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Is Gender Really More Important than Appointing Prime Minister?

Benjamin Alarie
Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Professors Jame Stribopoulos and Moin Yahya recently published an article in the Osgoode Hall Law Journal entitled, Does a Judge's Party of Appointment or Gender Matter to Case Outcomes? An Empirical Study of the Court of Appeal for Ontario.  The abstract explains:

This study reveals that at least in certain categories of cases, both party of appointment and gender are statistically significant in explaining case outcomes.  Between these two variables, gender actually appears to be the stronger determinant of outcome in certain types of cases.  While these findings are cause for concern, this study also points toward a simple solution.  Diversity in the composition of appeal panels both from the standpoint of gender and party of appointment dampened the statistical influence of either variable.  In other words, in the case of gender, a single judge on a panel who is of the opposite sex from the others, or in the case of political party, a single judge appointed by a different political party, is sufficient to eliminate the potential distorting influence of either variable.  This finding suggests a need to reform how appeal panels are currently assembled in order to ensure political and gender diversity and minimize concerns about the potential for bias.

Canada's New Terrorism Bills: Slow Down and Debate

Kent Roach
Monday, October 29, 2007

Canadian Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day tabled new legislation in the House of Commons last Monday to allow British-style special advocates to play a role in security certificate cases that are used to detain and deport non-citizens suspected of involvement in terrorism. The bill responds to the Supreme Court of Canada's decision earlier this year that the existing legislation was unconstitutional.

On Tuesday the government tabled another bill in the Senate to revive investigative hearings and preventive arrests. These Criminal Code powers were introduced after 9/11 but expired in March, 2007 after the government failed to convince Parliament to renew them for three years. The government now proposes to include the powers in the Criminal Code, subject to a some changes and a 5 year renewable sunset.

The official opposition - the Liberal Party - has indicated some preliminary support for both bills and they appear likely to pass. There is a need to slow down and carefully consider both bills, as well as important work already done by Parliamentary committees on anti-terrorism law.

A Common but Differentiated Approach to Global Climate Policy: How not to Re-invent the Wheel

Jutta Brunnée
Wednesday, October 17, 2007

The world appears to have arrived, grudgingly in some cases, at a consensus that climate change is a serious environmental threat.  The global policy-making machine has slowly creaked into gear.  Indeed, various initiatives are now picking up speed on multiple tracks.

On track 1, discussions about new commitments to follow Kyoto post-2012 are taking place under the auspices of the 1992 UN Climate Convention.  On track 2, this year’s G8 Summit saw the leading industrialized states endorse the idea of 50% cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.  On track 3, the Asia-Pacific Climate Partnership, which Canada has now joined, is chugging along towards technological cooperation and an “aspirational” emissions target.  On track 4, US President Bush’s climate initiative wants to bring the 15 countries, including China and India, that emit 80% of global greenhouse gases on board.  Here too the destination is a “flexible” long-term target.

Ontario 2007 Election

Thursday, October 11, 2007

By visiting scholar Adam Dodek.

One way to analyze the Ontario election results is in terms of a decisive rejection of constitutional change by Ontarians.

Ontarians generally want their premiers and their governments to focus on the business of governing rather than on constitutional change.  Premier David Peterson was punished at the polls in 1990 in part for focussing on Meech Lake and Canadian unity and Premier Bob Rae often seemed more interested in constitutional issues like Charlottetown than the more mundane issues that capture the Tim Horton's crowd.  Somehow John Tory fell into a similar trap by daring even to raise the issue of funding for faith-based schools.  After the Supreme Court of Canada's 1996 Adler decision, the issue of funding for non-Catholic faith-based schools was transferred from the judicial to the political realm.  Most politicians knew well enough that religion and politics make for an incediary mix (see Bill Davis' extension of funding for Catholic schools in 1984 and Premier McGuinty's experience with Sharia law from 2004 and 2005) and were content to let the issue lie dormant.  Ultimately, Tory was unable to foresee let alone control the firestorm that he had sparked and he was punished at the polls as a result.

Brian Leiter Revisits His Canadian Law School Rankings

Ariel Katz
Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Professor Brian Leiter, who designed Macleans ranking of Canadian Law Schools, responds to some of the comments about his methodology.  Follow the link: Brian Leiter's Law School Reports: Revisiting the Canadian Law School Rankings.

 

Lies, Damned Lies and Campaign Promises

Lorne Sossin
Monday, October 1, 2007

Today, as the home stretch of Ontario's election campaign begins, Conservative leader John Tory announced that he will allow a free vote after all on his controversial proposal to extend public funding to faith based schools. Many will seize on the turnaround as evidence of a "broken promise" (Tory has earlier indicated he would not put the proposal to a free vote if elected on October 10th). Perhaps this is an example of Tory having to get cozy in a bed of his making. Much of Tory's campaign has emphasized Premier McGuinty's broken promises, including most notably his "no new taxes" pledge of the 2003 campaign and the Liberal's subsequent decision to impose a new tax (the "health premium").

This all raises the question –What is the nature of integrity, ethics and accountability in political campaigning?

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation, which had encouraged the “no new taxes” pledge in 2003, took Premier McGuinty to court after the health premium was passed in 2004, arguing that he had breached a contract. The Ontario Court of Appeal rejected this legal ploy, affirming the obvious, which is that politicians who make campaign promises have not created a legal obligation to do the thing they promised.

Balanced Climate Policy, Made in Canada?

Jutta Brunnée
Friday, September 28, 2007

In a September 25 poll on its website, the Globe and Mail asked Canadians: “In terms of global warming, what approach do you favour? Strict adherence to the Kyoto Protocol? The 'more flexible' approach suggested by Prime Minister Harper? A compromise between those two positions? No action is needed because global warming is not happening?” The about 86000 respondents were almost equally divided between the first three options, with only 5 % opting for “no action.”

But are politicians and media providing the information that would allow Canadians to make these judgments?  Kyoto-bashing has become something of a national sport, a sport that Canadian media have fallen for hook, line and sinker.  The same goes for political slogans touting the need for a “made in Canada solution” or a “balanced approach” to climate change.  Why indeed favour a “flawed treaty”? And why resist such reasonableness as home-made balance?

According to now conventional wisdom Canada cannot meet its Kyoto obligations.  Yet, even if domestic measures cannot deliver Canadian Kyoto compliance, there are good reasons for bringing Canada as close as possible to compliance. 

Supreme Court of Canada Justices are Unpredictable - Mostly, Part II

Benjamin Alarie
Wednesday, September 26, 2007

This is a follow-up to the previous post regarding the paper Andrew Green and I recently posted on SSRN.  The point of this post is to elaborate on the motivation for the paper and summarize our results.

Improving the Rankings

Benjamin Alarie
Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Ideally rankings should be based on aspects of law school performance that can garner wide acceptance and cannot easily be manipulated.  That is, for a law school to improve its position in the rankings, it should have to actually improve its performance as an institution.  The two main activities of a law school are research and teaching.  Therefore, in measuring the performance of law schools in order to rank them, the goal should be to measure research contributions and teaching effectiveness in an unbiased way.  This is not easy to do.

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