiques de l'UQÀM. Son principal domaine de recherche est le droit constitutionnel comparé et le droit des personnes au Canada. Il écrit une dissertation sur l'évolution et le développement actuels du droit au logement social au Canada. La portée de cette recherche comprend la jurisprudence, les politiques et la législation, à l'échelle internationale, nationale et transnationale, pertinente pour l'avancement du droit. Le projet vise à examiner tous les aspects juridiques, de droit, et politiques de la question, en mettant particulièrement l'accent sur la situation juridique au Québec et le droit indigène au logement.
Il est également publié dans ce domaine, en lançant un chapitre modifié de sa thèse dans l'Annuaire de Windsor sur l'accès à la justice (The International Right to Housing and the Charter: A Case Comment on Tanudjaja v. Canada [Attorney General]), en le domaine de l'architecture juridique, de l'anthropologie, de la culture et de l'histoire (Representing Canadian Justice: Legal Symbolism and Iconography at the Supreme Court of Canada). Son essai sur la Magna Carta (Symbolism and Significance: The Place of Magna Carta in Contemporary Canadian Law) pour le concours national de 2015 organisé par le Conseil canadien des doyens en droit, a remporté le premier prix pour le Québec.
Supervisors: Hugo Cyr , Sébastien Grammond , Dave McGrane , John Packer, and Darren O'Toole
Address: Montréal, Québec, Canada
He is also a published scholar in this area, releasing a modified chapter of his dissertation in the Windsor Yearbook on Access to Justice (The International Right to Housing and the Charter: A Case Comment on Tanudjaja v. Canada [Attorney General]), in the field of legal architecture, anthropology, culture and history (Representing Canadian Justice: Legal Symbolism and Iconography at the Supreme Court of Canada). In the field of Canadian political studies (Legislative Experiences, Ideology, and Socio-Demographic Background:
The “Orange Wave”: New Democratic Party Members of Parliament).
His essay on Magna Carta (Symbolism and Significance: The Place of Magna Carta in Contemporary Canadian Law) for the 2015 national competition organized by the Canadian Council of Law Deans, won first prize for Quebec.
He is a Post-Doctoral Fellow with the Canadian Social Sciences Humanities Research Council for 2018.
David DesBaillets est un candidat au doctorat au programme des sciences juridiques de l'UQÀM. Son principal domaine de recherche est le droit constitutionnel comparé et le droit des personnes au Canada. Il écrit une dissertation sur l'évolution et le développement actuels du droit au logement social au Canada. La portée de cette recherche comprend la jurisprudence, les politiques et la législation, à l'échelle internationale, nationale et transnationale, pertinente pour l'avancement du droit. Le projet vise à examiner tous les aspects juridiques, de droit, et politiques de la question, en mettant particulièrement l'accent sur la situation juridique au Québec et le droit indigène au logement.
Il est également publié dans ce domaine, en lançant un chapitre modifié de sa thèse dans l'Annuaire de Windsor sur l'accès à la justice (The International Right to Housing and the Charter: A Case Comment on Tanudjaja v. Canada [Attorney General]), en le domaine de l'architecture juridique, de l'anthropologie, de la culture et de l'histoire (Representing Canadian Justice: Legal Symbolism and Iconography at the Supreme Court of Canada). Son essai sur la Magna Carta (Symbolism and Significance: The Place of Magna Carta in Contemporary Canadian Law) pour le concours national de 2015 organisé par le Conseil canadien des doyens en droit, a remporté le premier prix pour le Québec.
Supervisors: Hugo Cyr , Sébastien Grammond , Dave McGrane , John Packer, and Darren O'Toole
Address: Montréal, Québec, Canada
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https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/canadian-journal-of-law-and-society-la-revue-canadienne-droit-et-societe/article/coming-in-from-the-cold-canadas-national-housing-strategy-homelessness-and-the-right-to-housing-in-a-transnational-perspective/2B45D657AC83A264612B23CC7927CF61
In this literature review, we offer a concrete vision for what the progressive realization of the right to adequate housing should look like in the Canadian context and identify the responsibilities of all levels of government in driving forward this vision.
I will proceed by undertaking a comprehensive research of the Supreme Court of Canada, including its history, esthetics, architectural and design innovations, personal input of the architects, social and historical contexts, as well as some of the legal and constitutional concepts that they embody.
The assumption of my hypothesis being constitutional court houses, with their often impressive artistic details and inscribed legal maxims, seem to possess a quasi-religious significance, being an extension of what has become in many societies, especially developed liberal democracies with strong rule-of-law traditions, the secular approximation of a religious institution and, thus, the courts are transformed into a kind of temple of law.
However, the challenge of creating a courthouse, especially the Supreme Court of Canada, that reflects the legal traditions and social norms (the former often being in conflict with the latter) as well as the ever evolving aspirations of a dynamic and highly diverse, pluralistic society such as Canada’s is ,in many respects, an impossible one, and it remains an open question whether the image that the court conveys to the visitor, is ,as some scholars have suggested, the most “eloquent three dimensional representation of the role the Supreme Court has assumed in the life of the nation.”
In particular, he ignored the growing body of Charter related cases and historical precedents in Canadian jurisprudence that shed light on the complex relationship between fundamental human rights enshrined in various international legal documents and the recognized positive obligations they impose on the government of Canada to implement them, under such long established treaties as the Covenant of Economic Social and Cultural Rights and the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (both of which are binding on the government of Canada).
In this comment, the author makes a critique of the analysis undertaken by Judge Lederer (or lack of) with regards to the relevance of international human rights norms in the context of Tanudaja, by making reference to past Charter jurisprudence involving the impact of these norms on Canadian human rights claims. Specifically, in section II he provides an overview of the case law with respect to the interface of Canadian and International public law, which will place particular emphasis on those past cases that invoked international human rights law in their interpretation of the Charter. He then contrasts, in section III, Lederer J’s approach in Tanudjaja to previous cases that examined the implications of international human right norms for section 7 of the Charter. Finally, in part two of the same section, he analyses the Section 15 jurisprudence which considered the implications of international human rights norms for the interpretation of the Charter’s equality rights, with the goal of drawing comparisons with Lederer’s approach in Tanudjaja.
In the event that these questions were resolved by a sovereigntist government in Quebec and that government assumed a mandate to pursue secession from the rest of Canada, to what extent under international law is the question of secession now regulated by international legal norms? In the process of researching this thesis, I came across the work of jurists who vehemently dispute the Supreme Court's contention that the legitimacy of the process of secession is a pre-condition for international recognition nor is it an established norm of international law, as was suggested by the court in its judgment. They maintain that there are a number of cases that contradict the Court. Whether these cases are relevant to the Canadian question of secession, is open to debate. However, it seems clear that, far from being well-established international law, these issues continue to be extremely problematic.
But it does seem clear that the question of secession and recognition in the international system are now, to some extent, subject to certain legal criteria, some of which (e.g. self-determination) are raised by the court in the context of the Reference and must now be regarded as applying to the case of Quebec at least.
The ultimate result of the Canadian Social Democracy Study (CSDS) will be an academic book examining the activity and ideology of the federal NDP from Jack Layton’s election as leader in 2003 through to the 2015 federal election. The book will be solely authored by Dr. McGrane and submitted for publication to the University of British Columbia Press.
The second component of the CSDS will be the creation of a network of academics studying the NDP at both the provincial and federal levels. Events will be organized to facilitate intellectual exchange among these scholars and to encourage further research on social democracy in Canada. Through showcasing the work of these academics, this website provides resources to citizens, journalists, and students who are interested Canadian social democracy and the development of the NDP.
Our thesis is that Housing First (HF) models, such as was adopted by the Finnish government in 2005, should be incorporated into the NHS because it has proven successful elsewhere
The proposed paper is more or less divided into two parts. The first deals with the situation in Canada vis-à-vis HF models and the proposed National Housing Strategy. The second touches on HF in the context of Finland’s national anti-homelessness strategy.
There will be a detailed discussion of the way that HF policies are developed and implemented in the Canadian context. HF is promoted across different levels of government in Canada, especially by municipal governments. However, this paper will attempt to demonstrate that such policies could be just as effective at the national/federal level, if such a model were based on successful examples of large-scale anti-homelessness programs elsewhere.
Finally, the paper concludes with a section that examines the similarities and differences between Finland and Canada as it relates to the application of HF and housing rights. The objective will be to demonstrate that Finland is a good comparator with Canada for economic, social, political and legal reasons. This is not to deny significant cultural and constitutional differences between the two jurisdictions, in particular the absence of any recognized right to housing in Canada and the federal and jurisdictional division of powers, in particular regarding the regulation of property rights. And, finally, the strong influence of transnational and international legal norms on the Finnish architects of the national HF program.
In the Post-Charter era, the judiciary has played a growing role ensuring that the Federal government respects their Constitutional and Treaty duties towards Indigenous Canadians under Canadian law as well as its international legal obligations. For the first time, the federal budget includes an entire section dedicated to the needs of First Nations people. While the news was welcomed by many First Nations leaders, some still have doubts as to whether and how the government will deliver on this promise. This session will explore what, if any, legal recourse First Nations will have if they make a claim to the right to social housing through the Canadian judiciary.
This session will also explore how the sense of community has been taken away from Indigenous people by efforts that divided families (intentionally and non-intentionally) through mechanisms of assimilation (residential schools, breaking up the household through housing, seniors homes, foster care) and the role that creative approaches to housing can bring communities back together by placing the family unit back together in the home.
In recent years the issue of housing on-reserve has been a highly contentious political, social, and economic, question and has on occasion, led to extremely fraught public disputes between the Crown and First Nation’s Canadians. Thus, it is only natural that First Nations remain skeptical that they will benefit from the Crown’s newfound commitment to social housing. Among the biggest concerns, will inevitably be what accountability mechanisms will be in place should such policies fail to live up to their ideals and good intentions fail to translate into more social housing on-reserve?
In recent decades, particularly in the post-Charter era, the judiciary has played a growing part in ensuring that government respect their constitutional and treaty duties under Canadian law as well as its international legal obligations.
Hence, this project sets out to explore what, if any, legal recourse First Nations will have in the event that they make a claim to the right to social housing through the Canadian judiciary. After all, as many jurists have already stated “housing insecurity as indigenous peoples experience it on-reserve needs specific analysis”
It seeks to examine the convergence and cleavages between First Nations rights as defined by Canadian law, particularly at a constitutional level, their recognized rights under international law, in particular the doctrine of “cultural adequacy” , the different conceptions of indigenous rights advanced by Canadian scholars, and the way in which these complex notions relate to the specific context of the human right to social housing for indigenous Canadians.
Thus, housing rights are the overarching prism through which this inquiry would view the constitutional and legal dialogue between the Crown and First Nations, more generally in Canada. The hypothesis underlying this research project is that a positive right to social housing exists in both Canadian and International law and is enjoyed by First Nations peoples living on-reserve. Moreover, such a right may be predicated on a fiduciary responsibility that is binding on the Crown and inherent in certain treaties, constitutional norms and the Indian Act.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/canadian-journal-of-law-and-society-la-revue-canadienne-droit-et-societe/article/coming-in-from-the-cold-canadas-national-housing-strategy-homelessness-and-the-right-to-housing-in-a-transnational-perspective/2B45D657AC83A264612B23CC7927CF61
In this literature review, we offer a concrete vision for what the progressive realization of the right to adequate housing should look like in the Canadian context and identify the responsibilities of all levels of government in driving forward this vision.
I will proceed by undertaking a comprehensive research of the Supreme Court of Canada, including its history, esthetics, architectural and design innovations, personal input of the architects, social and historical contexts, as well as some of the legal and constitutional concepts that they embody.
The assumption of my hypothesis being constitutional court houses, with their often impressive artistic details and inscribed legal maxims, seem to possess a quasi-religious significance, being an extension of what has become in many societies, especially developed liberal democracies with strong rule-of-law traditions, the secular approximation of a religious institution and, thus, the courts are transformed into a kind of temple of law.
However, the challenge of creating a courthouse, especially the Supreme Court of Canada, that reflects the legal traditions and social norms (the former often being in conflict with the latter) as well as the ever evolving aspirations of a dynamic and highly diverse, pluralistic society such as Canada’s is ,in many respects, an impossible one, and it remains an open question whether the image that the court conveys to the visitor, is ,as some scholars have suggested, the most “eloquent three dimensional representation of the role the Supreme Court has assumed in the life of the nation.”
In particular, he ignored the growing body of Charter related cases and historical precedents in Canadian jurisprudence that shed light on the complex relationship between fundamental human rights enshrined in various international legal documents and the recognized positive obligations they impose on the government of Canada to implement them, under such long established treaties as the Covenant of Economic Social and Cultural Rights and the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (both of which are binding on the government of Canada).
In this comment, the author makes a critique of the analysis undertaken by Judge Lederer (or lack of) with regards to the relevance of international human rights norms in the context of Tanudaja, by making reference to past Charter jurisprudence involving the impact of these norms on Canadian human rights claims. Specifically, in section II he provides an overview of the case law with respect to the interface of Canadian and International public law, which will place particular emphasis on those past cases that invoked international human rights law in their interpretation of the Charter. He then contrasts, in section III, Lederer J’s approach in Tanudjaja to previous cases that examined the implications of international human right norms for section 7 of the Charter. Finally, in part two of the same section, he analyses the Section 15 jurisprudence which considered the implications of international human rights norms for the interpretation of the Charter’s equality rights, with the goal of drawing comparisons with Lederer’s approach in Tanudjaja.
In the event that these questions were resolved by a sovereigntist government in Quebec and that government assumed a mandate to pursue secession from the rest of Canada, to what extent under international law is the question of secession now regulated by international legal norms? In the process of researching this thesis, I came across the work of jurists who vehemently dispute the Supreme Court's contention that the legitimacy of the process of secession is a pre-condition for international recognition nor is it an established norm of international law, as was suggested by the court in its judgment. They maintain that there are a number of cases that contradict the Court. Whether these cases are relevant to the Canadian question of secession, is open to debate. However, it seems clear that, far from being well-established international law, these issues continue to be extremely problematic.
But it does seem clear that the question of secession and recognition in the international system are now, to some extent, subject to certain legal criteria, some of which (e.g. self-determination) are raised by the court in the context of the Reference and must now be regarded as applying to the case of Quebec at least.
The ultimate result of the Canadian Social Democracy Study (CSDS) will be an academic book examining the activity and ideology of the federal NDP from Jack Layton’s election as leader in 2003 through to the 2015 federal election. The book will be solely authored by Dr. McGrane and submitted for publication to the University of British Columbia Press.
The second component of the CSDS will be the creation of a network of academics studying the NDP at both the provincial and federal levels. Events will be organized to facilitate intellectual exchange among these scholars and to encourage further research on social democracy in Canada. Through showcasing the work of these academics, this website provides resources to citizens, journalists, and students who are interested Canadian social democracy and the development of the NDP.
Our thesis is that Housing First (HF) models, such as was adopted by the Finnish government in 2005, should be incorporated into the NHS because it has proven successful elsewhere
The proposed paper is more or less divided into two parts. The first deals with the situation in Canada vis-à-vis HF models and the proposed National Housing Strategy. The second touches on HF in the context of Finland’s national anti-homelessness strategy.
There will be a detailed discussion of the way that HF policies are developed and implemented in the Canadian context. HF is promoted across different levels of government in Canada, especially by municipal governments. However, this paper will attempt to demonstrate that such policies could be just as effective at the national/federal level, if such a model were based on successful examples of large-scale anti-homelessness programs elsewhere.
Finally, the paper concludes with a section that examines the similarities and differences between Finland and Canada as it relates to the application of HF and housing rights. The objective will be to demonstrate that Finland is a good comparator with Canada for economic, social, political and legal reasons. This is not to deny significant cultural and constitutional differences between the two jurisdictions, in particular the absence of any recognized right to housing in Canada and the federal and jurisdictional division of powers, in particular regarding the regulation of property rights. And, finally, the strong influence of transnational and international legal norms on the Finnish architects of the national HF program.
In the Post-Charter era, the judiciary has played a growing role ensuring that the Federal government respects their Constitutional and Treaty duties towards Indigenous Canadians under Canadian law as well as its international legal obligations. For the first time, the federal budget includes an entire section dedicated to the needs of First Nations people. While the news was welcomed by many First Nations leaders, some still have doubts as to whether and how the government will deliver on this promise. This session will explore what, if any, legal recourse First Nations will have if they make a claim to the right to social housing through the Canadian judiciary.
This session will also explore how the sense of community has been taken away from Indigenous people by efforts that divided families (intentionally and non-intentionally) through mechanisms of assimilation (residential schools, breaking up the household through housing, seniors homes, foster care) and the role that creative approaches to housing can bring communities back together by placing the family unit back together in the home.
In recent years the issue of housing on-reserve has been a highly contentious political, social, and economic, question and has on occasion, led to extremely fraught public disputes between the Crown and First Nation’s Canadians. Thus, it is only natural that First Nations remain skeptical that they will benefit from the Crown’s newfound commitment to social housing. Among the biggest concerns, will inevitably be what accountability mechanisms will be in place should such policies fail to live up to their ideals and good intentions fail to translate into more social housing on-reserve?
In recent decades, particularly in the post-Charter era, the judiciary has played a growing part in ensuring that government respect their constitutional and treaty duties under Canadian law as well as its international legal obligations.
Hence, this project sets out to explore what, if any, legal recourse First Nations will have in the event that they make a claim to the right to social housing through the Canadian judiciary. After all, as many jurists have already stated “housing insecurity as indigenous peoples experience it on-reserve needs specific analysis”
It seeks to examine the convergence and cleavages between First Nations rights as defined by Canadian law, particularly at a constitutional level, their recognized rights under international law, in particular the doctrine of “cultural adequacy” , the different conceptions of indigenous rights advanced by Canadian scholars, and the way in which these complex notions relate to the specific context of the human right to social housing for indigenous Canadians.
Thus, housing rights are the overarching prism through which this inquiry would view the constitutional and legal dialogue between the Crown and First Nations, more generally in Canada. The hypothesis underlying this research project is that a positive right to social housing exists in both Canadian and International law and is enjoyed by First Nations peoples living on-reserve. Moreover, such a right may be predicated on a fiduciary responsibility that is binding on the Crown and inherent in certain treaties, constitutional norms and the Indian Act.
Starting from the premise that the ways in which justice is represented is often a reflection of the values that legal institutions aspire to represent , this paper demonstrates the power of Magna Carta as a legal symbol to legitimize and create a rights based discourse that portrays our current human rights paradigm as originating in an ancient historical and mystical common law past.
In the first half, it looks at the semiotic , historical , anthropological and metaphorical uses of Magna Carta as well as in present day legal institutions and provides an overview of its specific relevance to the modern human rights narrative in Canada’s judiciary.
The second half of this paper will re-examine these symbols with a critical lens in order to demonstrate the reality of Magna Carta as a human rights instrument without formal legal status. The significance of a foreign statute which has no direct bearing on Canadian human rights will be scrutinized in its, human rights law , criminal law , indigenous law and administrative law contexts . The primary sources of legal doctrine, jurisprudence, and constitutional interpretations involving Magna Carta as well, secondary sources of critical analysis will be used in attempt to demonstrate that the influence of Magna Carta, both historically and in contemporary discourses on human rights, can be seen as both positive and negative.
Finally the paper will describe the paradox of the Magna Carta as both a source of proceduralism, on the one hand, and substantive rights and civil liberties, on the other, in the contentious Canadian debate between these two interrelated conceptions of human rights law as it relates to contemporary anti-terror legislation.
I will proceed by undertaking a comprehensive research of the Supreme Court of Canada, including its history, esthetics, architectural and design innovations, personal input of the architects, social and historical contexts, as well as some of the legal and constitutional concepts that they embody.
The assumption of my hypothesis being constitutional court houses, with their often impressive artistic details and inscribed legal maxims, seem to possess a quasi-religious significance, being an extension of what has become in many societies, especially developed liberal democracies with strong rule-of-law traditions, the secular approximation of a religious institution and, thus, the courts are transformed into a kind of temple of law.
However, the challenge of creating a courthouse, especially the Supreme Court of Canada, that reflects the legal traditions and social norms (the former often being in conflict with the latter) as well as the ever evolving aspirations of a dynamic and highly diverse, pluralistic society such as Canada’s is, in many respects, an impossible one, and it remains an open question whether the image that the court conveys to the visitor, is ,as Gournay & Vanlaethem state in their essay, the most “eloquent three dimensional representation of the role the Supreme Court has assumed in the life of the nation.”
I will proceed by undertaking a comprehensive research of the Supreme Court of Canada, including its history, esthetics, architectural and design innovations, personal input of the architects, social and historical contexts, as well as some of the legal and constitutional concepts that they embody.
The assumption of my hypothesis being constitutional court houses, with their often impressive artistic details and inscribed legal maxims, seem to possess a quasi-religious significance, being an extension of what has become in many societies, especially developed liberal democracies with strong rule-of-law traditions, the secular approximation of a religious institution and, thus, the courts are transformed into a kind of temple of law.
However, the challenge of creating a courthouse, especially the Supreme Court of Canada, that reflects the legal traditions and social norms (the former often being in conflict with the latter) as well as the ever evolving aspirations of a dynamic and highly diverse, pluralistic society such as Canada’s is ,in many respects, an impossible one, and it remains an open question whether the image that the court conveys to the visitor, is ,as some scholars have suggested, the most “eloquent three dimensional representation of the role the Supreme Court has assumed in the life of the nation.”
I will proceed by undertaking a comprehensive research of the Supreme Court of Canada, including its history, esthetics, architectural and design innovations, personal input of the architects, social and historical contexts, as well as some of the legal and constitutional concepts that they embody.
The assumption of my hypothesis being constitutional court houses, with their often impressive artistic details and inscribed legal maxims, seem to possess a quasi-religious significance, being an extension of what has become in many societies, especially developed liberal democracies with strong rule-of-law traditions, the secular approximation of a religious institution and, thus, the courts are transformed into a kind of temple of law.
However, the challenge of creating a courthouse, especially the Supreme Court of Canada, that reflects the legal traditions and social norms (the former often being in conflict with the latter) as well as the ever evolving aspirations of a dynamic and highly diverse, pluralistic society such as Canada’s is, in many respects, an impossible one, and it remains an open question whether the image that the court conveys to the visitor, is ,as Gournay & Vanlaethem state in their essay, the most “eloquent three dimensional representation of the role the Supreme Court has assumed in the life of the nation.”
In particular, he ignored the growing body of Charter related cases and historical precedents in Canadian jurisprudence that shed light on the complex relationship between fundamental human rights enshrined in various international legal documents and the recognized positive obligations they impose on the government of Canada to implement them, under such long established treaties as the Covenant of Economic Social and Cultural Rights and the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (both of which are binding on the government of Canada).
In this comment, the author makes a critique of the analysis undertaken by Judge Lederer (or lack thereof) with regards to the relevance of international human rights norms in the context of Tanudaja, by making reference to past Charter jurisprudence involving the impact of these norms on Canadian human rights claims. Specifically, in section II he provides an overview of the case law with respect to the interface of Canadian and International public law, which will place particular emphasis on those past cases that invoked international human rights in their interpretation of the Charter. He then contrasts, in section III, Lederer J’s approach in Tanudjaja to previous cases that examined the implications of international human right norms for section 7 of the Charter. Finally, in part two of the same section, he analyses Section 15 jurisprudence which considered the implications of international human rights norms for the interpretation of the Charter’s equality rights, with the goal of drawing comparisons between those examples and Lederer’s approach in Tanudjaja.
However, a more critical lens is needed in order to better understand this document and the way in which it has shaped and continues to influence law, proceduralism and constitutionalism in Canada’s modern legal institutions.
Starting from the premise that the ways in which justice is represented is often a reflection of the values that legal institutions aspire to represent , this paper demonstrates the power of Magna Carta as a legal symbol to legitimize and create a rights based discourse that portrays our current human rights paradigm as originating in an ancient historical and mystical common law past.
In the first half, it looks at the political , historical , anthropological and metaphorical uses of Magna Carta as well as in present day legal institutions and provides an overview of its specific relevance to the popular modern human rights narrative in Canada’s jurisprudence.
The second half of this paper will re-examine these symbols with a critical lens in order to demonstrate the reality of Magna Carta as a human rights instrument without formal legal status. The significance of a foreign statute which has no direct bearing on Canadian law will be scrutinized in its, human rights law , criminal law , indigenous law and administrative law contexts . The primary sources of legal doctrine, jurisprudence, and constitutional interpretations involving Magna Carta as well, secondary sources of doctrinal analysis will be used in attempt to demonstrate that the influence of Magna Carta, both historically and in contemporary discourse on Canadian law, especially human rights norms, can be seen as both positive and negative.
Finally the paper will describe the paradox of the Magna Carta as both a source of proceduralism or natural justice, on the one hand, and substantive rights and civil liberties, on the other. In the often contentious Canadian debate between these two interrelated conceptions of human rights law, this dilemma creates tensions in discussion around contemporary anti-terror legislation.