Critical Conversations in Canadian Public Law is a collection of essays that examine contemporary public law issues in Canada through critical lenses, including intersectional approaches to decolonial and Indigenous legal theory, Indigenous constitutionalisms, critical race theory, feminisms, queer theory and critical disability theory. Bringing together a diverse team of expert contributors, the collection demonstrates that critical theories are imperative to robust, fully contextualized understandings of public law topics.
Critical Conversations in Canadian Public Law is the first 100% open-access collection of peer-reviewed essays devoted entirely to critical appraisals of public law topics in Canada. Set to be published by the University of Ottawa Press in 2023, Critical Conversations in Canadian Public Law highlights the intersections of critical perspectives including decolonial and Indigenous legal theory, critical race theory, feminisms, and critical disability theorywith doctrinal public law topics, broadly defined. The goal of the Critical Conversations collection is to showcase interdisciplinary thinking on topical public law issues at the forefront of the evolving relationship between state and society. In Canada, this relationship is undergoing a period of significant reinvention, as evidenced, for example, by the movements for reconciliation, decolonization and Indigenization, the calls to recognize and remedy systemic racism in institutions including police forces, and the extension of human rights protections to prohibit discrimination based on gender identity or expression. By centering critical perspectives on public law topics, Critical Conversations in Canadian Public Law fills a gap in existing Canadian public law literature, which tends to prioritize traditional, largely liberal, public law scholarship. This collection bridges the divide between public law, as it is conventionally conceived, taught, and understood, and critical theory, by identifying critical theories as not only relevant, but imperative, to robust, fully contextualized understandings of public law topics. This approach marks an original and significant intervention into the field of public law in Canada. The collection includes 17 chapters organized into five thematic sections. The diverse contributors to Critical Conversations include legal academics, former judges, and activists from across Canada, writing in both English and French. Additionally, the text opens with an Introduction authored collectively by the editorial team that investigates and interrogates the field of critical public law writ large, mapping the contours of the field and laying the foundation for future work in this area, and closes with a short conclusion that draws together key themes, ideas, questions and problems from the 17 chapters.
Introduction
Joshua Sealy-Harrington, Karen Drake, Kyle Kirkup, Anne Levesque & Jena
McGill
A. Indigenous Peoples and Critical Approaches to Canadian Law
A.1 Critical Theory and Crown-Indigenous Relations by Gordon Christie
A.2 Implementing Article 14 of UNDRIP: Indigenous Language Transmission
Rights and Responsibilities by Lorena Fontaine
A.3 Critical Approaches to Jurisdiction: The Struggle for Control of
Indigenous Lands and Resources by Dayna Nadine Scott
A.4 Four Views of Metis Constitutionalism by Kerry Sloan
A.5 Wanted: Indigenous Representation on the Supreme Court of Canada (But the
Indian in the Child Must Be Gone!) by Harry S. LaForme
B. Policing, Criminal Law, and the Carceral State
B.1 Gladue Sentencing is Ordinary Sentencing by Lisa Kerr
B.2 Abolitionist Lawyers: Making Prisons Obsolete by Reakash Walters
B.3 Źtre puni-e sans nécessairement źtre condamné-e : la punitivité avant
procčs et au-delą de la matičre criminelle en droit canadien par Véronique
Fortin et Joo Velloso
B.4 The Hunt for Red October: Critical Race Theory and Racial McCarthyism by
Vincent Wong
B.5 The School Policing Origins of R v Grant by Lisa M. Kelly
B.6 An Open Letter to Legal Workers: Imagining a World Beyond Civilian
Oversight of Policing by Meenakshi Mannoe
C. Boundaries and Borders of Public Law
C.1 The Xenophobic Gap in the Canadian Charters Equality Guarantee by Y.Y.
Brandon Chen
C.2 Disruptive choices: Agency, religious freedom, and veiling Muslim women
in Canadian constitutional law by Ashleigh Keall
C.3 Pour une application de la Charte fondée sur les droits de lenfant par
Mona Paré
C.4 Critical Disability Theory and Public Law in Canada: The Case of
Longueépée v University of Waterloo by Ravi Malhotra
C.5 Critical Perspectives in Canadian Tax Law by Samuel Singer and Allison
Christians
Allison Christians (Contributor) Allison Christians is Full Professor and the H. Heward Stikeman Chair in the Law of Taxation at McGill University Faculty of Law.
Karen Drake (Editor) Karen Drake is Associate Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, at York University.
She is a member of the Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation who researches and teaches in the areas of Canadian law as it affects Indigenous peoples, Anishinaabe constitutionalism, Indigenous pedagogy within legal education, property law, and dispute resolution including civil procedure and Indigenous dispute resolution. She joined the Osgoode faculty in July 2017 from the Bora Laskin Faculty of Law at Lakehead University where she had been a founding Co-Editor in Chief of the Lakehead Law Journal.
Prior to joining Lakehead, she articled with Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP, completed clerkships with the Ontario Court of Appeal and the Federal Court, and practised with Erickson & Partners, focusing on legal issues impacting Indigenous peoples, human rights, and civil litigation.
Kyle Kirkup (Editor) Kyle Kirkup is Associate Professor at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law (Common Law Section). His research explores the role of constitutional law, criminal law, and family law in regulating contemporary norms of gender identity and sexuality.
Professor Kirkup holds a doctorate from the University of Toronto Faculty of Law (SJD 2017), where he was a 2013 Trudeau Scholar and a SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholar. He also studied at Yale Law School (LLM 2012), the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law (JD 2009), and the College of the Humanities at Carleton University (BHum 2006).
In 2010-2011, Professor Kirkup served as a law clerk to the Honourable Madam Justice Louise Charron at the Supreme Court of Canada. He also taught advanced constitutional law in the Faculty of Law at Western University and worked at McCarthy Tétrault LLP in Toronto. He was called to the Bar of Ontario in 2010.
Anne Levesque (Editor) Anne Levesque is Associate Professor in the French Common Law Program at the University of Ottawa. Her research and her publications focus on human rights and public interest litigation. Anne has practiced in the areas of employment, human rights, and public interest law. She has worked with a wide range of equality seeking groups, legal clinics, and non-for-profit organisations on test case litigation, interventions, and law reform initiatives.
She studied history and political science before obtaining her law degree from the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law (French Common Law Program) in 2007, followed by a Master's degree in International Human Rights from Oxford University in 2016. Her research and publications focus on human rights and public interest litigation. She is one of the lawyers representing the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada pro bono in its human rights complaint leading to a landmark victory in 2016 that affirms the right to equality of over 165,000 First Nations children.
Jena McGill (Editor) Jena McGill is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law (Common Law Section), and a member of the Law Society of Ontario. Her research engages with areas of Canadian constitutional law (with a focus on equality law); gender and sexuality; women, peace and security in international law; intersectional feminist legal theory; and legal technology as a vehicle to promote access to justice. Her work on section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms has been cited by the Supreme Court of Canada. Jena has been a Visiting Scholar at the Kent Centre for Law, Gender and Sexuality at Kent Law School in Canterbury, UK.
Joshua Sealy-Harrington (Editor) Joshua Sealy-Harrington is Associate Professor and Chair of Equality Law at Windsor Law.
Sealy-Harrington teaches and researches about constitutional law (with a focus on equality law), critical legal theory, and social change.
Further, as Counsel at Power Law, Sealy-Harringtons advocacy strategically mobilizes criminal and constitutional law to advance the interests of marginalized communities.
He is a Trinidadian-Canadian born in Calgary, Alberta.
He practices remotely from New York City, where he conducts doctoral research at Columbia Law School theorizing law, identity, and sexuality. He previously completed an LL.M. at Columbia Law School, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar, Fulbright Student, and Law Society Viscount Bennet Scholar.
He has authored several peer-reviewed publications as well as articles for The Globe and Mail, Newsweek, National Magazine, Law Matters, and ABlawg. Further, his scholarship has been cited by the Federal Court, Federal Court of Appeal, and Supreme Court of Canada. He is passionate about translating the experience of minority groups into tangible legal claims. And in 2019, he received a Canadian Law Blog Award for his online advocacy on behalf of race, gender, and sexual minorities.
