Yorks's Osgoode Hall Law School and the departments of philosophy at York and McMaster University have recently joined forces to facilitate academic collaborations in the field of legal philosophy. The Ontario Legal Philosophy Partnership (OLPP), which celebrates its founding with a launch reception on Friday, May 13 in the Great Hall of McMaster’s University Club, is the […]
The York Centre for Public Policy and Law (YCPPL) has been chosen by the Government of Canada to organize and lead the first ever Canada-China Industrial Relations & Labour Rights Forum in Beijing. The forum, which focuses on industrial relations, workplace discrimination and human rights issues, will be held today and tomorrow at the Beijing Conference Centre. YCPPL was […]
York law Professor David Doorey of the School of Human Resource Management has taken the idea of blogging one step further. He’s developed his own app for his blog, now available for Apple devices as a free download through iTunes. Doorey says the main reason he started Doorey's Workplace Law Blog was to better connect with […]
An upcoming forum, “WikiLeaks and the Politics of Exposure: Militaries, States and the Public Realm”, will look at the phenomena of WikiLeaks, including questions related to security, international relations, and public versus private space. The event will take place April 27, from 7 to 9pm, in the Rosedale Room of the Marriot Bloor-Yorkville Hotel, 90 […]
Last week, York law Professor Obiora Okafor was elected to the advisory committee of the United Nations Human Rights Council. The Nigerian-born professor brings his expertise in international law, human rights law, and immigration and refugee law, especially as it relates to Africa, to the advisory committee. “The committee is the think tank of the […]
Eight faculty members of York’s Osgoode Hall Law School recently visited India, where they continued a conversation with their counterparts that began last year on governance in a rapidly globalizing world and the impact on social justice, human rights, international trade and foreign investment, and environmental law. Right: Professor Sanjeev Purshotam Sahni (left), head of […]
Income-splitting for families with dependent children under 18 is a huge policy initiative for Stephen Harper’s majority-hungry Conservative party, wrote the Financial Post March 28, in a story outlining the details of the plan. So huge, you wonder why it wasn’t the centrepiece of last week’s dead-on-arrival federal budget. But the Family Tax Cut plan […]
With Tuesday’s budget, the federal government continued its love affair with tax expenditures, those special breaks that target tax relief to select causes or groups, wrote Lisa Philipps, professor in York’s Osgoode Hall Law School, in the Toronto Star March 23: Like many Liberal budgets before them, every one of the Conservative budgets since 2006 […]
The day the Toronto Star broke the story on a wide variation of acceptance rates by refugee board members, a Federal Court judge issued a decision chastising an adjudicator who had not granted asylum to anyone in three years, wrote The Star March 9: In an order issued Friday on an appeal by failed refugee […]
Asylum rejection rates have no bearing in the quality and consistency of decisions made by adjudicators, says Canada’s refugee board, reported the Toronto Star March 4: In fact, the board insists that each decision must be examined on a case-by-case basis. “Statistics on the acceptance and rejection rates of individual IRB members who determine refugee […]
If you were a refugee seeking protection in Canada, you wouldn’t want to cross the path of David McBean, wrote the Toronto Star March 4, in a story about a new York study that shows evidence of bias among different adjudicators on the Immigration & Refugee Board (IRB) of Canada: According to an analysis of […]
Last September, Justice Susan Himel of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice struck down three provisions in Canada's Criminal Code: living off the avails of prostitution; keeping a common bawdy house; and communicating in a public place for the purpose of engaging in prostitution, reported the Kingston Whig-Standard Feb. 18, in a series examining the […]
A forum held last week in our community has further raised the profile of pollution and its impact on our health, and underscores the need for a local study on the issue to commence immediately, wrote The Sarnia Observer Feb. 16 in an editorial: The devastating effects of pollution were discussed at the Community Forum […]
If collaboration across industry, academic and public sectors is key to bridging Canada’s innovation gap, how do you make university research more accessible to the people and organizations who need this expertise? York University has answered this challenge by launching Innovation York (IY). Strategically located in York Region, IY is the public face and conduit […]
Organizers of an upcoming environmental forum are hoping to engage First Nations youth, wrote The Sarnia Observer Jan. 30: The event, hosted by the Aamjiwnaang First Nations Health and Environment Committee, in partnership with York University, is a follow-up to a 2008 health symposium held in Sarnia to share research findings with members of the […]
Is snacking on morsels of human flesh wrong? Apparently it is, if it involves murdering the person first – even if you’re stranded at sea without food or water. According to common law, necessity is no defence to murder. Such a 19th-century case of murder and cannibalism is highlighted in Osgoode Hall Law School Professor Allan Hutchinson's […]
York University is the new home of the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice. The forum is moving to York from the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Law and will partner with the York Centre for Public Policy & Law (YCPPL) and Osgoode Hall Law School on various socio-legal research initiatives. “The Canadian Forum on Civil Justice […]
Osgoode Hall Law School’s Innocence Project, which provides up to 10 Juris Doctor (JD) students every year with supervised clinical work on cases of suspected wrongful conviction, is the driving force behind a constitutional challenge over preservation of evidence in murder cases. The students, who are supervised by Innocence Project Director and Professor Alan Young […]
The cumulative impact of the relentless release of pollutants into the air from Canada’s "Chemical Valley" affects the members of Aamjiwnaang in a way that is fundamentally unfair, and is now argued to be unconstitutional, wrote Dayna Nadine Scott, professor in York’s Osgoode Hall Law School and co-director of the National Network on Environments & […]
York history Professor Marc Stein grew up in the suburbs of New York City in the 1960s and 1970s with a passionate faith in the US Constitution and US Supreme Court as strong protectors of freedom, equality and democracy in the post-war era. That faith was shaken in the 1980s when the Supreme Court justices upheld state sodomy laws, […]