The Canadian Senate has long been considered an institutional pariah, viewed as an undemocratic, outmoded warehouse for patronage appointments and mired in spending and workload scandals. In 2014, the federal government was compelled to refer constitutional questions to the Supreme Court relating to its attempts to enact senatorial elections and term limits.Constitutional Pariah explores the aftermath of Reference re Senate Reform, which barred major unilateral al...

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 brin...

This book studies the "disciplinary divides" between law and political science, including conceptual, methodological, and normative differences in how each field approaches policy, institutions, and legal phenomena.Disciplinary Divides in the Study of Law and Politics critically analyses these fault lines and proposes strategies to bridge them. The chapters identify key gaps, disagreements, and challenges in the study of law and politics through fresh empirical analyses, in...

Rights and Parliamentary Systems in Canada and Beyond brings together political scientists and legal scholars to explore rights and their limitations, along with the governmental and legislative processes affecting them, within Canada’s parliamentary system. It also examines how these elements shape broader institutional relationships under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and in comparative perspective.This interdisciplinary volume offers valuable, in-depth anal...

Policy Change, Courts, and the Canadian Constitution aims to further our understanding of judicial policy impact and the role of the courts in shaping policy change. Bringing together a group of political scientists and legal scholars, this volume delves into a diverse set of policy areas, including health care issues, the regulation of elections, criminal justice policy, minority language education, citizenship, refugee policy, human rights legislation, and Indigenous policy....

Legislating under the Charter explores how governments and Parliament justify limitations on rights when advancing laws that raise rights concerns or when responding to judicial decisions under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.Through an analysis of legislation concerning criminal justice policy, the approval of new safe consumption sites, sex work, and medical assistance in dying, the book provides a detailed analysis of the extent and nature of parliamentary d...

Free expression is under threat. Social media and "fake news," misinformation, and disinformation have prompted governments to propose new forms of regulation that are deeply challenging to free expression. Hate speech, far-right populism, campus speech debates, and censorship consistently make headlines in Canada and abroad.Dilemmas of Free Expression offers forward-looking appraisals of ways to confront challenging moral issues, policy problems, and controversies that pa...