Backhouse has crafted an outstanding book that is, on one level, a micro-analysis of how one run-of-the-mill interaction between a youth and a police officer metamorphosized into one of the most significant legal cases in Canadian history. On another level, it is a macro-analysis of how the Canadian legal system and Canadian society in general is saturated by, and at the same time struggles with, anti-Black racism.On October 17, 1993, Rodney Darren Small, a fifteen-year-old Black youth, found himself in an altercation with a white police officer in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Subsequently, the prosecutor brought three charges against Small. During the trial, youth court Judge Corrine Sparks, the first Black female judge appointed in Canada, acquitted the youth, noting in part that “sometimes white police officers overreact.” This led to a successful appeal by the Crown on the basis of actual bias by the judge against the police officer. In the ensuing three years, a series of additional appeals culminated in a deeply divided and somewhat confusing Supreme Court of Canada decision that upheld Small’s acquittal and affirmed Judge Sparks’ decision.In both style and substance, the book is a page turner, crisply written and driven by a sense of anticipation as to what might happen next. In addition to many of the tools used by legal historians (archives, newspapers, online sources, legal texts—legal decisions, facta (briefs submitted to the court by the lawyers before a hearing), oral arguments—obituaries, and so on), the richness and nuance of the analysis derives from two main sources. The first are Backhouse’s ninety-nine interviews with a vast array of people—the accused, some of the lawyers, some of the judges, community activists, academics—which is a remarkable feat of research. The second is the author’s adoption of an intersectional analysis guided by critical race theory, feminist theory, and, on occasion, critical disability theory. In deploying these tools, Backhouse provides fundamental insights into the individuals, institutions, ideas, ideals, ideologies, and identities that both constituted and reverberate from the RDS case.The book touches on two further points of interest beyond the specifics of the RDS case. First, Backhouse confronts head-on the issue of the legitimacy of a white person engaging in research on what is the leading case addressing anti-Black racism in Canada. Acknowledging the dangers of such a project, Backhouse diligently incorporates as many Black voices in their own words as possible. Recognizing that this is still a partial and racially situated interpretation, Backhouse uses the book to communicate such perspectives as best as she is able within the confines of the project. Second, in the conclusion, although careful not to claim that history can predict the future, Backhouse identifies a plethora of unanswered questions about racism in the Canadian legal system that are highlighted by the RDS case. Some of these questions are specific to the case and identify potential limitations in Backhouse’s own interpretation. But many are structural and systemic in nature, thereby demanding ongoing attention and action not only by scholars, but by all members of the justice system, indeed all Canadians. While there can be no gainsaying that RDS was a significant victory for Black Canadians, the extent and ramifications of that victory are very much unresolved almost a quarter of a century later.

Judicial discipline has long stood in the shadows of public law scholarship. While important examples of sustained attention to the subject can be found, and indeed have proliferated in recent years,1 these have tended to focus on domestic regimes and controversies.2 In contrast, judicial discipline systems have not been integral to trans-systemic inquiry into constitutionalism or the rule of law, or principles of good governance or public administration. Where the subject has attracted attention, it has been susceptible to reductive analysis centring on stylized tensions between judicial independence on the one side and judicial accountability on the other. Sustained inquiry into how independence and accountability are understood and defended across diverse judicial discipline regimes, what other legal values are engaged by this distinct public law form, and whether or how the various features of judicial discipline systems may be understood as either essential to legal ordering as such, or, alternatively, as deeply contingent expressions of distinct political projects over time, remains conspicuously absent.

We are all familiar with the old adage that hard cases make for bad law. This symposium riffs off that idea to inquire whether soft law can make for (great) ethical lawyering? To interrogate this q...

This chapter focuses on the history of the complaints and discipline process in Canada and how public confidence in this system has increased and decreased over the years. It discusses the origins of the Canadian Judicial Council as a response to a “crisis of legitimacy” and the Council’s focus on judicial independence as a result of that crisis. The chapter also reviews the complaints and discipline process, including several reform measures, and outlines how the Council’s failure to calibrate the norms of reasoned justification, fair participation, impartiality, independence, transparency, accountability, representation, and efficiency has become apparent over the last decade.

of Law Deans and the Law Commission of Canada.1 The ambitions of this series are large: to "examine various issues of law reform from a multidisciplinary perspective [and] ... to advance our knowledge about law and society through the analysis of fundamental aspects of law."2The focus on the public-private divide is an excellent choice for the Legal Dimensions Series for no matter how one conceptualizes the relationship, or what one thinks about it, it is incontrovertible that the distinction between public and private is a foundational aspect of contemporary understandings of the nature and function of law.3The multidisciplinary ambitions of the series are also fulfilled, not only because the authors come from disciplines such as Communications, Geography, Philosophy as well as Law, but also because the lawyers draw heavily on other disciplines such as feminist political economy, governance theory and industrial relations.As such, this volume does "advance our knowledge about law and society"4 in significant and, in my view, quite exciting ways.However, the third side of the pyramid -issues of law reform -is more difficult to get a sense of in this collection.

On 19 October 2015 the Liberal Party of Canada won the general election and Justin Trudeau became Canada’s 23rd prime minister. During both the political campaign and the period after the election,...

This special issue of Legal Ethics focuses on the judiciary, with a particular emphasis on the ethics of judicial appointments. The first four articles all emerge from papers delivered in the two s...

Although the Canadian legal system has many virtues, it has at least one major weakness - its judicial appointments and promotion systems. The paper begins by identifying six key values that need to be considered in order to assess the legitimacy of a judicial appointments process - independence, impartiality, representativeness, transparency, accountability and efficiency. In the following sections, through the use of three case studies of appointments to the Supreme Court of Canada, the superior courts of Nova Scotia and a promotion to the Federal Court of Canada, we demonstrate that Canada has failed to live up to these values. We conclude by suggesting that recent reforms to the judicial appointments processes by the current government are an improvement, but that more radical reforms are essential to enhance public confidence in the integrity of Canada's judicial appointments and promotion systems.

Richard Devlin celebrates the life and career of Rocky Jones, a Black lawyer from Halifax who battled racism both outside and inside the law.

Judges are critical actors in justice systems around the world. Despite important differences between the various legal families (civil law, common law, socialist law and religious law), the judiciary is frequently viewed as an institution of considerable significance across such legal families. Judges preside over criminal trials where the liberty and, in some jurisdictions, the lives of individuals are at stake. They interpret laws and adjudicate disputes between individuals and the state. Judges review the legality of administrative action. In some jurisdictions, they have the power to strike down laws as inconsistent with the country’s Constitution. In civil cases, they may make determinations across a panorama of disputes, from divorce and child custody to personal injury and class actions to multibilliondollar commercial disputes. As an institution, the judiciary is often considered ‘the third branch’ of government alongside the legislative and executive branches. In short, judges exercise enormous power in society both as individuals and as an institution.1 We can therefore speak of judges collectively as ‘empowered judiciaries’. Broadly speaking there have been three types of responses to the emergence of empowered judiciaries. First, there are the boosters. They emphasize several key points: empowered judiciaries tend to promote development because they provide enhanced stability and predictability in the economic sphere;2 empowered judiciaries promote human and civil rights thereby enhancing human autonomy and the possibilities of improved democracy;3 and empowered judiciaries support the development of cultures of legality.4 Next, there are the sceptics. They argue that the connection between development and empowered judiciaries is much more contingent and complex than the boosters suggest.5 In addition, sceptics are concerned that empowered judiciaries are a threat to autonomy, human flourishing

In this short essay, we present law as a case study of teaching professionalism in the public interest. Our hope is that the accountancy profession, as well as other professions (including law), will be prompted to reflect on the potential for the concept of public-interest vocationalism to at least inform, if not transform, education in their domains. The argument proceeds in three stages. In Part I, we set the context by identifying a number of profound challenges now facing Canadian legal education. In Part II, we introduce the concept of, and provide a justification for, public-interest vocationalism. In Part III, we provide a model of how legal education could be reformed in order to reflect, accommodate, and engender public-interest vocationalism.

There now appears to be a consensus in Canada that we have a serious access to justice problem. Chief Justices have been vocal. The Governor-General has made an intervention. Legal newspapers and websites have weekly, if not daily, stories on access to justice concerns. There have been several thorough reports which both detail the problems and propose possible paths forward. And one CEO of a national law firm has lamented that “access to justice is the legal profession’s equivalent of global warming.” However, in my opinion, despite all this alarm, attention, and progress, two key components tend to be missing from the analyses: a clearly articulated conception of the ethical identity of a Canadian lawyer, and a sufficiently concrete elaboration of the responsibilities of law societies to help in the resolution of our access to justice problems. I will also argue that both these components are closely connected. Before I proceed to advance my argument, several caveats are essential. First, I do, of course, realize that access to justice is much more than access to law and/or access to lawyers. But, at the same time, it cannot be denied that the legal profession is one of the determining structural forces in the access to justice problematic. The legal profession cannot be allowed to get off the hook, even by inadvertence. Second, some might ask why am I focusing on law societies, and that I should be paying attention to my own backyard — the law schools’ responsibilities for promoting access to justice. I have been doing that in several recently essays. Third caveat: while I am going to be critical of law societies, I do recognize that many individual lawyers, either in their practices or through pro bono, strive hard to enhance access to justice. My concern in this essay is more with institutional responsibility, not individual responsibility. My fourth caveat is that I am focusing on law societies and not the Federation of Law Societies of Canada (FLSC) because a) it is the law societies who have the legislative authority and obligation to govern the legal profession not the FLSC, and b) the FLSC is over extended and under resourced as an organization. My argument will proceed in three stages. First, I will provide an overview and assessment of the three major access to justice reports that have been recently published. Second, I will outline an account of the ethical identity of a Canadian lawyer and what this says about the access to justice problematic. Third, I will propose eight concrete recommendations that law societies should pursue to assist in the resolution of the problems of access to justice.