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In 2019, the Quebec National Assembly passed Bill 21. It prohibits, among other things, certain state employees in positions of authority (including teachers, prison guards, police officers, and justices of the peace) from wearing religious symbols when providing public services. Many political commentators denounced the move as running counter to Canadian multiculturalism and human rights. Why did the government adopt this form of state secularism? And why did it garner public support? The Challenges of a Secular Quebec provides illuminating answers to these questions and explores why many Quebecers consider the law legitimate. Contributors analyze the statute from different angles to provide a nuanced, respectful discussion of its intentions and principles. Given the province’s singular history in North America, the merits of the initiative to separate church and state must be considered within the Quebec context. The Challenges of a Secular Quebec calls for a legal interpretation of Bill 21 that is sensitive to this difference.
Challenged Justice: In Pursuit of Judicial Independence is an academic continuation of the previous volumes on judicial Independence edited by Shimon Shetreet, with others: Jules Deschenes, Christopher Forsyth, and Wayne McCormack. All books were published by Brill Nijhoff: Judicial Independence: The Contemporary Debate (1985), The Culture of Judicial Independence: Conceptual Foundations and Practical Challenges (2012), The Culture of Judicial Independence: Rule of Law and World Peace (2014) and The Culture of Judicial Independence in a Globalised World (2016). This book offers academic articles by distinguished jurists on judicial independence and judicial process in many jurisdictions including indicators of justice and analysis of international Standards on judicial independence and judicial ethics.
More than ever Canada’s constitutional monarchy should be treasured as a distinct asset for the nation. Following Queen Elizabeth II’s historic Diamond Jubilee in 2012, there is renewed interest in the institution of the Crown in Canada and the roles of the queen, governor general, and lieutenant governor. Author D. Michael Jackson traces the story of the monarchy and the Crown and shows how they are integral to Canada’s parliamentary democracy. His book underscores the Crown’s key contribution to the origins, evolution, and successful functioning of Canadian federalism, while the place of the monarchy in francophone Canada and the First Nations receives special attention. Complex issues such as the royal prerogative, constitutional conventions, the office of lieutenant governor, and Canada’s honours system are made readily accessible to the general reader. Jackson examines the option of republican governance for Canada and concludes that responsible government under a constitutional monarchy is far preferable. He further argues that the Crown should be treasured as a distinct asset for Canada.
In Constitutional Culture, Independence, and Rights, Javier García Oliva and Helen Hall coin the term "constitutional culture" to encapsulate the collective rules and expectations that govern the collective life within a jurisdiction. Significantly, these shared norms have both legal and social elements, including matters as diverse as standards of parenting, the modus operandi of police officers, and taboos around sexuality. Using Quebec, Scotland, and Catalonia as case studies, the book delves into what these constitutional battles mean for the rights, identity, and needs of everyday people, and it powerfully demonstrates why the hypothetical future independence of these regions would hav...
This collection presents an analysis of the concept of secession and its constitutional accommodation alongside an assessment of the effects of secession in constitutional and international law. The work proposes a new approach and insights into the existing literature that fill a gap from multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary perspectives. The book approaches the topics of secession, constitutionalism, and their relationship from both theoretical and empirical perspectives, including the analysis of particular secessionist examples, such as Catalonia, the Basque Country, Tigray, the Palestinian minority in Israel, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Mapuche Nation, from a comparative constitu...
This book offers a comparative study of the management of legal pluralism. The authors describe and analyse the way state and non-state legal systems acknowledge legal pluralism – defined as the coexistence of a state and non-state legal systems in the same space in respect of the same subject matter for the same population - and determine its consequences for their own purposes. The book sheds light on the management processes deployed by legal systems in Africa, Canada, Central Europe and the South Pacific, the multitudinous factors circumscribing the action of systems and individuals with respect to legal pluralism, and the effects of management strategies and processes on systems as we...
This book puts forward an elegant theory of secessionism in liberal-democracies. It explains why some nationalist movements have experienced a significant increase in the strength of secessionism over the last decade or so, while other have not.
Four decades have passed since the adoption of the Constitution Act, 1982. Now it is time to assess its legacy. As Constitutional Crossroads makes clear, the 1982 constitutional package raises a host of questions about a number of important issues, including identity and pluralism, the scope and limits of rights, competing constitutional visions, the relationship between the state and Indigenous peoples, and the nature of constitutional change. This collection brings together an impressive assembly of established and rising stars of political science and law, who not only provide a robust account of the 1982 reform but also analyze the ensuing scholarship that has shaped our understanding of the Constitution. Contributors bypass historical description to offer reflective analyses of different aspects of Canada’s constitution as it is understood in the twenty-first century. With a focus on the themes of rights, reconciliation, and constitutional change, Constitutional Crossroads provides profound insights into institutional relationships, public policy, and the state of the fields of law and politics.
In The Constitution in a Hall of Mirrors, David E. Smith presents a learned but accessible analysis of the interconnectedness of Canada's parliamentary institutions.